Back in college I was president of the Young Republicans and a fervent Goldwater "conservative," even though I was not old enough to vote. My first vote, however, was cast when I was only 20 years old in the summer of 1967 at an American consulate in Munich, Germany. I was due to turn 21 by the general election, so I was allowed to vote in the Va. Democratic primary that summer. Back then there were no more than 5 or 6 Republicans in the House of Delegates, and most Democrats were pretty "conservative" back then. (Most of them later migrated to the Republican Party, including Gov. Mills Godwin. George McGovern's opposition to the Vietnam War drove a lot of them out of the Democratic Party.)
But also back then, conservatives like myself did not identify with know-nothing anti-intellectualism. In fact, "conservatism" was itself considered somewhat intellectual, bolstered by the rising prominence of William F. Buckley, Jr. In any event, I recall no quarrel with what was assumed to be scientifically-based FACT. Conservatism was about POLITICAL ideas and opinions, not science. With the presidential advent of the incredible "Know-Nothing-in-Chief," Ronald Reagan, who cleverly welcomed the religiously disaffected into the Republican Party, the definition of "conservatism" evolved quite differently from what I had thought it to mean. Some smarter, more educated Republicans were dismayed by that but, unfortunately, they went along with it because it meant more votes and more political power. About that time, and consistent with what was happening generally in the Republican Party, Buckley enunciated his support of anti-choice pregnancy policy and the attendant criminalization thereof, and a breach seemed to be forming in the conservative notion of individual liberty. Ronald Reagan embraced those policies to get elected President, with the help of the anti-intellectuals, and thus the Republican Party was transformed, for the worse.
It seems to me that conservatism has always had a legitimate role in promoting its ideas in areas of opinion and government policy, like regulating or limiting government benefits, taxation, war policies and financing and the merits or demerits of a social "safety net." That has traditionally been the most fertile ground for the creative aspects of conservatism. But when the redefined "conservatism" picks fights with fairly settled scientific fact, it is way off-base, as Senator Rubio's initial comments about the age of the Earth indicate. Rubio later quickly revised his remarks when confronted with overwhelming scientific opinion to the contrary, but he then "hedged" by asserting that parents should be free to teach their children utter pseudo-religious nonsense if they wished.
To the extent that "conservatism" is seen as embracing notions hostile to fairly well-settled science, it deserves to be called "stupid." Even Republican La. Gov. Bobby Jindal has recognized that. Those anti-intellectual notions include asserting coexistence of humans and dinosaurs (thus disputing Evolution and the much older age of the Earth than as described in Genesis), asserting homosexuality as a choice and its "reversibility," denying the human contribution to "global warming," asserting the unlikely possibility of pregnancy by rape, proclaiming the innate intellectual inferiority of other races, and disputing other biological and scientific matters for which exist considerable amounts of contrary empirical data that are consistent in their support of scientific "theory." Plus, there is also the notion that scientific "theory" is nothing more than "opinion" or "hypothesis," like the theory of gravity. Therefore, as it is OK to have differing opinions on matters of government policy, so may one have differing opinions about scientific matters if they are contrary which what is claimed to be written in the Bible, which is definitely NOT a scientific treatise. Scientific "theory" is a lot more certain and is more backed up by empirical evidence than mere "hypothesis," a distinction lost on the know-nothings, most of whom have no more than a high-school education and harbor barely concealed jealousy of the more-educated among us.
President George W. Bush, a graduate of both Yale and Harvard Business School, famously said that "the jury is still out" on Evolution. Now, whether or not he really believes that to be true is less important than the mere fact that he said it. Whether he was stating a matter of personal opinion is no more important (nor reliable) than if he was merely pandering to the religiously intolerant know-nothings who abound in the Republican Party. There are those know-nothings who believe that Evolution asserts human descent from apes when, in fact, it asserts that humans and apes likely had a common ancestor from which both lines are descendant. Similar beliefs fail to distinguish between the research and conclusions of Charles Darwin ("natural selection") and the larger issues within Evolution.
I believe most of this know-nothing anti-intellectualism is attributable to the fact that most well-educated folks are perceived as "liberal" (like Al Gore); thus, neither they nor their "theories" are worthy of respect. The hostility is real, actually on both sides, as the well-educated understandably scorn the know-nothings who yet express such absurd opinions about scientific matters. I know that I do. In the New York Times recently there was an op-ed piece about the Rubio matter by Charles M. Blow that laid out the following statistics:
Only 6% of scientists identify themselves as "Republican";
Only 15% of college professors identify themselves as "conservative," thus reinforcing the notion of "liberal bias" on college campuses;
58% of self-identified Republicans believe "God" created humans in their current form less than 10,000 years ago.
It utterly escapes those True Believers that the reason so few scientists and college professors self-identify as "conservative" might be because credulous know-nothings are not welcome in such circles! They are called "dumb-asses" for a reason!
According to Blow, taxpayers in Louisiana are being assessed the costs of private education (under notions of school "choice") for children to be brainwashed with such hyper-religious nonsense as that dinosaurs roamed the Garden of Eden, that Evolution is merely an unreliable crackpot "guess" about the origins of humans, that the Loch Ness monster really exists, etc. Where does this crap come from? WHY is the Republican Party home to such foolishness? Fortunately, a state judge recently ruled as unconstitutional the Louisiana statute that Gov. Jindal signed that overtly promotes Creationism with those "choice" vouchers. But, it's also going on in several other states. The state of Kentucky (which Mitt Romney won) has recently approved diversion of $44 Million of taxpayer money as tax incentives for the building of a Creationist theme park. Jesus wept!
This foolishness is blatantly unconstitutional, anti-intellectual and it must stop. So long as the Republican Party, however, is held hostage to such nonsense by its members and leaders, it will continue. Arguably, Barack Obama could have been defeated this year had the Republicans not been seen mostly as a pack of slavering idiots. The insults and horrific nonsense thrown at Obama and "liberals" by many Republicans certainly helped generate sympathy and votes for Obama. Republicans need only look in the mirror to see who is most at fault for the loss.
So long as Republicans fail to distinguish those matters which may be addressed by opinion and the matters concerning settled scientific fact, they will and should be dismissed as "stupid."
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