Let’s give a warm welcome to the world’s latest theocracy, the United Christian States of America! All hail our new Commander and Pope, George Bush. Shall we kiss his ring?
On November Second, we learned that over fifty percent of America is totally and completely irrational. Don’t believe me? Go ask that epitome of rationality, a scientist. I know only two scientists who voted for George Bush, out of a sample of a few hundred. This election wasn’t a referendum on George Bush’s first term, as many a pundit would claim, because there is no rational way to argue that his term has been anything but a disaster. Don’t believe me? Ask a scientist. So the reason over fifty percent of America voted for the George Bush must be something a scientist cannot comprehend, and indeed it was: that bastion of irrationaly, religion. Ever tried to argue about the theory of evolution with a member of the religious right? Feel strangely familiar to arguing with a Bush supporter? Indeed.
Hearing the election results on November 2nd, the first thought which crossed my mind was that I wished that those who have not educated themselves enough to be able to put a rational thought together were banned from enjoying the benefits of the brilliant scientists who have advanced society. But that thought is too harsh. Instead, we must think about how to turn that irrational fifty percent into rational coherent human beings. It’s surely one of the reasons I want to end up as a teaching professor. And you, my dear audience, you a bastion of rationality, you should not shrink in expressing your disdain for the irrational. Let us drive out the idiot out of America, not by physically revolting, but by teaching America how to think coherently.
O brave new quantum world!
i dunno, wasn’t the plan always to “drive the idiot out of america”? isn’t that what people have being trying to do all along? ever since the australian election i’ve been advocating a “pass a test if you want to vote policy”. maybe everyone that wants to vote should have to answer a list of questions supplied by each candidate (they must be verifiable facts!). if they don’t pass the test, they don’t get to vote cause they haven’t fulfilled their duty as a voter to be informed!!!
i think maybe i’m just angry…..
How do you teach someone who doesn’t want to learn?
I was just staring out my office window thinking about this very issue. (and it’s even sunny here, wtf?)
What I find scary is the element in America who basically wants to return to some kind of pre-enlightenment society. People who don’t understand that laws don’t come from god, etc. People who aren’t really that animated by the idea of freedom — sure, they’re for freedom within the *tight* confines of what they already consider morally acceptable (and whatever doesn’t cause them social and sexual anxiety), but they’re not really for freedom as we conceive of it today (or, did last monday).
These people are easy to identify: they’re the religious nutjobs, moral majority types. But I’m perenially on the fence as to whether religion itself ultimately causes this (and hence must be crushed), or it’s just the anxieties of a hardcore group, and not religion per se. One thing which is certain for liberal groups in america: any tactic which depends on diminishing the sway of religion is going to meet a quick demise. I think instead we’ll have to reach out to religious moderates, otherwise we’re screwed. And the trend away from religious moderation is already established, is it not? It’s time to reverse that trend by framing matters as enlightenment/modernity/rights/freedoms/
i-do-my-thing-&-you-do-yours vs crazy religious fanatics.
So I’m still unsure about religion, but the anti-enlightenment forces have to be crushed, both at home and abroad.
Since I voted for Bush, I guess you guys are all talking about me.
If Kerry was the rational choice, then where were the rational arguments prior to the election supporting his candidacy? I looked for them. All I heard was that it “couldn’t get any worse than Bush”, and I regard that as just hysteric hyperbole, since I can think of dozens of ways in which things could realisticaly get a lot worse. No Kerry supporters, including I imagine yourselves, saw the need to elucidate their superior insight with anything better than sophomoric and unsubstantiated name-calling, a lamentable trend which I see continues. To so sharply disparage the irrationality of others while consistently failing to make rational arguments is the pinnacle of irony. And arrogance.
My impression of liberals is the following argument: “We’re right because we’re smart.” That’s lazy and unconvincing. If you want to convince the rest of us ignoramuses of your superior ideology, you had better find a way that focuses on the ideas themselves instead of (a) how smart you are, or (b) how dumb we are. One of my favorite quotes, from John Buchan: “It is never a question of who is right but what is right”. That’s damn right.
Bush didn’t win because of religious right whack jobs. He won because nobody made a good enough case to vote for Kerry. Including, most notably, Kerry himself.
Oh well, I could go on and on. In fact, reviewing, it looks like I already have. Sorry to rain on your parade, Dave. I feel a little guilty for not just letting you have your fun on your own personal website, but…well…like I said once before, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s agreement.
Unable to resist…adding…one more comment…
Is it consistent with the spirit of the enlightenment to want to “crush” the “anti-enlightenment forces” 🙂 Reminds me of all the militant pacifists we have here in Seattle.
Dave, I reiterate, you have the only blog worth reading.
1. I WILL disparage the religious wack jobs for being irrational. And if you think their 22% percent of the vote didn’t make the difference in the election then you too are insane. Take them away and Kerry wins in a landslide. Bush wins ONLY because 22% of the population is religious wack jobs. Should I be “enlightened” and just “accept” their irrationality. No. The enlightenment was about how rational thought actually works. Hate to break it to you, but reality does count. And ignoring it is something society cannot tolerate. Sure this isn’t a tolerant stance, but not all liberals are touchy feely, ya know. The day we make an electorate who doesn’t overwelmingly believe that the theory of evolution is crack will be the day the enlightenment has finally suceeded.
2. Good arguments? Kerry’s stance on the environment (even Whitman couldn’t take the current administrations manipulations), Kerry’s stance on social security (any analysis of Bush’s privitization plan shows that there is no way to get to such a plan without destruction of the benefits currently promised to future generations), Kerry’s stance on science in general and stem cell research in particular, Kerry’s stance on tax cuts (or are you already in that $200,000+ income bracket which voted overwelmingly for Bush?), Kerry’s stance on healtcare (coverage for everyone without making the system government run), Kerry’s stance on drugs (who has the largest prison population in the world? we do!), Kerry’s stance on the missle defense initiative (uh, yeah, let’s launch a system which doesn’t even work! yeah!), Kerry’s stance on the international war crimes tribunal (or perhaps you think that something like, you know, world government, is a sign of the apocalypse.)
In a larger sense, however, I will also make the argument that Bush has been completely incompetent. And if you don’t see that, well, then there ain’t nothing I can do for you. He has A. lied and B. fucked up. I agree I can think of a lot worse people to elect, but can you really convince me that Bush hasn’t messed up more than any president since Johnson? Can you really argue that someone who has been a Senator for years without TOTALLY botching everything he touched wouldn’t be a better alternative? That’s just silly. But maybe you think imprisioning hundreds with no rights in Guantanamo Bay is fine? Maybe you think distorting all truth about weapons of mass distruction in Iraq is OK? Maybe you think rolling back environmental regulations is OK? Maybe you think launching a missle defense system which has little chance of succeeding is OK? Maybe you think putting nonscientific hacks on important advisory committee’s is OK, cus, you know, science is like subjective and all? Maybe you think driving the country into a huge financial deficit is fine, cus, you know, those Asian countries can keep buying the dollar indefinitely? Maybe you think it’s fine for your secretary of treasury to blatantly lie about the state of the economy? Maybe you think marginalizing homosexuals by banning them from marriage won’t marginalize them any further? Maybe you think it’s fine to give a larger tax cut to the higher tax brackets at a time when the employment situation is bleak and corporate profits are at an all time high?
Come on Bill. I understand that liberals sound like whining elitists. But they can be whining elitists, and be right at the same time. I mean, even the Economist endorsed Kerry. And it’s a whining conservative!
I agree with you (sorry), however, on one point, which is that elitist liberals talk down to the rest of the United States and politically this causes huge problems for the Democratic party. However, I ain’t a politician, so I don’t care that I sound like I know more. Because I do (if you ask me to point to a map of Afganistan, I will NOT point to north Korea. If you ask me to name the U.S. supreme court Justices, I will. If you ask me to explain to you loop quantum gravity, I will.)
Dave, those aren’t arguments! It’s a list of issues with unsubstantiated assertions that Kerry’s positions are superior! A provocative one too…I would love to argue any one of those points with you, since we disagree on most of them. I’m always looking to be proven wrong, it’s the only way to be right.
My original point was that it’s wrong to lambast people as irrational if there was a distinct lack of rational arguments for them to ignore. And I found that lack this last season very real and very painful. If you want to convince people, you have to convince them with reason instead of just yelling at them. Actually, that’s not usually true, but I wish it was. And it certainly is for me.
Pick one of those issues some time and we can go into depth about it. But, I don’t have time today. Why not? It’s HALO TIME! At least, it will be HALO TIME after I go to school. Then come back to work. Sigh. If you’re on Live, look for “Africanus” (as in “Publius Cornelius Scipio …”).
Well, I don’t think my original post was meant to convince anyone. If I were trying to convince someone of my side, I think I would be a little more polite and all. Like you said, my audience is my little corner of the universe where I don’t get challengers of your outstanding ilk. But I do stand by my main point, which is that a large cross section of people believe in UFOs, blood turning to wine, and that the earth was created in 6 days (how do you even define a day before you create the sun?) And I’m not particularly happy sharing a country with this group, as I’m sure they are not happy with sharing the country with me (fucking hippy.) If Kerry had won, I’m sure there would be some conservative blogger out there writing perhaps the exact same argument about those faithless athiestic liberals and their lack of moral values.
Plus Bill, you haven’t dug into me for my claim about scientists overwelmingly supporting Kerry. Why is this true? Are all those Ph.D.s just dillusional?
The limits of tolerance in a liberal society is a very important issue, but I don’t think the notion that “anti-enlightenment forces should be crushed” is very controversial. you can’t really have freedom in a country where no one else wants you to have it. either we each believe in freedom for our fellow citizens, or we aren’t a free country at all. the idea that god gives us freedom is an aberration from this point of view (hello ashcroft, roy moore, etc). a liberal (in the classic sense) society cannot be infinitely tolerant, or else “liberal” is meaningless.
the example too obvious to name of such an “anti-enlightenment” group is the taliban, but i’m sure in seattle you’re all too familiar with the tinge which infects the left. for fuck’s sake, an old friend of mine living in ballard went ape-shit when we saw a hummer parked near her place. you might have thought the driver was stalin the way she went off….
personally i think bush is an unmitigated disaster, and all we have to thank him for is driving up oil prices and overstretching the u.s. military.
that said, i basically agree with bill dougherty, and would even go farther.
1. everyone has assumptions, and unexamined ideological lenses through which they view the world. based on those different ideologies people can reach different conclusions.
2. your scientific triumphalism is also an ideology; i would even call it a religion. the enlightenment=rationality ideology (and modern spin-offs, like objectivism) explains the world in terms of a conflict between reason/unreason that is as unjustified and misleading as bush’s divide between good and evil.
3. education doesn’t equal intelligence, or the ability to evaluate options. saying it does is just elitist.
4. just to be concrete, bush won this election because people preferred him on terrorism and foreign policy. he gained the most among those who attend church “seldom or never” and stayed constant among evangelicals. he gained about 10 points among urban voters and lost about 5 among rural voters. people who thought terrorism was most important voted for bush by something like an 80% margin.
5. since when do “reason” and education stop imperialism and unnecessary wars? the bottom line is that americans don’t give a shit about 100,000+ iraqis dying. did educated clinton supporters care about 500,000+ iraqis dying from sanctions? the golden years of reason during the enlightenment coincided with some of the worst evils of colonialism.
6. people only perceive bush’s incompetence if they read the sort of news that we do. how many times have you watched fox in the last year? the country has self-segregated ideologically, due in part to liberals calling conservatives morons.
OK, Aram, I will respond to each number cus you numbered them so nicely.
1. Sure, everyone is biased: all is according to the color of the crystal through which you look. But is there really no difference between a well-informed ideology and one based on ignorance? (and yes, I have watched Fox news lately. I also read my hometown rural newspaper for a dose of why I should be afraid of the U.N.)
2. I’m not explaining the world in terms of rational versus irrational. I’m explaining the 2004 U.S. presidential election. And while I agree that my scientific triumphalism is nearly fanatical, I’m sick and tired of the other side getting all the fun of being outrageously over the top. Maybe I think most the far left is too mushy-bushy and what they need is a kick in the pants and some serious injection of rational thought? When I need to explain the world, I turn to physics (just kidding, sheesh, don’t get so excited!)
3. I don’t understand your 3. I agree that the absolutist statement “education is intelligence” is wrong, but surely there is correlation between the two? I don’t call someone dumb because they didn’t finish highschool, but if I need to argue about society, then education is a good way to increase intelligence and increase the ability to reason. At least if it’s a good education. Are you advocating that we should abolish education because, well, there are uneducated smart people?
4. “he gained the most among those who attend church ‘seldom or never’ and stayed constant among evangelicals.” This argument only works if you think the 2000 election wasn’t also deplorable. A major reason Gore lost in 2000 because he was portrayed as being too smart. Sounds like antienlightenment forces at work to me.
5. “since when do “reason” and education stop imperialism and unnecessary wars?” Here I am in total agreement. But you seem to think that “reason” and “education” have been the winning forces in America. I don’t believe there has been a point in history when that has ever been true. But you’re right, in that I know plenty of reasonable people who don’t give a crap about the state of 100,000 Iraqis. But, again, I’m not explaining the world in terms of rational/irrational. I’m explaining the 2004 presidential election.
6. I agree. But even if you simply read print media, you will have seen large chunks of dissent. And as I said above, I get large chunks of conservative bias reading my local news (Siskiyou Daily News) and watching Fox news. And what I see is that the arguments put forth in both these media are transparently full of bad arguments. I have a real hard time not understanding how one could read or watch that media without seeing how sloppy the thinking is. But maybe that’s my problem, eh?
Man I’m taking a schilacking on this article.
But still, no one has given me a reason why I think that a large number of scientists were pro-Kerry this election. Anyone?
well, i should think that the increased politicization of science under bush was a downer for scientists. i can respect a decision against stem cells, even if i disagree with it; i cannot respect their handling of the science/scientists related to global warming. of course science is always political to some degree, but there’s no reason to go wild. unless you are a tool of the oil companies. but that would never happen.
i don’t want to wade into the rationality part of the whole enlightenment business, but rather stay with the freedom aspect. to wit, here’s a nice missive from someone with, shall we say, a different view… from the la times:
Christian Conservatives Must Not Compromise
Voters reject liberalism, an evil ideology.
By Frank Pastore
Former major league pitcher Frank Pastore is the afternoon host on the Christian talk-radio station KKLA, 99.5 FM.
November 5, 2004
Christians, in politics as in evangelism, are not against people or the world. But we are against false ideas that hold good people captive. On Tuesday, this nation rejected liberalism, primarily because liberalism has been taken captive by the left. Since 1968, the left has taken millions captive, and we must help those Democrats who truly want to be free to actually break free of this evil ideology.
In the weeks and months to come, we will hear the voices of well-meaning people beseeching the victor to compromise with the vanquished. This would be a mistake. Conservatives must not compromise with the left. Good people holding false ideas are won over only if we defeat what is false with the truth.
The left must be defeated in the realm of ideas, just as it was on Tuesday at the ballot box. The left hates the ballot box and loves its courtrooms, which is why it hopes to continue to advance its agenda through the courts. This must end.
The left bewitches with its potions and elixirs, served daily in its strongholds of academe, Hollywood and old media. It vomits upon the morals, values and traditions we hold sacred: God, family and country. As we learned Tuesday, it is clear the left holds the majority of Americans, the majority of us, in contempt.
Simply, a majority of Americans have rejected John Kerry and John Edwards and the left because they are wrong. They are wrong because there are not two Americas. We are one nation under a God they reject. We remain indivisible despite their attempts to divide Americans through their relentless warfare against class, ethnic and religious unity.
We still believe that liberty and justice is for all. In 1946, there were those on the left who believed the Germans and the Japanese were incapable of democracy and liberty. Today, many doubt democracy can be birthed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Like their forebears, they too will be proved wrong.
The nation has now resoundingly rejected the left and its agenda. We do not want to become European. We do not want to become socialist. We do not want to become secular. We are exceptional. We are unique. And we are the greatest force for good in the world, despite what the left, the terrorists or the United Nations may claim. It is for these reasons that we remain the last great hope in the world for freedom.
We continue to be that shining city set on a hill. And we fully accept the responsibility; we are proud to be the envy of the world.
hmm. i’m pretty excited by the theological implications of this line of thought. we americans are a little higher on the divine ladder, since it’s our unique responsibility to spread god’s will (freedom) to the satanic (socialist) masses. and all under a banner of class, racial, and religous unity! i continue to pray for the rapture to get these guys out of here….
i’m just trying to say that people can have different beliefs (like whether bush is a good president) without being irrational – they just start with different premises. starting with these premises, about the importance of religion and family or whatever, they still use logic just as correctly as we do to get to their conclusions.
i’m about 95% against anti-intellectualism, but whatever else you want to say about it, i don’t think it’s explainable only by irrationality. if you think that intellectuals don’t share your cultural values, then it makes sense for you to oppose them running the country.
when “dumb” or “too smart” are used to describe bush or gore, for many they’re codewords that signal cultural differences. e.g. we don’t actually care that gore is smart so much as that he would respect the advice of his expert advisers.
maybe this would be a good subject for a post on my own (neglected) blog, rather than endless commenting here.
ok, so this is almost certainly so far in the past that no one is reading it, but at this point i’m just collecting notes for my own blog post.
here’s a good example of how denying your enemy’s rationality is a method of dehumanizing them.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15952
“FP: Thank you Mr. Leiken. To be sure, of course there are always some “deeper†reasons for hatred and the impulse to kill — and your insights into Islamism in this context are instructive. But I stress irrationalism because it is crucial to emphasize that there isn’t always some explainable “reason†why tyranny-worshippers perpetrate the crimes that they do. This is what the Left loves to do — rationalize evil — and in so doing, it weakens our battle against our enemy.”