Another day, another Amerikan school district heads back to the Middle Ages. This time it is Grantsburg, in northwestern rural Wisconsin that is going to teach creationism.
The deans of Wisconsin's 43 colleges and hundreds of teachers have sent protests.(1) Yet, this is all something Amerika has done before and it does not seem to change.
MIM investigated to see how much of this is the fault of intellectuals on the "right." We did an exhaustive review of the mentions of "creationism" on nationalreview.com, an important reactionary magazine.
We found both less blame and more than we expected. Apparently no National Review author considers him/herself creationist.
There was even one article that attempted to argue substance against the hundreds of letter writers advocating creationism.(2)
48% of Amerikans believe in creationism.(3) Then they wonder why MIM cannot support majority rule in principle, when only 28% support the theory of evolution. It's clear that for a majority of people they choose on all questions based on what "feels good" emotionally or physically.
Nor was it MIM to mention in the same breath the huge swath of Amerika that likes the sodomy laws. 43% want gay relations illegal and that was too much even for the National Review.(3) By contrast with the Amerikan labor aristocracy, George W. Bush is a moderate. He supports civil unions as of five days before the end of his 2004 campaign.
As the ballot initiatives prove in various states where gay marriage is on course to become illegal by a voter margin of 3 to 1, if one stands up against discrimination against gays, one has written off the white "working" class. There is no alternative, because the majority of the white "working" class has taken action to put into law denial of gay marriage. The white "working" class has made itself the consistent enemy of the international proletariat on this question and through support for countless bombings and ground wars.
In countless places, the white "working" class is taking action to support sodomy law mostly through coordination with Taliban-style churches. Anyone who thinks sodomy laws are bullshit has written off the white "working" class, because even Bu$h and the National Review are better on that point.
Ditto teaching evolution. Getting the school board to teach creationism is an enemy attack. Anyone who opposes this attack instead of reconciling with people with a combination of crazy ideas has already written off the white "working" class. Any "Marxist" party which claims otherwise cannot be trusted by gays or thinking people who know the correct way to teach children biology. Backward "Marxist" parties who say the white "working" class is the vehicle of progress will sacrifice gays and the teaching of evolution to get themselves to power.
At the same time while knowing the facts about public opinion and public actions and claiming to support evolution and while opposing sodomy laws, the National Review is also for letting schools teach whatever they want.(4) National Review is for school choice, (funding for private schools) right after mentioning creationism. In other words, it is conceivable to National Review that school choice could lead to at least 48% of schools' opposing evolution and getting a voucher to do that. Then they still wonder why people oppose school choice and even support the dictatorship of the proletariat. Maybe teachers get an inside look at communism when they teach at capitalist schools, because they come to realize that a failure of authoritarian spine on behalf of intellectual progress could put us back in caves pretty quickly.
In this context, MIM does have to make the unfortunate call that adults do have to dictate to children. In fact, mentally, the creationism question is a terrible blow to MIM's theory in general, because it forces MIM to admit that Amerikans are a majority children mentally. They want to eat at McDonald's because the advertising is fun, not because the food is good for them and they like creationism, because it is comforting. It justifies an authoritarian hand even more than MIM has suggested.
We thought we would find more mentions of Lysenko in the National Review, but we found only two. The more substantial mention refers to a theory that brought about "devolution" of man and which has a parallel in the united $tates "brainwashing" people on gun control.(5)
In all twelve mentions of creationism I found at National Review, not one says that churches are brainwashing people with creationism. In contrast, Lysenko was a plant biologist, not some wacky eugenicist trying to breed a master race of people. There was much more to what Lysenko was saying scientifically in all his papers on plants than there is in creationism.
Had peasants been given "federalism" to decide locally what to learn in school by "school choice," most of the Soviet Union would have chosen Lysenko. The battle with Mendel just was not that developed back then, especially in application. In contrast, Lysenko claimed to be able grow crops better than others. It doesn't take much to figure out that Lysenko would have won a competition for followers, but he would have done it with much more basis than that 48% of Amerikans who oppose the theory of evolution. Under Mao Zedong, we communists were able to incorporate Mendelian genetics without popular backlash. In the united $tates, we are still in the mental Middle Ages, ripening for the Taliban or the Christian Coalition.
Notes:
1. http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/11/06/evolution.schools.ap/index.html
2. http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire043003.asp
3. http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire050803.asp
4. http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg083099.html ;
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-ferrara070202.asp
5. http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel092200.shtml