Last week, Paul Krugman wrote a column entitled "Republicans Against Science," noting matter-of-factly that the Republican candidate for President of the United States of America will almost certainly profess doubt regarding evolution, global warming and "fancy" economic theories. Although Republican anti-intellectualism is certainly not limited to these topics (these days the Party's know-nothingism seems boundless), willful ignorance on these topics - evolution, global warming and economics - is fast becoming the price of admission.
Fellow Kossack swellsman recently directed me to this 2004 blog post wherein the author waxes nostalgic for the pro-science, realist, buzzkill Republicans that most of us are old enough to remember:
Remember Republicans? Sober men in suits, pipes, who'd nod thoughtfully over their latest tract on market-driven fiscal conservatism while grinding out the numbers on rocket science. Remember those serious-looking 1950's-1960's science guys in the movies -- Republican to a one.
They were the grown-ups. They were the realists. Sure they were a bummer, maaaaan, but on the way to La Revolution you need somebody to remember where you parked the car. . . .
How did they become the party of fairy dust and make believe? How did they become the anti-science guys? The anti-fact guys? The anti-logic guys?
Tellingly, the author went on to expressly exclude John McCain from the anti-rationalist wing of the Republican Party. McCain's eventual (and for some heartbreaking) capitulation was a signal that the party's transformation was complete. At this point, the shining stars of the party - Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry - are aggressively anti-intellectual and even the previously sensible members of the party are forced to toe the anti-science line.
So how did this happen? How in such a short span of time did the Republic party go from being the wet blanket, adults in the room to being a party in open rebellion against science and reason?
Economics
Matt Yglesias believes he has pinpointed the precise date when Republicans jumped the shark on economics (my good friend Nate informs me the phrase "jump the shark" has jumped the shark; apparently, the new phrase is "nuke the fridge.") So now that we're all up-to-date on our pop-culture references (thanks Nate!), here is Matt Yglesias identifying one of the milestones on the GOP road to willful ignorance:
It seems to me that it’s possible to date the moment that conservative movement thinking on tax and budget issues jumped the shark. The date? August 6, 1996. The issue—Bob Dole’s economic plan:
In the face of a steady stream of solid economic news – low unemployment, mild inflation and rising wages – Dole will argue this fall that high taxes are keeping the American economy from realizing its full potential. . . . Dole said it’s the preamble to an even more ambitious and unspecified plan to restructure the tax system and “end the IRS as we know it” – all while keeping Social Security, Medicare and defense “off the table” from budget cuts.
“The real Bob Dole would wonder how you were going to pay for it,” said Martha Phillips . . . .
What you have here is a political movement that no longer understands its own theory. Flash back to the 1970s. You have high unemployment. But you also have high inflation. Because inflation is already high, you can’t boost growth by boosting aggregate demand. You need reforms that operate “on the supply side” and lower marginal tax rates count. Now we can debate ’till the cows come home whether or not Ronald Reagan’s 1981 budget actually had important supply side benefits, but the basic story makes sense. But by 1996, what is the problem that Bob Dole is trying to solve with this tax cut? . . . We need supply-side reform because . . . why? Ever since then, conservatives haven’t really answered “why” questions about their economic prescriptions. Instead they prescribe a cure for stagflation regardless of the situation. And over time, this scenario has become more and more toxic, such that today they’ve decided that we are experiencing high inflation even though we’re not.
I think there's something to this. We all know Reagan's supply-side rhetoric was mainly rhetoric (he raised taxes aplenty), but politically, the Two Santas strategy was a winner. So, for a long time, most Republicans would pay lip service to some form of supply-side, tax-cuts-pay-for-themselves nonsense, but once elected would appoint economists (like Greg Mankiw) who knew better. As late as 2004, Republican policy-makers were capable of making economic sense.
However, it's hard to maintain a separate public and private face and before you know it Plutocrat Pete can't control Tea Party Tim. So now we have beloved Tea Party politicians like Michelle Bachman who are utterly unfazed by fancy, schmancy economic theories. She swears that default would've been fine because . . . well, just because. And think about her position on the debt ceiling for a moment. The idea was to use the debt ceiling vote as leverage; it was a hostage-taking strategy. But Bachman didn't seem to understand even this much; her position was to vote against raising the debt ceiling no matter what. A hostage situation was created and her position was to shoot the hostage: Not shoot the hostage unless "x" demand is met, just shoot the hostage to shoot the hostage.
This is a serious contender for the GOP nominee for President of the United States of America - someone who doesn't even understand the mechanics of negotiation and who pines for a return to the Dark Ages. No really, she does:
I’m loving the New Yorker Michele Bachmann profile . . .this especially:
[In 1977, the Bachmans], . . . experienced a . . . life-altering event: they watched a series of films by the evangelist and theologian Francis Schaeffer called “How Should We Then Live?”
[.....]
The first five installments of the series are something of an art-history and philosophy course. The iconic image from the early episodes is Schaeffer standing on a raised platform next to Michelangelo’s “David” and explaining why, for all its beauty, Renaissance art represented a dangerous turn away from a God-centered world and toward a blasphemous, human-centered world.
Any right-wing hack can say that everything was fine before Lady Gaga and the hippety-hop, but it takes a real conservative intellectual to blame it all on the Renaissance.
Global Warming
The faux global warming debate is interesting because it's an utterly inorganic PR campaign. As Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway document in Merchants of Doubt (can't say enough about this book), the original global warming deniers (a group of four physicists) were former Cold Warriors who found themselves suddenly without a cause when the Berlin War fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Having prevailed, these anti-communists didn't pop the champagne and revel in their victory; instead, they moved seamlessly to protecting Americans from the reds-under-the-bed, environmentalists.
It appears they sincerely believed that environmentalism was a form of creeping communism that would lead inexorably to socialism and tyranny. But rather than having this insane, but sincere political debate, they insincerely attacked the science vis-a-vis the Tobacco Strategy, which had been cunningly engineered by PR firms when they found out their clients' product killed people. Unlike other anti-scientific "debates," the global warming denialists played not to religious or cultural prejudices, but rather, to the skeptical values of science: Don't rush to judgment, consider all of the evidence, consider both sides - although this was a relentlessly anti-scientific campaign, it's effectiveness was based on exploitation of the values of science. And it worked for decades. One of the more surprising things about Merchants of Doubt is how long there's been scientific consensus regarding global warming (it's earlier than you think).
But what puzzles me is why members of the religious right (particularly those living on the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast) don't want to do something about global warming. The only way I can explain it is to see it as the consequence of anti-intellectualism: Once science, logic and facts are rejected, reasoned discourse is no longer an option; politics is based on power and with-us-or-against-us tribalism. So as long as a politician agrees with the touchstones of their theological agenda (Creationism, pro-life, anti-gay, with the occasional nod to school prayer), they'll uncritically adopt the other, non-theological planks of the platform. And not just half-heartedly, mind you. It always shocks me when poor people get red faced about government-provided health care and corporate welfare. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, with-us-or-against-us tribalism is a deep-seated, primal instinct. The Enlightenment aspiration of societies based on reason is not the default; such societies are hard won and always precarious.
Evolution
To me evolution denialism is the crown jewel of the GOP crusade against science. I mean didn't we decide this in the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925? And there isn't even a faux scientific debate - at it's top-dollar best Creationism is an article of faith that consciously ignores all of the evidence to the contrary.
If I had to guess its origin (and this is just a guess), I think I would pin it on William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale. It's kind of ironic given that Buckley would be horrified by Creationism - one gets the feeling Buckley was a Catholic in the Augustine-Aquinas-Jesuit tradition, not a redneck simpleton who believed the earth had a four-figure history, evidence be damned. But there are certain lines that once crossed have a life of their own and once you consciously start blurring the line between church and state, it's just a hop, skip and a jump to the What's-the-Matter-With-Kansas Republicans that comprise the increasingly powerful wing of the Republican Party known as the religious right.
By 2007, during the first GOP primary debate, three out of ten candidates were willing to unequivocally state that they did not believe in evolution. But these candidates - Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo and Sam Brownback - were not the front runners; they could be dismissed as representing a small, albeit vocal minority of the Republican Party. The religious right was loud (and obnoxious), but they were usually thrown under the bus when it came down to actual governing. The pro-business faction of the Republican Party takes their votes, but mocks them in their more literate publications.
But as the discussion of economics and global warming suggests, this Faustian bargain is not easily undone and soon the rejection science is obligatory. Thus, four short years later, the only candidate to side unambiguously with science, John Huntsman, isn't a serious contender. Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum flatly reject science (Ron Paul doesn't even understand what all the fuss is about) while Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are trying to split the baby, claiming Creationism and science are compatible. So the elites of the Republican Party can look down their noses all they like; at this point, it is almost certain that the Republican nominee for President of the United States of America will reject (or at least publicly doubt) evolution, a subject on which there is absolutely no scientific controversy.
And that's the thing, that's what the elites mocking the rabble fail to understand - ideas have consequences. If you pay lip service to Creationism, global warming denialism and crackpot economic theories, why should science, logic or facts ever matter? For now, the elites are still able to prevail (by the skin of their teeth), but the anti-intellectualism of the Republican Party is gaining momentum and it's not at all clear that this trend can be contained, let alone reversed.
Cross-Posted at Plutocracy Files.