A Stitch in Haste

JunkYarkBlog throws down the gauntlet to libertarians on Bush's Intelligent Design gobbledygook:

We have two political parties. We have Pepsi and Coke. We have Mac and PC. We have Chevy and Ford. And Honda and Toyota.

We have lots of choices. And you libertarians seem to think that that's a good thing.

Or not. President Bush today said something about teaching intelligent design in public schools. And the libertarians react with a ferocity they generally reserve for caliphascists and Jimmy Carter-scale idiotarians.

I wonder — do they realize that they're acting like totalitarians? Do they even care? Nah. They just want to ridicule anything with even a whiff of Christianity about it.

Some hasty stitches:

--Intelligent Design and evolution are not analogous to "Coke and Pepsi" or "Honda and Toyota," but rather to astrology and astronomy. Or alchemy and chemistry. Or poison and nourishment. How would JYB react if a major politician advocated teaching astrology, as a viable scientific theory, in public schools under force of law and with taxpayer dollars?

--A "whiff of Christianity"? Actually it's the ID crowd who bend over backwards to insist that ID is not in any way religious, and certainly not "Christian."

--When people — libertarian or otherwise — debunk a fraud, it is not "acting like totalitarians." It is being intellectually honest. We're not the totalitarians, reality and truth are. If you don't want to be ridiculed, then don't hold ridiculous views.

It's amazing, and sad, to see how corrupting and corroding the little-tent, Bible-thumper conservatives are becoming to the Republican Party. They are convinced that they don't need libertarians.

They are wrong.

I hope they don't learn that the hard way. Republicans still have their good points, although with decreasing frequency.

UPDATE: Rick Santorum, of all people, is publicly disagreeing with the President on this issue:

"I think I would probably tailor that a little more than what the president has suggested," Santorum, the third-ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate, told National Public Radio. "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom."

Spoken like a man of true convictions...or of true presidential aspirations. One wonders just how long it took Tricky Rick to make up his mind on this issue (i.e., how much right-wing backlash to the president's gobbledygook he had to read before deciding to take a position). Could it be that the conservative (i.e., radical fundamentalist) base isn't worth pandering to like it used to be? Go figure.