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Christianity Today article trashes Dems and Dean Tony Carnes' piece, "Dean Vows to Reach Evangelicals as Democratic Leaders," aptly demonstrates that conservative evangelical Christians, too, can be bitchy. With regal condescension so trite it borders on camp, Carnes writes of a recent Democratic event he attended:
It's unfortunate that Carnes' work ends up as a hit piece capped with a cheap and easy play towards irrational, fear-based prejudices. (The lesbo law-breaker! That Dean embraced! Therefore: cooties?) In fact, parts of the article hint to what it might have been: a prescient glimpse of faith-related discussions and--probably--struggles within the Democratic Party as it rediscovers its populist voice.
Carnes' judgmentalism calls into question his trustworthiness as an observer of the DNC event. But, with that caveat in mind, I submit that some of what he relates should not be ignored, and generally confirms a deplorable reality about the Democratic Party: that the Party has let itself become a place where Christians--even liberal evangelicals and life-long Democrats who are Christians--are uncomfortable.
This could spell continuing electoral doom. (Thankfully, Gov. Dean seems to recognize this.)
*One interviewed Party member, from the Texas delegation, tells Carnes: "I have a strong background in my faith--but that isn't necessarily to be quoted." *Carnes notes that few "rank-and-file Democratic leaders had yet to catch a hold of Dean's new way of talking [in the language of religion and moral values.]" *Carens: "Several state chairman (sic) polled by [Christianity Today] either declined to answer or professed that they didn't know of any evangelicals in their delegations." *From Carnes' penultimate paragraph, before he slapped down his Icky Lesbians finale:
Bush flip-flopped on civil rights for gay Americans
It Affects You has brought attention to the Bush "turnaround" on gay Americans, as revealed in the secret Bush tapes.
Britain criticizes US climate record
From the Associate Press:
Out-foxed & out-voted
Today is the last day foxhunting is legal in Britain. A so-called sport in which hounds hound a fox until it slows from exhaution so ti can be ripped apart. Finally, fox hunting is going the way of cock fighting and bear-baiting. But why did it take so long? Class. The monied are the ones who participate in foxhunting. The snob appeal of foxhunting is strong. Strong social and political conservatism on the rise among college students 43.7% of college freshmen believe that colleges should ban "extreme speakers"
Only 53.9% believe that abortion should be legal
58.1% believe there is too much concern for "the rights of criminals"
Only 29.7% of freshmen cited "helping to promote racial understanding" as an "essential" or "very important" goal for them, compared with 46.4% in 1992
Critically important to the rightwing's longterm strategy for political hegemony has been changing the political climate on college campuses. It began in the 1970's, and by the 1980's was racing along. When I was an undergrad in the early 1990's, the college-level conservative press had already gone national, Rush Limbaugh was established, and campus Young Republicans clubs were becoming stale entities because conservatism's near ubiquity was rendering them superfluous, except for their strictly political operations, like voter registration. They were no longer needed as missionaries of conservatism. Why preach to the masses already involved in Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) and filling the pews of conservative evangelical churches offering Sunday morning Christian rock music and plenty of free food and fellowship?
Conservatism had become cool.
And it still is.
Not only did the Democratic Party's leaders (mostly ensconced literally and metaphorically within the Party's NYC-DC-Boston bubble) do nothing either to understand or counter all of this, but so-called progressive groups demonstrated no care at all for cultivating a new generation of effective progressives. Only now are we hearing from people like Howard Dean the need to cultivate progressivism on campuses and literally sponsor future progressive and Democratic leaders.
"Leave No Child Behind: Teach Evolution" I don't often cite an article in full. This one I will. It's too important not to. (All emphases are mine.) While you're at it, why not give to the NCSE?
"Leave No Child Behind: Teach Evolution," by Edna Devore, Dir. of Education and Public Outreach, SETI Institute. (Space.com, Feb. 10, 2005.)
As I write this column, I'm flying from San Francisco to New York City for three days of meetings at the American Museum of Natural History on bringing the latest scientific data to the public via museums and planetariums. I look forward to working with my colleagues. I'm also eager to gaze again at their stunning collection of fossils and to travel to distant locations in our universe at the Rose Center and the Hayden Planetarium, the museum's digital planetarium. Both the fossil dinosaurs and the immersive planetarium environment present concrete evidence that evolution is pervasive throughout the natural world. The universe evolved from the Big Bang to systems of galaxies, stars, and planets; these, including Earth, continue to evolve. Astronomers are teasing out the role of dark matter and dark energy. Life on Earth goes back at least 3.5 billion years as evidenced by fossilized stromatolites from Australia. Over that vast span of time, there's evidence that life evolved from small single celled-organisms to the incredible diversity we see today. Scientific research continues to discover additional evidence that supports evolution as the fundamental description for how the physical universe and life developed in the past and will continue to change in the future. Yet, teaching evolution remains controversial in America. Just now, I'm cruising at 35,000 feet above the snow-laced landscape. The texture of the ground below reveals the power of geologic forces. In California, Los Angeles moves inexorably toward San Francisco at 3.5 cm per year. Anyone who has experienced an earthquake has a personal understanding of the forces that drive geological evolution. At altitude, the folds, rifts and fault lines reveal an evolving planet. In what's called the range and basin region, the western mountain chains thrust upward and great valleys drop between them. The vast central plains stretch slowly downhill toward the East Coast from the heights of the Rockies. Over time, the ancient inland ocean receded, revealing most of what is now the center of our continent. More than erosion and weathering shaped this land. As the tectonic plates push and grind together, our planet evolves. It takes a long time, but it makes sense when seen from an airplane window. Teaching the age and history of our planet takes us back about 4.6 billion years; it is included in only 55% of our 50 State's science education standards. Today, we find the fossil remains of extinct creatures that wandered the shores of the ancient American sea high in the Rockies and layered in the badlands of the US and Canada. The evolution of life on our planet is evident in these layers of rock and fossil. In Africa, fossil evidence of early hominids links us to ancestral species. Where did we come from? We six billion humans find our biological genesis in these African fossils. Human evolution is included in the National Science Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy, our national statements of the fundamental science concepts for grades K-12. The Standards and Benchmarks describe the basics for scientifically literate citizens. At the state level, politics overtake science education. Human evolution is included in only 8% of the state science standards, and is therefore not required in almost all American elementary, middle or high school science courses. ("The Emphasis Given to Evolution in State Science Standards: A lever for Change in Evolution Education?" Gerald Skoog, Kimberly Bilica, 2002) The evolution of the universe, our solar system, and our planet fare somewhat better, but still do not appear in almost half of the states' science standards. These standards drive the content of textbooks and state achievement tests, and learning about evolution is getting left out. Evolution is fundamental to modern biology, geology and astronomy. Ignoring or discarding fundamental scientific understandings of the natural world does not prepare our children well for the future. As America strives to "leave no child behind," it's time that evolution is not left behind in our science classrooms. Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin Darwin was born February 12, 1809; he published Origin of the Species at age 50. Tony Blair gives up on Bush Tony Blair's given up on Bush when it comes to the environment. At a recent Labour Party conference, Blair said that it is simply futile to try to overcome hostility in the Bush administration and Congress to Kyoto.
It's sometimes the case that Americans who opposed Bush's invasion of Iraq lump Blair and Bush together as "them," which is inaccurate, or at least grossly over-simplified. Bush-Cheney, Bush-Rumsfeld, Bush-Rove, yes; but, the concept of a Bush-Blair couplet would be no marriage of similar ideologies.
Tony Blair may have been pro-invasion, but in the final analysis, he's still Labour's leader, the leader of an organized opposition to the Conservative Party, to people who are more like Bush than Tony Blair will ever be. Blair's party is the party that created the National Health Service, that stood against the railroad privatization programs that turned out to be horrible failures. His cabinet has out, gay members. His Government has several women in key positions, and actively promotes female and minority candidates across Britain. The Labour-led House of Commons has approved civil unions already (apparently marriage in all but name); it sees value in Kyoto, participates in International Courts, funds the arts and scientific innovation, fairly taxes the wealthy, AND it has achieved while doing the above: * the lowest unemployment in 29 years
While we have Bush and get: massive debt, homophobia, civil rights curtailments, a stagnant economy, trade deficit, the destruction of Americas' great societal security program, cuts to education and arts funding, stiffling of scientific experimentation, and more than 10,000 American soldiers dead or wounded. |
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