Chris Mooney believes conservatives are wrong about many more
important issues than are liberals. Like any principled science writer,
he’s also certain he could be wrong. Had Mooney chosen a less insulting
title, he might have convinced a few conservatives to consider his
positions on climate change, evolution, and President Obama’s healthcare
program.
Of course, he’d also sell fewer books. He and his publisher know their audience, just as Ann Coulter and Jonah Goldberg know theirs. Mooney admits that he has little hope of changing conservative minds through education. His 2005 attempt at an edifying overture, The Republican War on Science, failed entirely.
Despite a religious temperament and natural respect for tradition, an unsettling, empirical bent forces me into agreement with Mooney and his fellow liberals on the issues of climate change and evolution. Darwin got it right. There is no scientifically credible challenge to the general theory of evolution. Likewise, the scientific consensus on climate change—that it’s real, anthropogenic, and poses a grave threat—is as solid as consensus on anything beyond first principles is likely to ever be.
Mooney’s guiding light is the Marquis de Condorcet, the French Enlightenment philosopher and mathematician, whom he correctly distances from Jacobin excesses during the French Revolution. Alas, that Mooney dedicates The Republican Brain to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with no caveat, supports his assertion that conservatives and liberals are truly different people. Mooney quotes Thomas Carlyle on Rousseau: “He could be cooped into garrets, laughed at as a maniac, left to starve like a wild beast in his cage; but he could not be hindered from setting the world on fire.”
Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/are-conservatives-irrational/
Of course, he’d also sell fewer books. He and his publisher know their audience, just as Ann Coulter and Jonah Goldberg know theirs. Mooney admits that he has little hope of changing conservative minds through education. His 2005 attempt at an edifying overture, The Republican War on Science, failed entirely.
Despite a religious temperament and natural respect for tradition, an unsettling, empirical bent forces me into agreement with Mooney and his fellow liberals on the issues of climate change and evolution. Darwin got it right. There is no scientifically credible challenge to the general theory of evolution. Likewise, the scientific consensus on climate change—that it’s real, anthropogenic, and poses a grave threat—is as solid as consensus on anything beyond first principles is likely to ever be.
Mooney’s guiding light is the Marquis de Condorcet, the French Enlightenment philosopher and mathematician, whom he correctly distances from Jacobin excesses during the French Revolution. Alas, that Mooney dedicates The Republican Brain to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with no caveat, supports his assertion that conservatives and liberals are truly different people. Mooney quotes Thomas Carlyle on Rousseau: “He could be cooped into garrets, laughed at as a maniac, left to starve like a wild beast in his cage; but he could not be hindered from setting the world on fire.”
Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/are-conservatives-irrational/
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