For as long as this blog has been around, Bobby Jindal has been a source of controversy in the comment threads. Should South Asian Americans support him because he is an undisputedly intelligent politician and desi like us, or is it okay to turn our backs on him because we fundamentally disagree with his policies and the type of America that he represents? Both answers are of course correct, depending upon what matters most to you as an individual voter.
When the media reports on a political stories there is nothing they enjoy more than a stark contrast between two people or viewpoints. That is one of the reasons that the Obama-McCain race is generating such excitement this year. Almost everyone (except maybe Nader supporters) believes that Obama and McCain have a very divergent vision for the next four year. Because of a law working its way through the Louisiana legislative process right now, the next few weeks will also provide us with an incisive look into the mind and soul of Bobby Jindal. Will he govern according to his religious beliefs or according to accepted scientifc fact? Whether or not he is chosen as McCain’s running mate this year, one thing seems clear: eventually he will be on a national ticket.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Sunday that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal “would be far and away the best candidate” to appear on the Republican presidential ticket with Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).
Gingrich, who appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” heaped praise upon the former congressman, saying that he is a “spectacular” governor and predicted that Jindal would be a presidential candidate in the future. [Link]
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As the New York Times reported two weeks ago, there is a proposed law working its way through the Louisiana legislature right now that is going to stick with Jindal, for better or for worse, for a very long time.
In the Legislature, the climate for a conservative Christian agenda is warmer than in years. Some of that agenda, including a school voucher program for New Orleans that Mr. Jindal calls a “scholarship plan,” is being pushed vigorously by the governor. On other parts, like a bill favored by Christian conservatives that opponents say is a stalking horse for teaching creationism, Mr. Jindal has been well in the background, though legislators say they think the governor would sign it, as he has raised doubts about evolution. [Link]
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p>The Louisiana Science and Education Act is nothing but a thinly-veiled attempt to allow the arguments of Creationism to be taught in Louisiana schools alongside evolution. This in a state that already has some of the worst school systems in the country.
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p>Every lawmaker in Louisiana knows that Jindal supports Creationist ideas. The problem he has is trying to sign these proposals into law in Louisiana without seriously hurting his national appeal among Independents. He is navigating this issue in two specific ways. First, he is studiously avoiding the spotlight when he can:
Still, for a governor whose campaign in 2003 ran radio advertisements extolling the Ten Commandments and attacking liberals, the approach has been studiously low-key and nonideological. Mr. Jindal himself has been nearly invisible at the Capitol, lawmakers and Louisiana reporters say.
Hot-button terms and issues are avoided. Cloning will not get state financing but also will not be criminalized, and Mr. Jindal is nowhere to be seen on the Louisiana Science Education Act, which promotes “open and objective discussion” in the schools of “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”
A hearing for the bill last week was packed with Christian advocates — it has already passed the State Senate unanimously — and it was proposed to its legislative sponsor by a Louisiana Family Forum member. Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University and a critic of the bill, testified that it was “designed to permit teaching intelligent design creationism in Louisiana public schools,” though there was no mention of creationism or intelligent design in the bill. [Link]
The second strategy Jindal is using is to cleverly manipulate the public’s understanding of the law. A perfect example is this interview he gave on CBS’ Face the Nation
this past Sunday. Unless you are well-versed in the manipulation tactics used by Intelligent Designers, whose “educational approach” was soundly thrashed in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, you might think he is making a perfectly reasonable argument in favor of science here:
REID: Let me make a sharp turn here to a different issue, an issue that has raised some controversy. Now, you were a biology major in college. I think you had a double major. But you were a biology major, and you support the teaching of intelligent design in schools. Do you have doubts about the theory of evolution?Gov. JINDAL: A couple of things. One, I don’t think this is something the federal or state government should be imposing its views on local school districts. You know, as a conservative I think government that’s closest to the people governs best. I think local school boards should be in a position of deciding the curricula and also deciding what students should be learning. Secondly, I don’t think students learn by us withholding information from them. Some want only to teach intelligent design, some only want to teach evolution. I think both views are wrong, as a parent.
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p>REID: But how about you personally? Where do you stand personally on the issue?
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p>Gov. JINDAL: As a parent, when my kids go to schools, when they go to public schools, I want them to be presented with the best thinking. I want them to be able to make decisions for themselves. I want them to see the best data. I personally think that the life, human life and the world we live in wasn’t created accidentally. I do think that there’s a creator. I’m a Christian. I do think that God played a role in creating not only earth, but mankind. Now, the way that he did it, I’d certainly want my kids to be exposed to the very best science. I don’t want them to be–I don’t want any facts or theories or explanations to be withheld from them because of political correctness. The way we’re going to have smart, intelligent kids is exposing them to the very best science and let them not only decide, but also let them contribute to that body of knowledge. That’s what makes the scientific process so exciting. You get to go there and find facts and data and test what’s come before you and challenge those theories.
This is the new “strategy” that has been adopted by ID-ers. They want to say that putting creationist ideas next evolution and letting kids decide is a better way to do science. You notice how he uses the phrase “facts or theories or explanations withheld?” This is pure manipulation. He is frightening people into thinking that education is being denied to their children. In fact, there are no facts or even theories associated with ID/Creationist ideas. Knowing that their strategy won’t work if they single out evolution alone, the ID/Creationists needed to find another scientific theory to lump together with evolution so that they could say, “see we aren’t just picking on evolution.” Global warming provided the perfect second issue (another wedge issue). NPR’s Science Friday last Friday did a great job of deconstructing the manipulating tactics being used by the Intelligent Design community. Bobby Jindal is following the script laid out for him perfectly. You have to admit he speaks well.
In a letter last week to Louisiana Speaker of the House Jim Tucker, the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s CEO and the publisher of Science magazine Alan I. Leshner wrote of the “Louisiana Science Education Act”:
The bill implies that particular theories are controversial among scientists, including evolution. But there is virtually no controversy about evolution among the overwhelming majority of researchers. The science of evolution underpins all of modern biology and is supported by tens of thousands of scientific studies in fields that include cosmology, geology, paleontology, genetics and other biological specialties. It informs scientific research in a broad range of fields such as agriculture and medicine, work that has an important impact on our everyday lives.
Backers of the bill, including the Louisiana Family Forum and the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, are longtime supporters of attempts to teach creationism or intelligent design as science. The judicial courts have ruled that both of these are religious concepts that do not belong in public school science classrooms. In fact, it was Louisiana’s own “creation science” law that the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1987. [Link]
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p>Much of the press and blogosphere think they discovered that Jindal once performed an exorcism this week. In fact, Manish reported it here almost four years ago as further evidence of Jindal’s extreme religious views.
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p>My cousin Manan also forwarded me this article today, a long interview of Jindal in Details magazine. In it they re-cap his entire history and explain how he became a conservative Christian in the first place. Reading it will provide good context in which to evaluate his current support of Creationism is classrooms.
So as we wait to see if McCain taps Jindal we have to figure out which Jindal we’d get. The articulate and intelligent and accomplished Jindal or the one that would advocate exorcising our educational system of reason.
well i was talking w/i the context of the first amendment: beliefs, freedom of speech, freedom of religion.
schools have always been a first amendment free zone. this was explained to us as kids by many of our teachers 🙂 IOW, you can believe and say whatever you want, but once you’re within the school they can force you not to wear what you want to wear, and they can penalize you for being “disruptive” for saying particular things. at least that was last i checked.
so the issue here is not about the right to have tarded beliefs, it is simply about the balance and conflicts between various levels of power. yokel mobilization doesn’t scale very well so the local level is where they might have the greatest success.
47 · MoorNam said
home school. right, david duke (#44)?
portmanteu, razib, amfd etc:
Are you saying that kids of taxpayers who believe in ID/Creationism should not be allowed to learn that in public schools even if they don’t infringe on the right of kids of taxpayers who study evolution in the same public schools?
M. Nam
MoorNam, are you for school vouchers? Is that a means of ensuring that taxpayers get what they want for their money? My big problem with vouchers is that they might ultimately end up subsidizing religious instruction and practice (85% of private schools currently are parochial) with state funds (sort of unconstitutional).
fair enough. but i meant that minorities should be protected from having any other specific religion (and its beliefs) forced upon them. if no theories based in religion are taught, no religion is being sidelined or preferred. as far as public schools and settings go, this is the safest, and in my opinion the soundest, policy available. parochial schools and centers are there to fill the desire to have children learn these teachings without violating constitutional concepts. once you start teaching something like ID, you not only have to accomodate every single religion, but it also sends out the message – to students and citizens alike – that things like separation of church and state could be dismissed when convenient. nobody is restricting evolution in public schools because it has nothing to do with religion. but ID does. you can extend the argument of denial to say that nobody is denying absolutely that certain kids can be taught ID – they have that option in private settings and that is not being denied. but in a public setting, the rules change, in part because their funds come from taxes.
btw i e-mailed this post to a (christian) colleague of mine, and she (actually) argued that, because this country was founded by christians on christian principles, creationism should be allowed in public schools.
51 · razib said
the first amendment applies to public schools. they can restrict speech if it interferes with their mission, but otherwise students retain first amendment rights. either way, its irrelevant to vouchers, which are more analogous to the GI bill.
giving $$ directly to the students parents and letting them decide is a very liberal solution to this problem. sure, some people will choose the wrong school; but that’s long been a conservative argument against liberalism: if we allow the people to have freedom of choice, they may choose the wrong thing.
but in the long run, the marketplace of ideas has proven to be the best defense against indoctrination and tyranny.
Jindal is right; the anti-religion liberal majority is pushing its own beliefs onto everyone in the schools and not even allowing for alternative viewpoints.
When I substitute-taught biology a few years ago, I merely presented to the students an alternative viewpoint to evolutionary THEORY and was immediately dismissed!!!! Talk about a violation of my First Amendment rights!!!
To all who care to hear the TRUE story of the origin of the earth and all existence, here it is:
After the creation of the earth and every living thing on it in the period of six days, the Lord rested on the seventh day, for he was exhausted and was desirous to look upon his creation and be entertained. He saw that all he had created was good. He spake unto Adam and Eve and asked, “what do you think of my creation?” And, lo, they agreed that it was very good. And thus, to show the Lord their gratitude for granting them existence, they bought him a brand-new Playstation 3 with a 108-inch projection screen television. And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats.
btw i e-mailed this post to a (christian) colleague of mine, and she (actually) argued that, because this country was founded by christians on christian principles, creationism should be allowed in public schools.
lol. you have some damn stupid colleagues, huh? though to be fair such tardish statements have been made on these boards (at least the first part).
but in the long run, the marketplace of ideas has proven to be the best defense against indoctrination and tyranny.
this is a correct expectation. but do note that science is a very narrow marketplace of ideas; if the typical tard was in charge acceleration would be proportional to the mass of the object which is accelerating. that’s because there are particular physical and biological intuitions which most humans have; we’re not black-box rational actors. IOW, human preference is fundamentally secondary to reality when it comes to natural science, and the problems with scientific approximations have to do with the inefficiencies in the way humans consume scientific ideas (e.g., group-think, innate intuitions, etc.). with science most people, including scientists outside of field, are just too stupid to make a rationally informed decision. that doesn’t mean that one should constrain people from making irrational and uninformed decisions, but we should be careful of analogizing too freely with other consumption choices….
To all who care to hear the TRUE story of the origin of the earth and all existence, here it is:
gross. is mouth-farting allowed on this thread?
Jindal is right; the anti-religion liberal majority is pushing its own beliefs onto everyone in the schools and not even allowing for alternative viewpoints.
let’s be clear about something: most religious people in the world believe in evolution. in fact, catholic americans accept evolution to a greater extent than protestants, and jindal’s own church has no problems with evolution, and has long held that it is the most probable explanation for the physical origin of species (the dominant catholic position last i checked was that adam & eve are literally true because they were the first hominids who were ensouled).
What is something Bush would do that Jindal wouldnt? Jindal is just way to right wing for me. Is he moderate on anything? I bet he would make “Gun safety a pre-req to junior high. He would get rid of affirmative action and probably demote Martin Luther King day from federal status. Take his oath on 10 stacks of bibles because one just isnt good enough. Add the words “Ford truck” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Refuse to talk to India about anything just to prove how American he is.
Aid: Good news President Jindal an Indian doctor just cured cancer! When should we ship in the drugs
Jindal: Never! I reckon a fixon of apple pie and fireworks would do the trick.
He is obviously a very smart guy, but I get the same vibe from him that right wingers get from Obama and that is that the end of everything we know and love would come to an end if Jindal/Obama was elected.
but we should be careful of analogizing too freely with other consumption choices….
i’ll be concrete: people make a choice about which religion they follow for a variety of reasons. over the long term of their life they adhere to the sect which most satisfies their disparate needs. people are equipped to make these choices, and they yield the fruit of these choices proximately. even more concretely, consumers choose a brand of detergent and determine how efficacious it is at its task vis-a-vis other brands they have chosen. OTOH, general opinion about the plausibility of quantum mechanics is irrelevant; most scientists, even those who have done course work on quantum mechanics, don’t understand it very well. of course, we accept QM because of its material fruits; e.g., electronics, etc. but these fruits exhibit a latency vis-a-vis the emergence of the theory, so that’s why we’re lucky that physicists who actually knew something about particle physics determined the validity of QM (einstein was famously not happy with QM because it violated his aesthetic sense re: determinism, but whateva).
56 · Manju said
there may be huge externalities when ‘people choose the wrong school.’ a generation of mobilized yokels, to steal a choice phrase from razib. who knows how speedy/efficient the market-clearing mechanism is in the marketplace of ideas? as mark twain said, a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
meanwhile, i like this test devised by the Supreme Court in Zelman v. Simone-Harris:
But the dissent is also quite compelling:
Also, vouchers are NOT like the provisions of the GI Bill. The GI Bill has a compensatory aspect wrt World War 2 vets (for the suffering and career setbacks they may have endured during WW 2), vouchers are a distribution mechanism. You do not have render any service to the State to be eligible for a school voucher.
as mark twain said, a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
lies are good memes. we’re hardwired to believe them, as evidenced by kahneman and tversky. your point about externalities is important though; i think that liberalism is contingent upon a post-malthusian world enabled by the fruit of science & technology. all the research i’ve seen suggests that science is an abnormal way of thinking. once scientists move outside of their narrow discipline they tend to start f**king up too.
41 · MoorNam said
You and Manju and other libertarians and market fundamentalists should have no problem with madrassahs proliferating in America then. Or with racial supremacist schools which ban “inferior” colored people like you from attending. Right?
You mean how the free market in independent, democratic India has decided that the christian missionary schools set up more than a century ago by european colonials are the winners in the educational competition and thus the teachers of truth?
i have no idea how the marketplace of ideas will function in a post-liberal world where words have no meaning. like “science”. thankfully, we will all still know the meaning of “marriage”. And that’s what’s important.
but in the long run, the marketplace of ideas has proven to be the best defense against indoctrination and tyranny.
also, let me note that i am libertarian-leaning myself, but my turn toward a belief in cultural and institutional pre-conditions for a liberal order means that i’m a lot more accepting of coercion than i once would have been. we’re never going living in a nozickian utopia, so arguing with libertarian premises as goals is pretty much a moot point. the question is: what sort of society do you want to live in? (i.e., what are your norms/ultimate values) and, how do you foster the furtherance of those values you hold as good? i’m not as comfortable as some with re-educating tards toward Correct Thought, my main worry is the breakdown of the scientific system. the probability of this is low contingent upon the teaching of creationism is a dead-end banana republic like louisiana, but i am of the school that there truly has only been on full-fledged scientific culture (as opposed to isolated scientists and geniuses in the dark). i do think it is important to observe that the doyen of the ID movement, philip johnson, is also a fan of critical theory, while anti-atheist author alister mcgrath was gushing about the rise of the post-modern world and the positive results which that will yield for the resurgence of religion as an organizing force of modern life. the collapse of the liberal civilization will not entail the passing of religious truth, we know that from the record of the past.
63 · portmanteau said
i don’t see how that distinction is relevant to the constitutionality of the programs, Port. in both cases, public funds are being used to finance religious activity; which should be constitutional unless its compulsionary…like church buses using a public road.
65 · Bollyhood said
right
34 · kyrial said
Exactly. Maybe schools should also be compelled to teach the myth about the earth being the center of the Universe with the Sun revolving around it? This was the christian belief until just a few centuries ago and a tiny lunatic fringe still clings to this notion. Since the mainstream Church, catholic and protestant, was forced to come to terms with scientific discoveries that upturned their geocentric worldview and consequently they rejected the literal interpretation of the Bible in that particular case, what principle are the american evangelicals basing their stubborn opposition to evolution on? The Catholic Church, the largest christian denomination, has already come to terms with Evolution. Clearly Jindal isnt pandering to fellow catholics of Louisiana here. He is pandering to the evangelical lobby that until this election held the Republican Party hostage.
I got two words for all y’all sums of bitches: Markit Place.
Yes. If the taxpayers demand it. Please see my analogy in #27
M. Nam
So, y’all should do what I did when I got good and disgusted with Bobby “The Enlightenment….errr, not-so-much” Jindal: donate 50 bucks to Ashwin Madia. The strange thing about Jindal is I get this ownership-of-all-Desis embarassment when hearing about him, in much the same way my stomach turns at the mention of Deepak Chopra. I think a lot of it is the Desi way of equating conventional achievement with authority – my Dad still brags that Chopra went to that All-India Medical Institute, and my Moms seems to have Jindal’s biodata memorized. Piyush, of course, doesn’t think twice about brown, but seems to have inherited this line of thinking – I love his quote asserting his right to spout boorish goo about science because he was a biology major. Madia, on the other hand, is the real deal – he may not impress the Aunties with his Rhodes like Piyush, but at least he doesn’t believe in fairies or spaghetti monsters, and his priorities are about real people, not wedge issues.
Your analogy was terrible, by your logic we would still have segregated schools because local communities demanded them.
22 · Sumanth said
Hmmm, let me guess: you must belong to the indian “elite” whose highest aspiration is to get jobs writing back-end code or answer service calls for anglosaxon corporations, right?
You guys are really something 🙂
There are two separate issues here.
The first is who should decide the curricula for public schools. I’m sympathetic to the argument that local school boards should be the main, er, deciders.
The second is the idea that both ID and evolutionary theory have equal ‘validity’. I’m, in the word of razib, a ‘tard when it comes to evolutionary science but it is the accepted scientific theory. Should IDers have a problem with the science, they are free to develop experiments that poke holes in evolutionary theory, and, if the science stands up, the IDers will get published. I’m thinking they don’t have the data to do that (read that in an extremely dry voice).
So, when Jindal acts like there is some equivalency between the two as scientific theory, he is either pandering or being willfully obtuse, or simply refusing to believe the science. I do find it a bit weird, but, he’s ambitious, no? Or, maybe, he just doesn’t believe it because his religious beliefs trump what he has learned.
Anyway, the guy could literally wear a tinfoil hat and I’d still be interested in him as a political figure as long he can move his state up a few notches on all those statistics where LA falls at the bottom. If he can create jobs, attract business, improve the overall performance of schools (I’m thinking public schools in LA have lots of problems or they wouldn’t be at the bottom of state rankings) then good for him.
This stuff? It’s pretty embarrassing for him, innit? The righty blogs are hitting him hard on this stuff, too, and, the commenters at, say, HotAir, are having an incomprehensible back and forth between IDers and the rest.
I never get IDers. If you believe, you believe. What’s to stop you from telling your kid, in the privacy of your own home, ‘hey, we don’t agree with teacher on the evolution, thing, okay?” Or home school. Don’tgetit.
The debate is about what to teach – not whom to teach to.
Nobody is trying to take anybody’s freedom or rights away here – so I still don’t get what the brouhaha is about.
M.Nam
The righty blogs are hitting him hard on this stuff, too, and, the commenters at, say, HotAir, are having an incomprehensible back and forth between IDers and the rest.
There are people against ID on HotAir! Isnt that the vile site run by Michelle Malkin?
You framed the argument as local communities have the rights to set their own teaching agenda, what if they decide to teach eugenics and the superiority of certain races?
There are people against ID on HotAir!
most people who read and participate on weblogs are well educated males, no matter their ideology. this is the same set which is mostly likely to accept evolutionary science. as i’ve noted before, despite the popularity of creationism its inability to translate that into public policy is in large part due to the fact that right-wing elites balk when given the choice of implementing that particular policy. judge jones was famously a republican, but there’s a long history going back decades of non-creationist conservatives getting mobilized only after the yokels have turned-out in school districts and taken over the curriculum. IOW, this is a social issue where newton’s 3rd law applies, the creationist program tends to elicit a proportional response from elites.
p.s. also, do note that i am very serious when i say most people who believe in evolution believe in it like they believe in quantum mechanics; they don’t know jack about it, it’s just a way to signal that they’re not yokels. not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s just how things are.
what if they decide to teach eugenics and the superiority of certain races?
let’s be clear that these are far more normative issues than as to whether evolution is true or geocentrism is false.
razib I’m trying to understand here, are you saying that based on some sort of perceived threshold we should give teaching Intelligent Design a pass to local communities but other teachings would have to be evaluated on an objectionable scale?
p.s. also, do note that i am very serious when i say most people who believe in evolution believe in it like they believe in quantum mechanics; they don’t know jack about it, it’s just a way to signal that they’re not yokels.
Good point. However, credit is due for deferring to the views of the established scientific community.
79 · bj said
presumably, under the school choice/free-markert paradigm, very few people would send their kids to such a school. the school would not attract enough tuition $$ and go out of business.
after all, you don’t see many universities teaching this.
Pagal – is that a Michelle Malkin site? Did not know that.
Anyway, yes, I think on both the right and left there are quieter groups who tend to keep their mouths shut about some stuff. I’d put the more rabid anti-illegal and legal immigration in there with ID. I think a lot of righty pundits/elites aren’t into that stuff, but, they know which side their bread is buttered on. Don’t know what the equivalent on the left is, maybe free trade.
Political websites, in general, tend to be kind of vili-ish. I mean, it’s the freaks that get into crying fits over obscure parts of obscure bills (and, no, I’m not saying abhi is a freak. This post is totally reasonable. In general, I am off the political stuff these days. Those hardcore ‘politics as religion’ people really are freaks).
Speaking for myself – yes.
Any teaching – that neither infringes upon rights of any Americans, nor puts a section of Americans at a disadvantage – should be permitted. ID or Flat Earth comes under this category.
Any teaching that violates the principle above – like eugenics etc – should be thrown out.
M. Nam
Not to meddle in American politics, but Jindal’s desi origins do nothing for me. I can’t believe that he wants to outlaw abortion without exceptions to the mother’s life – is that seriously true? Very very scary. What is even more offensive to me are his beliefs on evolution. I don’t believe in any of this wishy-washy ‘the taxpayer decides’. Facts, people. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve argued with creationists who didn’t even grasp the basic tenets of genetics or radiometric dating but still felt confident enough to dismiss the entire concept. To me such views matter far more than whatever Jindal did with his name, which is his business. I’m suprised more people don’t feel that way.
razib I’m trying to understand here, are you saying that based on some sort of perceived threshold we should give teaching Intelligent Design a pass to local communities but other teachings would have to be evaluated on an objectionable scale?
actually, invert it. teaching whether race A is superior to race B is contingent upon the axioms you hold in terms of superiority. same with eugenics (which i think should be spoken of more openly with things like massive rise in selective abortions of down syndrome fetuses in western countries). evolution or gravity are issues of fact, not values. i do have certain values, but i think the hashing out of values is a function of democratic & republican government in terms of establishing public consensus. even fundamental rights are questions of opinion, not fact (i don’t believe in natural law obviously). science is not something that is determined through democratic action; if it was, it wouldn’t be science. nature is the ultimate arbiter and the consensus of the scientific community is just a murky mirror of that ultimate authority.
i don’t believe in natural law obviously
How do you define natural law?
86 · MoorNam said
as far as i know, there’s nothing preventing a local school from teaching eugenics. the community, thru local schools boards, does decide the curriculum and as far as i know, no one has tried to impose this. i suppose, if they did, one could argue that it violates the equal protection clause, but it should be pointed out that we’ve never had a such a case even go to the courts(as far as i know).
and that’s very important when discussing freedom of choice. we often expect the worst from the tards. but when push comes to shove, the tards want their kids to be elite too.
68 · Manju said
what religious activity is the GI bill financing? do you mean divinity school or liberty u for war vets?
It’s not wishy-washy, Meena. It’s called a principle, the principle being ‘who decides?’ I believe the people are the ones who are to decide. Not dicated to from on high, but the people, are to decide. That ain’t wishy-washy at all. It’s called freedom.
I believe in competence, too, and, on that basis, I can vote for a politician who believes goofy things but governs well. I know plenty of people who believe all the correct things, have the correct education, are well read, educated, erudite, and are still complete incompetents. Remember, I work in teaching hospitals. The ‘elite’ can be very stupid.
I’d like to know more about the abortion thing – everything I’ve read comes from left of center sites, I’d like to read more from a non-wiki, non-lefty site. I’m trending pro-life myself, thesedays, so I’m less concerned than you lot. The lack of exemptions sounds odd to me, but, again, I’d prefer to hear him talk about it directly because I don’t trust partisans to get it right, er, correct.
91 · portmanteau said
yeah, the GI bill funded divinity scooling as well as educations at religious-orinted univerites like BC or note dame.
Bobby Jindal, like any clever politician, will say whatever it takes to endear himself to his constituents. If the majority of the people he represents strongly believed in the Easter Bunny then I am sure he would become one of the biggest Easter Bunny supporters.
I agree with MD at #76. The ID people need to get some publications in professional journals and not the National Enquirer, etc to give some validity to their arguments and credibility to their cause. Although most ID’ers will cite the Bible as their evidence. I have no problems with the Bible but I can’t stand people who misinterpret the Bible for their own selfish cause. In fact, more people should actually read it and learn how to treat others humanely and with respect, give charity and help those in need because that is the heart of Christianity. Even though I am a Hindu, I would never claim any of the Hindu stories from Vedic scriptures to be taken literally. Most of stories are symbolic. I really believe they are meant to teach a moral lesson or proper living that was relevant to the people in the old days and some scriptures have a message/lessons that are applicable to modern times.
Manju, here is an article that argues that school vouchers are not like the GI bill. There are certain empirical facts mentioned in the piece that I am not in position to evaluate, there are some sensible points made here.
Not comforting enough. What should people do when they are confronted with a paradox known as Francis Collins?
They have the freedom to found their own private schools or teach ID at home, MD. No one’s stopping them. But as for public schools, well they are for facts. If the pupils need to know about creationism they can be taught in a religion class, not a science class.
How do you define natural law?
see first sentence of wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
i don’t know much about the theories, but i know i don’t really agree with what i’ve heard (e.g., there is a faction of libertarian from rothbard who ground their ideas in natural law, but i was always a utilitarian).
The ‘elite’ can be very stupid.
most science is falsified. the key isn’t whether it is very efficient at prediction; it isn’t overall, it is whether it beats random expectation of naive intuition. it clearly does. the major issue elites have had is that they haven’t introduced the proper error bars into their predictions….
The lack of exemptions sounds odd to me
i think it’s within the bounds of catholic teaching. i don’t think you can purposely attempt an abortion to save the life of a mother, but, http://capitolwatch.reallouisiana.com/html/BC4983D2-AC99-421E-83DC-00FD0707A94D.shtml Jindal opposes the exceptions but said if a procedure to save the life of the woman is performed that results in an abortion, that’s OK. Gambit newspaper in New Orleans also said Jindal told it he supports the use of emergency-room contraception for rape victims who request it.
on abortion jindal’s views are much more explicable as a traditional catholic than on evolution.
What should people do when they are confronted with a paradox known as Francis Collins?
1) one counter-example doesn’t contradict a general trend. though einstein was instrumental in the development of quantum theory he fundamentally rejected it on philosophical grounds as “true.” so what? it worked, and the scientific community accepted it.
2) collins supports evolution. he just happens to be a theistic evolutionist. i don’t agree with that position, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
84 · Manju said
You really are clueless. What the hell made you presume that there are not enough racists to keep such schools in business??
You libertarians, like atheists, are nothing but half-baked intellectuals.