Coming across various news and blog posts here and there, I keep asking myself if the intellectual elite, the somebodies in the inner circles back there in the mover and shaker scene in DC-Boston axis, have painted themselves in a corner.

There is now so much concern about trying to include different point of views on any single issue that the result is a modern media that is turning in a cacophony of loons, all calling for their intellectual mates.

What got me going down this path tonight is the NPR story:

Debate: Do Liberals Stifle Intellectual Diversity On The College Campus?

[…]

In the latest event from Intelligence Squared U.S., two teams faced off on in an Oxford-style debate on the motion, “Liberals Are Stifling Intellectual Diversity On Campus.” In these events, the team that sways the most people by the end of the debate is declared the winner.

Before the debate at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., 33 percent of the audience voted in favor of the motion, 21 percent were opposed and 46 percent were undecided. After the debate, 59 percent agreed with the motion, while 32 percent disagreed, making the team arguing in favor of the motion the winner.

There’s so much wrong here, but among the side effects is that the religious right is trying to harvest fruit from this folly. Note that Denny Burk, who is Mullah Mohler’s blogging point man, pounces on this:

Do Liberals Stifle Intellectual Diversity on Campus?

The problem I see is that the post-modernist academics in what used to be called “liberal arts” or “the humanities” are diverging from the greater thrust that the science (and the art) communities have kept from modernity.

More than ever a great deal of what I see published out of academia strikes me as sophistry or rhetorical exercises rather than tangible additions to the collective pool of human knowledge.

Now, let’s cue this one up to see how these memes get played out in American politics:

Cruz hits liberals on global warming, GMO food labeling

Sen. Ted Cruz accused liberals of “anti-science zealotry” on global warming, genetically modified food labeling and biotechnology in Iowa on Saturday.

“The radical left loves attacking people as anti-science when anyone dares question their computer models on global warming,” Cruz told about a thousand activists during an agriculture summit on the state fairgrounds. “They scream, ‘you’re anti-science,’ when someone points out, for example, that in the last 17 years, satellite data shows there’s been no warming whatsoever.”

[…]

“The hard-core left loves ridiculing Christians who believe scripture that says God created the heaven and the earth,” Cruz went on. “They say that it’s anti-science to believe that an almighty God would do such a thing. But when it comes to biotech, suddenly these same voices become the most anti-science zealots we’ve ever seen.”

[…]

Well, golly, imagine ridiculing creationism! Oh the horrors!

Imagine “stifling” creationism on a college campus - oh, the horror! Let’s debate it!!