re: #528 Thanos

What you are proposing however is bordering on technocracy, the way the left is getting to statism. “Don’t bother your pretty little head about science, we’ll take care of those decisions for you…”

This exactly sums up my attitude, except for the “pretty” part. Lots of creationists are male and/or donkey-butt ugly. And don’t get me started on the topic of hairspray…

The average american will make the right decision when given the facts, witness the recent change to purple in Kansas due to these very issues.

Like the median 50th and 51st votes out of 100 were votes for Obama? Right, “given the facts”… so:

What’s needed is better science reporting, not a cabal of technocrats. That’s going to happen over the next few years because it really must due to the large scale changes coming in science and technology.

What good is science reporting to people who don’t, or can’t, read it? How can voters be “given the facts” when the people giving the facts, and the facts themselves, aren’t out to flatter the voters. The liberal solution is to force facts into the voters so that they can be “well-informed”. As well try preaching to your cat.

I’m more magnanimous; I allow the peoples’ ignorant opinions about the Great Green Arkleseizure. I just think these opinions shouldn’t be allowed to affect the foundational axioms of our state. What policies should be followed, based on these axioms, can remain in the hands of democracy. (For the sake of argument.)

Yours was the great hope of the 2000s: once people compare our way of life with their own, surely they will choose of their own free will to become More Like Us. I don’t have any such faith in human nature. Libertarians read Ayn Rand; conservatives play BioShock.

Jonathan Swift was right: humans are, by nature, a selfish, grasping, unintelligent clan of chimpanzee. Creationists get around this by claiming that we’re the image of God, which is hardly a flattery to God, and then they act like the most devious apes in the cage. By all means listen to their hooting and offer them a banana if they’re hungry, but by no means let them write your science books for you.