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The Atlanta Journal/Constitution reports on an evolution-in-school dispute: David Bechler, a biology professor and head of the department of biology at Valdosta State University, said the statements suggest a basic misunderstanding of science. “I don’t think they understand the definition of a theory,” Bechler said. “You’re talking about a statement that describes a body of data that has gone through testing and proving. The theory of creation, intelligent design, or whatever you might want to call it, has not been tested and should not be discussed in science classes. It’s not the same thing.”

I enjoy it when scientists are just blatantly dishonest. As Joe Carter has pointed out, most people don’t realize that the leading evolutionists themselves have completely rejected Darwin’s notion of phyletic gradualism as an explanation for the origin of the species. As it turns out, his micro-evolution only serves to explain the origin of the breeds. Macro evolution, on the other hand, is completely untested and there is absolutely no scientific evidence for it, let alone proof of it. Apparently even Richard Dawkins, one of the foremost anti-religious champions of evolution, seeks to avoid the question of information being naturally added to DNA. In short, actual science has done in the quasi-scientific theory of Darwinian evolution. And so the secular giants of the 19th century continue to fall….

I was interested to see if my understanding of macro and micro was correct, interestingly enough, the situation is precisely the same in economics, where micro is based on observation and supported by evidence and macro is abstract theory maquerading as science, which turns out to be totally nonoperative in practice. Below is a decent start on understanding the difference between the two:

The difference between micro and macro-evolution is a major point of confusion between the Christian worldview and the Darwinian evolution worldview in today’s culture. Micro-evolution is the adaptations and changes within a species while macro-evolution is the addition of new traits or a transition to a new species. Micro-evolution is a fact that is plainly observable throughout nature. Macro-evolution is a theory that has never been observed in science…. a hypothesis introduced as a possible explanation of origins. In this article, my goal is to explain the difference between micro and macro-evolution and show why micro-evolution cannot result in macro-evolution.

Micro-evolution is a fact. This has never been disputed by anyone who understands what micro-evolution is. Micro-evolution is the alteration of a specific trait due to natural response. Take a look at Darwin’s observation of the changes in finches. Isolated in the Galapagos Island, Darwin discovered finches that had much longer beaks than those found off the island. His assumption was that evolution was changing this species. However, these finches remained finches. Princeton professor Peter Grant completed an 18 year study of the finches on this island. He concluded that during drought years, the finches with shorter beaks died off because with a limited supply of seeds, only those that could reach the grubs living under tree bark could survive. With limited resources on a small island, these finches could not migrate to find food. We clearly observe natural selection, but not macro-evolution. However, it is not a permanent change. The finch offspring with shorter beaks prospered during seasons of plenty. Natural adaptation is the function of micro-evolution. There are three plainly observable principles to micro-evolution. 1. A trait will alter because of a stimulus. 2. The trait will return to the norm if left to nature or returned to its original conditions. 3. No new information is added to the DNA.

The argument for evolution is that species will change slightly over time and eventually change into something completely different and will over eons of time eventually become a new species. [Macro-evolution] This theory was thought up as a hypothesis and as science advances, the facts have not been found to support it, but much has been provided to dispute it. There are no examples in nature that even remotely indicates a change of species through evolution. The fossil records have zero transitional forms. Even fossilized insects such as spiders and ants that have been dated to pre-historic times are identical to modern day spiders and ants. There are three critical flaws in the [macro] theory of evolution through gradual change: Dysfunctional change, the DNA code barrier, and natural selection that removes DNA information but does not add new information.

If you don’t understand what those three things are, best not to even think about claiming that science “proves” evolution. I don’t see why it’s so shocking to think that a scientific theory developed 144 years ago would get blown out of the water as science advances. Darwinism had a pretty respectable run compared to Marxism. Even Newton and Einstein turned out to be less than flawless, after all, to say nothing of Freud. And look at how many people are still Marxists despite its obviously absurd foundation on the labory theory of value and the concept of social class, when a little observation and logic are enough to explode it entirely.

This is not a battle between ignorant religionists and truth-seeking scientists, it is a battle waged on purely scientific grounds. And as such, iIt’s fascinating to see how in diverse scientific fields, it is the believers who are eager to wage the intellectual war using scientific methods, while the devotees of scientism are increasingly resorting to science fiction and inaccurate, juvenile name-calling.

I find it tremendously amusing and a little bit disheartening that some conservatives are so short-sighted as to be more concerned about libertarian advocacy of drug legalization than about the Republican leadership following the Democratic lead in increasing central state power and abandoning national sovereignty to supranational organizations. As Britain has discovered, local politics don’t matter one way or the other once Brussels makes its decision.

Let me grant the most paranoid conservative fear and state that even if I knew that every school child in America would immediately begin smoking pot every single day that I would still support ending the drug war. Even if I knew that every single adult in America would be riding the electric high wire on cocaine every night, I would still support ending the drug war. Because neither of those things will kill America dead beyond any hope of recovery the way that increasing the power of the central state always kills a society in the end. This has been clear since the days of Rome; it is true now.

Look, paranoid drug warrior, fire up a joint and see what it does to you. Don’t forget to inhale! Are you still a freedom-loving responsible individual? Now take all your money and ask a government bureaucrat to act as your pursor, alternatively, just shoot yourself in the back of the head for belonging to a government-disapproved group. Are you still a freedom-loving responsible individual? No, you’re either a dependent serf or you’re dead. This is not rocket science!

Libertine hedonism is a predictable late-stage phenomenon. To focus on it is to concentrate on the symptom, not the disease. Sometimes the symptoms will grow worse as the disease is treated. But the disease must be treated or the patient will die. To make the disease worse in the name of fighting – unsuccessfully, in the case of the Drug War – the symptom is not only illogical, it is doomed to failure.

The Evangelical Outpost rightly takes to task those of us who found the time to mention Miss Jackson, but not the fact that the South Dakota legislature and governor are taking on the US Supreme Court by banning and criminalizing abortion. This is definitely something that needs to be supported; judicial tyranny must be faced down and I’d very much like to see a state dare the Federal Government to do something about what both sides know was an illegitimate power grab by the Court and its Federal allies.

Section 1. The Legislature finds that the State of South Dakota has a compelling and paramount interest in the preservation and protection of all human life within and subject to its jurisdiction and that the preservation and protection of human life applies to all human life, born or unborn.

Section 2. The Legislature finds that since neither constitutional law nor Supreme Court decision has resolved the question of the beginning of life, it is within the proper sphere of state legislative enactment to determine the question in light of the best scientific and medical evidence. The Legislature therefore finds that unborn human life begins when the ovum is fertilized by male sperm.

You said you wanted a cause, conservatives. You said you wanted something to support. There you go. Let the legislators of South Dakota know that you support them in this.

Pat Buchanan writes: Let it be said: George Bush is beatable. He has no explanation and no cure for the hemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs at Depression rates, no plan to stop the outsourcing of white-collar jobs to Asia, no desire or will to stop the invasion from Mexico. Yet, he remains a favorite against Kerry, because Kerry has no answers, either. Both are globalists. Both are free-traders. Both favor open borders. Again, it needs to be said: There is no conservative party in America.

There is the Constitution Party, which I fully support despite being a member of the Libertarian Party. I’d very much like to see a tactical alliance between the two parties to pose right-wing challenge to the two major parties.

Hank writes: “Women entering the work force didn’t have to turn the country into the land of two income families.”

Actually, Hank, it was pretty inevitable. I’ve done extensive research on this. Economic theory dictates that if you double the workforce and everything else remains equal, you reduce the wage rate by half as you cannot ever escape the iron law of supply and demand. Now, obviously not everything has remained equal, but the evidence very much supports the theory. In fact, the primary reason that wages haven’t fallen more as women began working in large numbers is that older men left the workforce almost as fast as young women entered it. If you study the workforce numbers, a reasonably clear pattern emerges. To summarize, what we’ve seen over the last fifty years is that women have entered the workforce in order to make it possible for men to retire at 55+. This is particularly ironic considering that lifespans increased dramatically during this time.

Beyond that, the effect has been to reduce real wages, which peaked in the early 1970s.

TZ loyally expresses doubt: Vox was and is right with his original article. Maybe his webmaster can come up with a ton of stuff, but there is nothing in the Essentials area even hinting at opposition to Bush. Maybe his subscribers can have a different view, if they have better access and can pick and choose, but I can’t find the “documentation”. Is there any way you can post what was attached (or links), or maybe I just can’t find it.

I do appreciate it, TZ, but I’m pretty satisfied that I used a suboptimal illustration here, although the fundamental point still stands. I should have used George Will or someone else as an example. I don’t expect all Republicans to immediately abandon the party, only be willing to hold George Delano accountable and be open to the idea of withdrawing their support for him. George Prayias, Rush’s webmaster, was good enough to provide the supporting evidence:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020204/content/theory.guest.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020204/content/the_big_theory.guest.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020204/content/bigtheorymedicare.guest.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020204/content/morrisbigtheory.guest.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020204/content/gillespie.guest.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020204/content/medicareexpansion.guest.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020204/content/limited.guest.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020204/content/surprise.guest.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020204/content/bush__04_strategy_more_nixon_than_reagan.guest.html

Rush Limbaugh’s webmaster, George Prayias, corrects the record: I’m the webmaster at RushLimbaugh.com. After reading your latest column on Rush – and his criticism of the Bush administration’s domestic agenda – I thought you would want to be informed that contrary to what you assert in your column, Rush has been very critical of this administration’s expansion of government for quite some time now. He has devoted many broadcasts over the past year to lamenting what he refers to as “The Big Theory” – the administration’s effort to destroy the Democratic Party by moving the liberal agenda forward. Rush was the first commentator to point this out and critique it…..

In addition, your assertion that, “A new and metastasizing federal drug entitlement wasn’t enough to convince Rush of this,” is similarly incorrect. Rush was immediately critical of the Medicare drug entitlement, again devoting many shows to vociferously arguing against it, criticizing the administration for proposing it and Republicans in Congress for going along with it. I have enclosed documentation of this as well, including a transcript of a rare on-air interview with RNC chair Ed Gillespie, in which Rush challenged him directly on the expansion of government under President Bush. In short, the theme of your column, that recently proposed NEA funding is finally what “appears to have at last caused the scales to fall from Rush’s eyes,” is just plain wrong. Rush has been leading the criticism of the administration on spending from the start. Thank you for the opportunity to correct the record.

As I told the gentleman, I’m quite pleased to discover that I’m wrong about Rush on this regard. Now, the theme of my column is by no means wrong – contrary to Mr. Prayias’ reading of it, Rush is not the theme, the Republican betrayal of conservatives is – but clearly I erred in lumping Rush in with George Will, Henry Lamb, Fred Barnes and numerous Townhall and National Review writers who have ranged from squishy to downright supine in failing to call this administration on its abandonment of conservativism. I’ve been saving clippings; I’ll post a list one of these days. I should also mention that while Rush may have been the first to articulate “the Big Theory”, he was by no means the first commentator to get down on George Delano, as both Joseph Farah and I refused to support him while he was still running for the Republican nomination.

How did I gang so far agley? Pretty simple. I don’t listen to radio and I watch very little TV. Outside of the literary world, I am a pure creature of the Internet, and I’m more up on my Greek philosophers and Austrian economists than I am on CNN talk show hosts. That’s why I was quite serious when I said before that I have no interest in my own TV show, since I don’t know who is on them or even what they do. Clearly, however, I’ll have to add Rush’s web site to my reading list.

In any event, I’m quite sorry about the failure to correctly characterize Rush’s past positions. I always do my homework on the Left, clearly I need to do a better job on the Right as well next time. This really blows. Not only is it personally embarassing, but it completely ruins that line about the great white whale, which otherwise worked on so many levels.

Bloody heck. Scrivero’ il mio prossimo articolo in italiano.

SB writes: The public gets the government it deserves. People will vote for politicians promising more beer and potato chips. They will vote for politicians promising to cancel all debts, and to grab money from the wealthy and redistribute it. That’s why the States at first did not want to allow poor people to have the vote. We gave them the vote, and now we have the unions, the bankruptcy laws, the redistribution of wealth, and everything that anyone would expect. That’s how it works. If Americans are short sighted, demand a free lunch, and for that matter demand free sex and other perversions, then that is exactly what they will get in a democracy. Perhaps our democratic experiment is a failure, and we are really demo-crazy.

Certainly everyone from de Tocqueville to Marx and Schumpeter have argued that this was the inevitable end of democracy. And perhaps it is a failure. In which case, those of us who love freedom have two choices. We allow it to die with or without protest. I imagine you probably know my position on the matter.

GM writes: I can only find one thing to disagree with in your column, “A Legacy of Betrayal.” Power used badly is not useless, it is evil. Otherwise, you have hit the nail on the head. I’ve tried explaining Republican behavior to conservatives by using the analogy of “boiling the frog”. The Democrats always try to drop the frog into boiling water, as in the first two years of the Clinton administration when they raised taxes, passed the Brady Bill and attempted to instantly socialize our medical care system, all at once. Came 1994 and the frog jumped out of the pot. The Republicans picked the little fella up and slipped him into a pot of nice, cool Republican water. Then they began to increase the temperature gradually with bills like Kennedy-Kassebaum and Kennedy-Hatch, passing Hillary’s health care plan piecemeal, so’s the frog didn’t notice. George Delano has gotten the frog up to about medium rare, and the frog thinks everything’s fine. If you want Socialism done right, vote GOP.

I actually get far more of these sorts of emails from Republicans and conservatives than the previous sort. Nor am I the only one, as even the whore doggies are getting a little nervous about the marked lack of enthusiasm for George Delano. I don’t think it will be enough for Kerry to win, but it might help the Libertarians and Constitutionals to hit new records. And if it is enough for Kerry to win, so be it, perhaps the frog will be galvanized to leap out of the pot. In any case, sacrificing principles for pragmatism deserves to be punished.

JN writes: We have the chance to reform the judiciary in the next four years: replace federal judgeships, Supreme Court appointments etc.. By having a temper tantrum you are playing right into the hand of Sen Kennedy and Leheay’s. You are also jeopardizing the lives of the unborn innocents, it is unconscionable you could do this! If unborn children mean anything to you you will button your lip.

Gee, maybe if I just shut my mouth and quietly accept the long march towards global socialism, everything will turn out peachy keen! It’s interesting, too, to see how a call to stand by one’s principles is equated with a temper tantrum. JN has to open his eyes and realize that George Delano and the Republican Party have no intention of abiding by their publicly professed principles. “But he said he loved me,” he’ll sob one day, like a girl who’s just been deflowered and abandoned by her smooth-talking lover. “He said he loved me!” See, the thing is, George Delano doesn’t mean what he says. Nor does the Republican Party leadership. That’s kind of the entire point.

Of course, if we just vote Republican, we’ll get great Supreme Court judges who will fight for the unborn like Earl Warren, Warren Burger, David Souter, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Conner… hmmm, wait a minute!