Vox Popoli

Scott forgets that this blog is not all about our debate:

I thought that Vox and I were in pretty substantive agreement when it comes to distinguishing between the science of evolution and the ideologically-motivated misapplication of that science. Curious, then, that he has expended several thousand words over at his site as to which Nazi wore which belt buckle, or whether the Soviets were ‘inspired’ by Darwin.

We are, and I’m doing some reading to catch up before responding to Scott’s latest post. My clarification of Nazi belt buckles was not related to the debate at all as my previous post on the subject predated our debate, and the explication of the Soviet inspiration by Darwin was only tangentially related by virtue of the subject. I have a weekly column to write, after all, which takes priority over the debate on evolution.

As for the idea that I am somehow playing “semantic dodge ball” or attempting to cloud the issue, I note that I’m not the one attempting to put a spin on the very basic concept of a “predictive model” or the idea that the scientific method is commonly supposed to require hypothesis, testing of the hypothesis and replication.

You’d almost think he’d been following my debate with Scott Hatfield:

I remember learning in school about the neat line of human descent and wondering how we can be so sure about that from the relatively few fossil discoveries. It looked like bullshit to me. And now we have a better idea that it was. Some of the most basic so-called facts of human evolution were wrong, it seems. Tools were used before brains got bigger, we walked upright at the same time we did a lot of tree swinging, etc.

Proponents of evolution will angrily argue the following points that I will acknowledge first just to piss them off:

1. Science is dynamic and revises itself. That is its strength. Yay, science!
2. Revising details of evolution doesn’t mean evolution didn’t happen.
3. There is a mountain of good information for evolution.
4. Scott Adams is not a trained scientist. That’s why he doesn’t understand evolution.
5. The stuff in that article has been known to scientists for a long time.

That’s all true, I’m sure. It also has nothing to do with my point. My point is that the average non-scientist has been fed a diet of suspicious evidence for evolution for decades. And much of it turns out to be bullshit. It smelled like bullshit and it was.

I’m a little less sanguine about the strength of the scientific position than Mr. Adams, mostly due to the predictive shortcomings that I understand in my own scientific field, but this summary explains both the challenge faced by scientists as well as the reasonable – indeed, inevitable – skepticism about evolution on the part of many intelligent non-scientists.

Nearly everything I was taught about evolution in both public and private school has not only turned to be, as Scott describes it, complete bullshit, but infuriatingly, is now often denied by evolutionists as having anything to do with evolution. (That’s not Darwinism, that’s Haeckelism… right, like they made that all-important distinction for us in fifth grade.) Not that I care what is taught in schools that these days can’t even teach children how to read or do basic math, but it does raise serious questions about viability of the concept favored by so many scientists of teaching more science in school.

For every Scott Hatfield that is perfectly capable of teaching the actual science and avoiding the bovine ejectus, there’s probably twenty teachers that will guarantee a classroom full of students convinced that science is essentially fraudulent.

Science has always been amoral. If scientists insist on continuing to their work in this direction, I have the feeling that in a few decades they’ll make science less popular than the global jihad. Science as the rational basis for human society has seldom looked like more of an utter non-starter:

Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government’s fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were “at ease” with scientists creating the hybrid embryos.

It’s entirely possible that the New Atheists are correct and mankind is heading for a paroxysm of anti-scientific fervor. What they don’t understand is that it will have little to do with religion and is more likely to involve a perfectly reasonable reaction to a scientific disaster.

The most problematic fact in the lead-up to the 2008 elections isn’t the fund-raising problems, but that the Republican Party’s most positive political sign is that there is still some support for a war that they are in the process of losing:

During the summer, a female acquaintance of mine in her 70s who had been a faithful Republican was solicited by a GOP cold caller as a previous contributor to the party. Not this time. She informed the fund-raiser that President Bush’s position on immigration was the last straw. She would not give the Republicans another dime — not now, maybe never. So, she told him, “Stop calling me!”

That rebuff, commonplace in today’s Republican fund-raising, puts a human face on the Federal Election Commission’s cold statistics. They show a commanding Democratic lead over Republicans in raising money for the 2008 elections. Such an unusual disparity is at once a symptom and a contributing cause of the melancholy suffusing the Grand Old Party as Congress reconvenes after the August break.

As measured by offices held, Republicans have been in much worse shape during my half century of reporting in Washington. Their party was a mere remnant after the Democratic landslides of 1958, 1964 and 1974. But never before have I seen morale within the party so low. While Republican support for an unpopular war has remained remarkably strong, almost all non-war news during the dreary August recess has been bad for the GOP.

I don’t think Hillary will top Reagan’s electoral vote total, but her share of the popular vote may well be higher. Nominating a pro-war, pro-immigration candidate like Thompson or Giuliani will doom the Gay Old Party, as Hillary has shown that she will adroitly position herself just far enough to the more popular position to suck the life out of the Republican base.

Ergo the problem must be a nail. The military strategist and inventor of the 4th Generation Warfare concept points out that the methodology of the latest military efforts indicate that those efforts are doomed to failure:

Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the “surge” is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: it isn’t.

Worse, the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and Gen. Petraeus’ best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping Fourth Generation war. To put it bluntly, there is no surer or faster way to lose in 4GW than by calling in airstrikes. It is a disaster on every level. Physically, it inevitably kills far more civilians than enemies, enraging the population against us and driving them into the arms of our opponents. Mentally, it tells the insurgents we are cowards who only dare fight them from 20,000 feet in the air. Morally, it turns us into Goliath, a monster every real man has to fight. So negative are the results of air strikes in this kind of war that there is only one possible good number of them: zero (unless we are employing the “Hama model,” which we are not).

Kill them all or isolate them. Those are the only two strategic options and our moral justification for the invasion and occupation demands the latter. Simply widening the conflict by attacking Iran merely postpones the decision while increasing the risk of total failure.

Fortunately, there is some mordant humor to be found in all of this: “the U.S. Air Force recently announced it is developing its own counter-insurgency doctrine”. I, for one, very, very much look forward to learning precisely what this doctrine is.

Texans counties unite to shut down a massive private land grab of 584,000 acres. Of course, the Lone Star State would have done better to stay independent in the first place:

As of Monday, August 27, Gov. Perry, the Texas Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency were notified of the move to stop the TTC. The four Texas cities of Bartlett, Holland, Little River-Academy, and Rogers formed the Eastern Central Texas Sub-Regional Planning Commission (ECTSRPC) to fight the TTC. Moreover, among other things, they are depending on federal court decisions that have set precedents in favor of landowners, but never involving something of this magnitude, in other federal districts to add backbone to the local laws they are utilizing….

The newly formed commission, in an unprecedented move, was formed using the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391. This allows cities to develop plans for their local region and to force the state agencies to coordinate with their activities. Under Chapter 391.009(c), TxDoT is required to coordinate with commissions to ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level. The vice president of the newly formed commission, Ronnie White, said: “TxDoT must coordinate with us before they can implement their plans in our region.” He also stated that “The TTC is driven by greed and has no respect for our rural way of life.” This would have to be the understatement of the century, in my estimation.

After long consultations with attorneys and massive investigation, commission members concluded that there are no loopholes for the state agencies to exploit here. Therefore, under state law, TxDoT will be required to work with the ECTSRPC and coordinate their plans with the local group before any land is taken or any construction begins.

This is merely the first return fire in what is going to be the most significant political battle of our generation. Understand this: if Americans consent to the NAU, there will be no more America. To vote for any politician, of any party, who supports the TTC or the SPP or any of the other supranational acronym organizations, is to vote for treason.

On learning the prime directive of labor:

One morning when we clocked in, though, our foreman told us we had a new challenge. The park had a bandshell, and our job was to assemble the temporary stage risers needed for the concert that night. He drove over to the bandshell — and I do mean he drove, while we trotted along behind; I don’t think I ever saw him set foot outside of that golf cart or without a cigarette in his mouth — pointed to the backstage door, and told us the riser parts were inside and being a bunch of smart kids, we should be able to figure out how to put it together. Someone asked how long the job should take.

He said, “The union work rules say it takes a full crew four hours to assemble those risers.”

Scott offers a new challenge:

I’ll tell you what: you show me evidence that the Soviets enthusiastically incorporated natural selection within their version of Marxism, rather than mere evolution, and then you might have something. Or, alternatively, if you can show me state-approved scientists in 1930-1950 Russia who were lauded for their championing of natural selection, that might be something.

First, from a Marxist point of view, evolution by natural selection is the biological dialectic. Or if you prefer, the dialectic is socio-political evolution by natural selection. Nonsense? I should say so, as is the Labor Theory of Value, macroeconomics and macroevolution, in my opinion. The point is what they believed, not whether we think they were correct to believe it. As for the second part, here’s an initial start, I’m sure Just a Girl could add a few more names as she cited Michurin yesterday.

Theodosius Dobzhansky, University of Leningrad

Architect of the modern Darwin-Mendel synthesis to which Scott himself subscribes. Had the good sense to emigrate to the USA in 1927. Probably wasn’t a Marxist at all, as he was Eastern Orthodox. But since he learned his evolutionary biology in the Soviet Union, it would appear that their Darwinist science couldn’t have been all that different than in the West.

Yuri Filipchenko, University of Leningrad

“Russian entomologist and coiner of the terms microevolution and macroevolution. Mentor of Theodosius Dobzhansky. Though he himself was an orthogenetic he was one of the first scientists to incorporate the laws of Mendel into evolutionary theory and thus had great influence on The Modern Synthesis.”

Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin – Lenin All-Union Academy of Agriculture

Michurin was one of the founding fathers of scientific agricultural selection. He worked on hybridization of plants of similar and different origins, cultivating methods in connection with the natural course of ontogenesis, directing the process of predominance, evaluation and selection of seedlings, acceleration of process of selection with the help of physical and chemical factors. Michurin’s method of crossing of geographically distant plants would be widely used by other selectionists…. Throughout all his life Michurin worked to create new sorts of fruit plants. He introduced over 300 new species. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Banner of Labor for his achievements.”

Sergei Sergeevich Chetverikov – Department of Genetics at Gorky University

“One of the founders of population genetics and synthetic theory of evolution.”

As for a famous Marxist Darwinist outside the Soviet Union, there is of course Richard Dawkins’s hero, J.B.S. Haldane.

“Haldane was very idealistic, and in his youth was a devoted Communist and author of many articles in The Daily Worker and was the chairman of the editorial board of the London edition for several years. In 1937, Haldane had become a Marxist, and an open supporter of the Communist Party, but not yet a member of the Party. He would join the Party in 1942…. He left the Communist party in 1950, shortly after having toyed with standing for Parliament as a Communist Party candidate.”

Nikolai Vavilov
“Member of the USSR Central Executive Committee, President of All-Union Geographical Society and a recipient of the Lenin Prize. In 1940 he was jailed as a defender of the “bourgeois pseudoscience” (genetics) in a struggle with Lysenkoism, and died of malnutrition in a prison in 1943. The majority of his genetic samples were seized by a German collecting command set up in 1943, and the samples were transferred to the SS Institute for Plant Genetics, which had been established at the Lannach Castle near Graz, Austria…. The leader of the German command was Heinz Brücher, an SS officer who was also a plant genetics expert.”

Now the Pharyngulans are just clutching at straws. After I pointed out that Nazis weren’t even permitted to serve in the Wehrmacht at the time when the previously mentioned belt buckle was issued, in 1937, Windy came up with this rationale:

The requirement of not being affiliated with a political party did not stop the Wehrmacht members from swearing allegiance to Hitler. It’s not a belt buckle of the Nazi party, but it’s a belt buckle of the army of Nazi Germany.

I find it strange that I should have to point this out, but swearing obedience to Hitler – and even unconditional obedience is not allegiance – did not make one a member of the German National Socialist Workers Party. If promising to obey your commander-in-chief is indicative of one’s political party, then we must conclude that all Marines, Army Rangers and Navy SEALs are Republicans. That is ridiculous.

The millions of members of the Wehrmacht did not swear allegiance to Hitler personally, again, that was the Waffen SS, who swore him both loyalty and obedience. The Wehrmacht oath only swore obedience to Hitler in his persona as supreme commander of the armed forces, little different than hundreds of similar oaths sworn by soldiers to their warleaders since pre-Roman times. The Wehrmacht oath was as follows:

I swear by God this sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that I shall at all times be prepared, as a brave soldier, to give my life for this oath.

The SS oath, on the other hand, was a personal one. Remember that any member of any branch of the SS was also a member of the Nazi party.

“I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer and Chancellor of the German Nation, loyalty and bravery. I vow to you and to my superiors designated by you obedience to the death. So help me God.”

All of this is a salient lesson in reminding Christians of Jesus Christ’s admonishment to refrain from taking oaths. Matthew 5:33-37

“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.