Month: March 2011

Having It Both Ways

by digby

Krugman reprises a column he wrote the last time the social security vultures tried to destroy the program. Here’s an excerpt:

But those who insist that we face a Social Security crisis want to have it both ways. Having invoked the concept of a unified budget to reject the existence of a trust fund, they refuse to accept the implications of that unified budget going forward. Instead, having changed the rules to make the trust fund meaningless, they want to change the rules back around 15 years from now: today, when the payroll tax takes in more revenue than SS benefits, they say that’s meaningless, but when – in 2018 or later – benefits start to exceed the payroll tax, why, that’s a crisis. Huh?

I don’t know why this contradiction is so hard to understand, except to echo Upton Sinclair: it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary (or, in the current situation, his membership in the political club) depends on his not understanding it. But let me try this one more time, by asking the following: What happens in 2018 or whenever, when benefits payments exceed payroll tax revenues?

The answer, very clearly, is nothing.

The Social Security system won’t be in trouble: it will, in fact, still have a growing trust fund, because of the interest that the trust earns on its accumulated surplus. The only way Social Security gets in trouble is if Congress votes not to honor U.S. government bonds held by Social Security. That’s not going to happen. So legally, mechanically, 2018 has no meaning.

During the last election Democratic pollsters did a lot of work on messaging this problem and what they found wasn’t very hopeful. As one would expect, people are very confused. And in the best case most of them believe that the government “raided the trust fund” when it invested our money in US government bonds — the safest investment in the world.

I don’t know how to unravel that except to ask people what they think the government should have done with the money — put it under the mattress? Or literally in a lock box at Fort Knox? Or was it a really good idea to invest the money and have Social Security “live off the interest?” Nobody gets it. They think the money’s been “stolen” not invested and it’s nearly impossible to get them to think otherwise. Well played, Pete Peterson.

The country has been misled on all these issues for years by people with an ideological agenda. And now it’s to the point where very few people can sort it all out. They just “know” that the system is going broke. It’s a problem.

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Main Street Movement

by digby

Think Progress calls this the Main street movement, and I think that’s pretty good:

Police estimated up to 100,000 people turned out in Madison, WI yesterday to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) assault on unions, making it bigger than any protests the city has witnessed, even those during the Vietnam War…yesterday’s rally in Madison is noteworthy because at 85,000-100,000, it was bigger than the biggest tea party protest, the September 12, 2009 rally in Washington, D.C., which turned out only an estimated 60,000-70,000.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Crisis? What crisis?

By Dennis Hartley

Off the grid: Carbon Nation

Do you remember those math story problems you had to do way back in your public school days? Good times. Anyway, here’s a fun one for you: Mankind’s energy use rate is 16 terawatts. Currently, an estimated 2 of those terawatts are derived from “green” sources. That means that the remaining 14 terawatts rely on traditional fossil fuels. Now, if the Sun alone (to name but one available form of “free” alternative energy) is bombarding the Earth with a potential tap of 86,000 terawatts a day, WTF IS WRONG WITH MANKIND? Oh-did you remember to carry the global warming deniers? Good! Now, you may put down your No. 2 pencils and pass your papers to the front of the class.

It’s a simple question, really. And it frames the premise of an eco-doc from director Peter Byck, called Carbon Nation. In all fairness, that little dig at the global warming deniers was my embellishment; the film’s tag line actually promises “a climate change solutions movie that doesn’t even care if you believe in climate change”. This is either good news or bad news, depending on what you generally look for in an eco-doc. If you are looking to have your worst fears confirmed about how screwed the planet might be (An Inconvenient Truth, The 11th Hour) or a “catch ‘em with their pants down” muckraker about the fossil fuels industry, like Gasland-then you may be frustrated by Byck’s non-partisan approach. However, if you already “get” the part about the sky falling, yet are looking for some positive news on the “solutions” front, this film could be an inspiration.

Byck traverses America, profiling people who are striving to make a difference in lightening our carbon footprint. People like Cliff Etherege, a West Texas cotton farmer who talked a number of his neighbors into pooling their relatively small 500-acre farms together into forming an operation called Peak Wind, which is now (collectively) one of the largest wind farms in the world. The formation of the company literally saved the town of Roscoe, which had been slowly dying for a number of years. There is Alaskan entrepreneur Bernie Karl (who I had the pleasure of meeting a few times through my Alaskan radio gig many moons ago). Karl is the owner of the Chena Hot Springs Resort, a popular tourist destination about 60 miles north of Fairbanks. He has devised a machine that generates geothermal power from a water temperature of 165 degrees. 95% of the liquid drilled from the ground by most oil wells is water, which averages a temperature of…165 degrees. In an ideal universe, each of those wells would have one of Bernie’s converters on hand-which would create a power output equivalent to 10 nuclear plants. Unfortunately, oil companies currently view the water simply as waste-but we can dream.

One of the more admirable folks profiled is Van Jones, the civil rights advocate who has become a green jobs organizer. He was a key advocate for the Green Jobs Act (signed into law back in 2007). Armed with an uplifting catchphrase (“Green jobs, not jails”) Jones is shown spreading his message through economically challenged urban communities like Richmond, California, where disadvantaged youths have found steady employment installing solar panels on neighborhood homes through one of his programs. It’s quite inspirational to see that someone has figured a way to mesh the idea of sustaining a green economy while making a positive social impact at the same time. Byck also touches base with some of the “Green Hawks” who are working with the Department of Defense to make overseas military support operations more energy efficient via wind and solar power. One of them, ex-CIA head R. James Woolsey, delivers the film’s money quote. In consideration of the “blood and treasure” sacrifices that we suffer as a result of our dependence on fossil fuels, he observes, “President (George Herbert Walker) Bush probably would not have felt like he had to protect Saudi Arabia from Iraq, if the Persian Gulf had been home to 2/3 of the world’s proven supply of broccoli.” I say amen to that.

Woolsey’s comment is probably the closest that the film comes to skirting any kind of partisan viewpoint; as I stated at the top of the review, Byck has made a concerted effort to just accentuate the positive. Which is all well and good (who can’t use an uplift and a little inspiration now and then?), but in a way it’s a bit of a shame, particularly with the timing of the film’s release (have any change left after filling your tank in the last week or so?). With all the eco-docs that have dealt with the global warming/fossil fuels dependency issues, I’ve yet to see one that acknowledges and addresses the elephant in the room: Despite the fact that this is one issue that should transcend politics, like it or not, this whole issue has, in a rather sad point of fact, been co-opted as a political football, and we need to get away from that (at least if we ever hope to see more planet-friendly legislation). During my morning commute the other day I was listening to “Democracy Now” and heard Amy Goodman interviewing Naomi Klein, who is working on a new book about climate change and the climate change deniers. I thought Klein offered some thoughtful observations on why most of the deniers come from the Right:

But something very different is going on on the right, and I think we need to understand what that is. Why is climate change seen as such a threat? I don’t believe it’s an unreasonable fear. I think it is—it’s unreasonable to believe that scientists are making up the science. They’re not. It’s not a hoax. But actually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. So, in fact, if you really wrestle with the implications of the science and what real climate action would mean, here’s just a few examples what it would mean.

Well, it would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. So, this has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade. That would have to be reversed.

You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. So, on the most basic, basic, “you broke it, you bought it,” polluter pays, you would have to redistribute wealth, which is also against their ideology.
You would have to regulate corporations. You simply would have to. I mean, any serious climate action has to intervene in the economy. You would have to subsidize renewable energy, which also breaks their worldview.

You would have to have a really strong United Nations, because individual countries can’t do this alone. You absolutely have to have a strong international architecture.

So when you go through this, you see, it challenges everything that they believe in. So they’re choosing to disbelieve it, because it’s easier to deny the science than to say, “OK, I accept that my whole worldview is going to fall apart,” that we have to have massive investments in public infrastructure, that we have to reverse free trade deals, that we have to have huge transfers of wealth from the North to the South. Imagine actually contending with that. It’s a lot easier to deny it.

Klein did go on to say that a lot of the major green groups are in a “kind of denial” as well; in that they don’t want to confront the fact that it this a political and economic issue. Getting back to Byck’s film, many of the people and companies he profiles are, in fact, proving that sustainability can be both an earth-friendly and economically sound proposition. So what’s stopping everybody from getting together on the same page? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Don’t make me turn this into another math story problem…

Previous posts with related themes:

The Planet
Top Ten Eco Flicks
No Impact Man

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The Shock Doctrine Cliff Notes

by digby

“The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that.” Larry Kudlow

Watch the inspiring video at the link.

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Hail Mary

by digby

From Al Jazeera’s live blog:

First it was 6,000 – then 45,000… Now about 140,000 people have been told to evacuate areas near the two Fukushima nuclear power plants following Friday’s earthquake, said the UN atomic watchdog. The International Atomic Energy Agency said:

Evacuations around both affected nuclear plants have begun … but full evacuation measures have not been completed.

Kate Sheppard, live blogging at Mother Jones reports:

Speaking to reporters Saturday afternoon, several US-based experts on nuclear power and emergency response noted that the decision to evacuate the area around the plants during a time of such dire emergency in the country is likely evidence that the government is very concerned about a potential disaster at the site. “Ordering several thousand people into motion in the immediate aftermath [of an earthquake and tsunami] is something that no government would do if could help it,” said Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He added: “That says a lot about the seriousness of the reports they were getting about the condition of the plant.”

UPDATE 3:40 PM: Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former senior policy advisor to the Secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration, says that the plan to use sea water to attempt to cool the reactor is an “act of desperation.” “I would describe this measure as a ‘Hail Mary’ pass,” said Alvarez. Kenneth Bergeron, a physicist who previously worked on nuclear reactor accident simulation at the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories, also noted that this is a “very unconventional” method for trying to cool the reactor.

Bergeron described what’s going on at the plant is known as “a station blackout”—both a loss of external power and a failure of the on-site emergency power. This kind of situation is “considered extremely unlikely,” said Bergeron, though it has been a major concern for decades that something like this could happen. “We are in uncharted territory,” said Bergeron.

NY Times overview here.

TEPCO (power company)press releases here.

There is a lot of conflicting information. Government sources are particularly unreliable because they have a great interest in not creating further panic after this catastrophe. I even understand it. Everything is stretched to the limit and they may not think they can cope in the event of a meltdown in these circumstances.

But from our perspective in other countries, this is confusing to say the least. Stay tuned.

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If you ever wondered whether the right wing is totally heartless …

by digby

… or just mostly heartless, this clears it up:

For years, Missouri earned the dubious distinction as the nation’s “puppy mill capital” because its lax humane regulations and enforcement allowed dog breeders to raise puppies at low costs in terrible, overcrowded conditions. Last fall, Missouri voters approved a referendum to finally solve this problem — the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act — which mandates regular veterinarian inspections of breeding facilities and ensures a basic level of treatment for dogs, such keeping temperatures between 45 and 85 degrees. Tea party groups stridently opposed the referendum, arguing it was “just another example of big government meddling in people’s lives.” Now, capitalizing on the big gains they made in November, Republicans in the state legislature are poised to repeal the regulations Missouri’s voters enacted.

At this point, any pet store or person who buys dogs from Missouri should be boycotted and shunned. They have been notoriously cruel and inhumane for years and now they refuse to be regulated even slightly? Then they should be put out of business entirely.

People who are kind to animals are not necessarily decent people. But people who are cruel to animals definitely are not.

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The Full Madison

by digby

For full coverage of the huge Day of Action in Wisconsin today, I think Michael Moore’s site is probably the best. The livestream is below, but there are tons of slides and articles on his site if you’re looking for comprehensive coverage:

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Loose Nuke Talk

by digby

I stayed up way too late last night reading and watching news reports about nuclear meltdown in Japan. Not a good way to relax before going to sleep.

I gathered from reading around the web that this Wikipedia entry is a pretty good discussion of the science involved. One thing seems clear. The nuclear proponents are very, very sure that it’s completely impossible for any kind of nuclear disaster to happen — even in the case of an 8.9 earthquake with frequent huge aftershocks and a catastrophic tsunami. Other scientists seem a bit more skeptical.

I would certainly be cautious about believing some of the happy talk from the reporters who are parroting government assurances. Last night, in their zeal to be fair and balanced there was a long discussion of how important nuclear power is for all of us — with the footage of the plant blowing up on the screen. There may be reasons to underplay the potential fallout (no pun intended) but if you’re looking for truth, I’d keep an open mind and get information from a number of sources on this one. I am getting that “BP” feeling where we were told for days that it was under control — and it wasn’t.

Last night as the thing was unfolding, Kyodo News had frequent updates that I wasn’t seeing anywhere else.

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Nuclear Scare

by digby

This isn’t good:

Japanese nuclear officials say radiation levels inside a nuclear power plant have surged to 1,000 times their normal levels after the cooling system failed. The nuclear safety agency said early Saturday that some radiation has also seeped outside the plant, prompting calls for further evacuations of the area. Some 3,000 people have already been urged to leave their homes, as the government declared its first-ever state of emergency at a nuclear plant. The cooling system for a reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant failed on Friday after a massive earthquake caused a power outage. The continued loss of electricity has also delayed the planned release of vapor from inside the reactor to ease pressure. Japan’s nuclear safety agency said pressure inside one of six boiling water reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant had risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal. Hours after the evacuation order, the government announced that the plant in northeastern Japan will release slightly radioactive vapor from the unit to lower the pressure in an effort to protect it from a possible meltdown.

Scarecrow at FDL has a sobering rundown of the situation:

Bottom line: There may be not one but two units at risk. They’re both on last-ditch, fail-safe systems that rely on limited-life batteries to keep cooling water flowing and covering the core. The operators are in a race against time to replace them or to get electric power either from repaired or replaced back-up generators or restored access to the grid. We don’t know the status of any of these efforts.

Without continuously circulating cooling water, the still very hot reactor core will slowly (over hours) boil away the remaining cooling water, and that could eventually leave the reactor core and its radioactive fuel rods uncovered. We don’t know how far along we are in that sequence. What happens after that can lead to an uncontrolled meltdown and releases of radiation.

“Controlled” radiation releases, through filters (we don’t know their effectiveness), have already been used to relieve pressure inside the reactor. [There’s a report they’ve lost any other ability to control pressure.] suspect most has been contained inside a massive containment structure, which is designed to withstand everything except the things they didn’t plan for, like the loss of everything. We’re there.

There have already been pressure buildups inside the reactor (or containment?) that exceed its design capacity. We don’t know what it’s real limits are, and we don’t know what damage the earthquake caused to its integrity.

Egad.

I have often thought it was downright suicidal to place nuclear plants in an earthquake zone. But then I live on the California coast within 200 miles of two of them, so …

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Prisoners of their own strategy

by digby

Doug Hill at Balloon Juice asked conservative bloggers if they believed in evolution and apparently was told that it wasn’t a very good sample of conservative thinking because they were all well educated and would naturally believe in the scientific evidence.

Well, today, he finds out that the highly educated conservatives are actually slightly more likely to believe in evolution. This doesn’t surprise me. One of my favorite posts ever was this one:

This is fascinating. Ben Adler asked a bunch of leading conservative intellectuals whether they believed in evolution. As far as I can tell only about half of them have any intellectual integrity whatsoever, and only one is definitively honest in my opinion: Charles Krauthamer, if you can believe that. Richard Brookheiser and William F Buckley get honorable mentions.

Remember, these are highly educated people. The problem is not that they may believe in God or have a religious view of the origins of the universe. That is quite easily explained. It’s the weaselly, mushy way they try to divert the question elsewhere or explain what they know is a ridiculous position. It’s as if they are all terribly afraid that James Dobson might read TNR and berate them for not having a religiously correct fundamentalist view. William Kristol, as always, is the slickest guy around.

William Kristol, The Weekly Standard

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I don’t discuss personal opinions. … I’m familiar with what’s obviously true about it as well as what’s problematic. … I’m not a scientist. … It’s like me asking you whether you believe in the Big Bang.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I managed to have my children go through the Fairfax, Virginia schools without ever looking at one of their science textbooks.”

Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I’ve never understood how an eye evolves.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “Put me down for the intelligent design people.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “The real problem here is that you shouldn’t have government-run schools. … Given that we have to spend all our time crushing the capital gains tax I don’t have much time for this issue.”

David Frum, American Enterprise Institute and National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I do believe in evolution.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “If intelligent design means that evolution occurs under some divine guidance, I believe that.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I don’t believe that anything that offends nine-tenths of the American public should be taught in public schools. … Christianity is the faith of nine-tenths of the American public. … I don’t believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle.”

Stephen Moore, Free Enterprise Fund

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I believe in parts of it but I think there are holes in the evolutionary theory.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I generally agree with said critique.”

Whether intelligent design or a similar critique should be taught in public schools: “I think people should be taught … that there are various theories about how man was created.”

Whether schools should leave open the possibility that man was created by God in his present form: “Of course, yes, definitely.”

Jonah Goldberg, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Sure.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I think it’s interesting. … I think it’s wrong. I think it’s God-in-the-gaps theorizing. But I’m not hostile to it the way other people are because I don’t, while I think evolution is real, I don’t think any specific–there are a lot of unknowns left in evolution theory and criticizing evolution from different areas doesn’t really bother me, just as long as you’re not going to say the world was created in six days or something.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I don’t think you should teach religious conclusions as science and I don’t think you should teach science as religion. … I see nothing [wrong] with having teachers pay some attention to the sensitivities of other people in the room. I think if that means you’re more careful about some issues than others that’s fine. People are careful about race and gender; I don’t see why all of a sudden we can’t be diplomatic on these issues when it comes to religion.”

Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Of course.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “At most, interesting.”

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: “The idea that [intelligent design] should be taught as a competing theory to evolution is ridiculous. … The entire structure of modern biology, and every branch of it [is] built around evolution and to teach anything but evolution would be a tremendous disservice to scientific education. If you wanna have one lecture at the end of your year on evolutionary biology, on intelligent design as a way to understand evolution, that’s fine. But the idea that there are these two competing scientific schools is ridiculous.”

William Buckley, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I’d have to write that down. … I’d have to say something more carefully than I can over the telephone. I’m a Christian.”

Whether schools should raise the possibility that the original genetic code was written by an intelligent designer: “Well, surely, yeah, absolutely.”

Whether schools should raise the possibility–but not in biology classes–that man was created by God in his present form? : “Yes, sure, absolutely.”

Which classes that should be discussed in: “History, etymology.”

John Tierney, The New York Times (via email)

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I believe that the theory of evolution has great explanatory powers.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I haven’t really studied the arguments for intelligent design, so I’m loath to say much about it except that I’m skeptical.”

James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I could not speak fluently on the subject but I know what the basic argument is.”

Whether schools should teach intelligent design or similar critiques of evolution in biology classes: “I guess I would say they probably shouldn’t be taught in biology classes; they probably should be taught in philosophy classes if there is such a thing. It seems to me, and again I don’t speak with any authority on this, that the hypothesis … that the universe is somehow inherently intelligent is not a scientific hypothesis. Because how do you prove it or disprove it? And really the question is how do you disprove it, because a scientific hypothesis has to be capable of being falsified. So while there may be holes in Darwinian theory, while there’s obviously a lot we don’t know, and perhaps Darwinian theory could be wrong altogether, I think whether or not the universe is designed is just a question outside the realm of science.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “It probably should be taught, if it’s going to be taught, in a more thoroughgoing way, a more rigorous way that explains what a scientific theory is. … You know, my general impression is that high school instruction in general is not all that rigorous. … I think one possible way of solving this problem is by–if you can’t teach it in a rigorous way, if the schools aren’t up to that, and if it’s going to be a political hot potato in the way it is, and we have schools that are politically run, one possible solution might be just take it out of the curriculum altogether. I’m not necessarily advocating that, but I think it’s something that policy makers might think about. I’d rather see it taught in a rigorous and serious way, but as a realistic matter that may be expecting too much of our government schools.”

Norman Podhoretz, Commentary (via email)

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “It’s impossible to answer that question with a simple yes or no.”

Richard Brookhiser, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “It doesn’t seem like good science to me.”

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: “No.”

Pat Buchanan, The American Conservative

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Do I believe in absolute evolution? No. I don’t believe that evolution can explain the creation of matter. … Do I believe in Darwinian evolution? The answer is no.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “Do I believe in a Darwinian evolutionary process which can be inspired by a creator? Yeah, that’s a real possibility. I don’t believe evolution can explain the creation of matter. I don’t believe it can explain the intelligent design in the universe. I just don’t believe it can explain the tremendous complexity of the human being when you get down to DNA and you get down to atomic particles, and molecules, atomic particles, subatomic particles, which we’re only beginning to understand right now. I think to say it all happened by accident or by chance or simply evolved, I just don’t believe it.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “Evolution [has] been so powerful a theory in Western history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and often a malevolent force–it’s been used by non-Christians and anti-Christians to justify polices which have been horrendous. I do believe that every American student should be introduced to the idea and its effects on society. But I don’t think it ought to be taught as fact. It ought to be taught as theory. … How do you answer a kid who says, ‘Where did we all come from?’ Do you say, ‘We all evolved’? I think that’s a theory. … Now the biblical story of creation should be taught to children, not as dogma but every child should know first of all the famous biblical stories because they have had a tremendous influence as well. … I don’t think it should be taught as religion to kids who don’t wanna learn it. … I think in biology that honest teachers gotta say, ‘Look the universe exhibits, betrays the idea that there is a first mover, that there is intelligent design.’ … You should leave the teaching of religion to a voluntary classes in my judgment and only those who wish to attend.”

Tucker Carlson, MSNBC

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I think God’s responsible for the existence of the universe and everything in it. … I think God is probably clever enough to think up evolution. … It’s plausible to me that God designed evolution; I don’t know why that’s outside the realm. It’s not in my view.”

On the possibility that God created man in his present form: “I don’t know if He created man in his present form. … I don’t discount it at all. I don’t know the answer. I would put it this way: The one thing I feel confident saying I’m certain of is that God created everything there is.”

On the possibility that man evolved from a common ancestor with apes: “I don’t know. It wouldn’t rock my world if it were true. It doesn’t sound proved to me. But, yeah I’m willing to believe it, sure.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I don’t have a problem with public schools or any schools teaching evolution. I guess I would have a problem if a school or a science teacher asserted that we know how life began, because we don’t so far as I know, do we? … If science teachers are teaching that we know things that in fact we don’t know, then I’m against that. That’s a lie. But if they are merely describing the state of knowledge in 2005 then I don’t have problem with that. If they are saying, ‘Most scientists believe this,’ and most scientists believe it, then it’s an accurate statement. What bothers me is the suggestion that we know things we don’t know. That’s just another form of religion it seems to me.”

Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “To the extent that I am familiar with it, and that’s not very much, I guess what I think is this: The intelligent designers are correct insofar as they are reacting against a view of evolution which holds that it can’t have been guided by God in any way–can’t even have sort of been set in motion by God to achieve particular results and that no step in the process is guided by God. But they seem to give too little attention to the possibility that God could have set up an evolutionary process.”

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: “I guess my own inclination would be to teach evolution in the public schools. I don’t think that you ought to make a federal case out of it though.”

David Brooks, The New York Times (via email)

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I believe in the theory of evolution.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I’ve never really studied the issue or learned much about ID, so I’m afraid I couldn’t add anything intelligent to the discussion.”

And these are the people who railed against campus political correctness.

They have tried very hard to create and intellectual basis for their tribal prejudices over the past few years. But it never really works.

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