Senator Rubio Goes to Moscow
In Internet time, it’s already an old story, but worth repeating. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Tea Party guy, was asked in a GQ interview how old he believes the earth is. His reply:
I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.
Survey says: Bzzt. There are many mysteries out there. The age of the earth is not one of them: the radiocarbon radiometric dating is so clear that it cannot be doubted — unless you are a paleo-Christianist (and part of the GOP base).
The Shrill One was not pleased:
[H]ere’s what you should realize: when Rubio says that the question of the Earth’s age “has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow”, he’s dead wrong. For one thing, science and technology education has a lot to do with our future productivity — and how are you going to have effective science education if schools have to give equal time to the views of fundamentalist Christians?
More broadly, the attitude that discounts any amount of evidence — and boy, do we have lots of evidence on the age of the planet! — if it conflicts with prejudices is not an attitude consistent with effective policy. If you’re going to ignore what geologists say if you don’t like its implications, what are the chances that you’ll take sensible advice on monetary and fiscal policy? After all, we’ve just seen how Republicans deal with research reports that undermine their faith in the magic of tax cuts: they try to suppress the reports.
But even Krugman does not go far enough, because the suppression of facts, a general trend that Ethan highlighted in the context of the election, has darker implications. Hannah Arendt has a reminder for us. Speaking of the famous Smolensk Archive, a cache of Stalin-era Soviet government documents captured by Nazi invaders, she observes a striking “lacuna” in them “concerning statistical data:”
[A]ll facts that did not agree, or were likely to disagree, with the official fiction — data on crop-yields, criminality, true incidences of ‘counter-revolutionary’ activities as distinguished from the later conspiracy fictions — were treated as non-facts. It was indeed quite in line with the totalitarian contempt for facts and reality that all such data, instead of being collected in Moscow from the four corners of the immense territory, were first made known to the respective localities through publication in Pravda, Izvestia, or some other official organ in Moscow, so that every region and every district of the Soviet Union received its official, fictitious statistical data in much the same way it received the no less fictitious norms allotted to them by the Five Year Plans. (Origins of Totalitarianism, 3rd ed. 1966, p. 367).
No — the current Republican Party is not totalitarian. But in this sense at least, it is following a totalitarian trope. It’s one of several. Arendt also observes that totalitarianism is constantly changing its core beliefs, leaving its supporters with nothing else but to Follow The Leader. So too with Republicans. The Affordable Care Act was hatched in the Heritage Foundation. Cap-and-trade was also originally a conservative idea. Ronald Reagan was adamant in his resistance to torture, and also insisted that Social Security played no role in the deficit. Conservatives in good standing could believe all these things — until the Party told them that doing so was capitulating to socialism. Soviet regions and districts were told what to believe in Pravda and Izvestia: Movement Conservatives are told what to believe from Fox News and the Rush Limbaugh Show.
At some point, we are going to need a better theoretical analysis of the peculiar nature of what passes for modern thought within Movement Conservatism (as opposed to genuine conservatism, which is now mostly represented within the Democratic Party). It’s not totalitarian — for example, the GOP has no charismatic leader that defines it, and (so far) has avoided paramilitary formations — but seems to grab a bunch of things from totalitarianianism, most obviously a world view that completely shuts out inconvenient facts. What would you call it? Totalism? Truman Show-ism? Wordsmiths better get on it. In the meantime, the rest of us need to think about how to make sure the public knows just how maniacal Movement Conservatism has become.
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Jonathan Zasloff teaches Torts, Land Use, Environmental Law, Comparative Urban Planning Law, Legal History, and Public Policy Clinic – Land Use, the Environment and Loc…
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Should be “radiometric dating” not “radiocarbon dating”.
Radiocarbon has a half-live around 5000 years and would be useful if the old christian monks were right, but isn’t of much use for giving the correct age of the earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Modern_radiometric_dating
Should be “radiometric dating” not “radiocarbon dating”.
Radiocarbon has a half-live around 5000 years and would be useful if the old christian monks were right, but isn’t of much use for giving the correct age of the earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Modern_radiometric_dating
Excellent point! Unlike Republicans, I will edit my post in order to reflect reality. Thanks.
Excellent point! Unlike Republicans, I will edit my post in order to reflect reality. Thanks.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) believes all is not lost in his push to thwart Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations despite President Obama’s victory and Democrats’ continued control of the Senate. Inhofe, one of Capitol Hill’s most persistent critics of EPA regulations on carbon dioxide and other pollutants, said in an interview broadcast Sunday that new political opportunities await EPA foes.
“There are a lot of Democrats who are coming up for re-election in 2014 who are not going to want to fall on the sword of Obama on this overregulation once the people at home know what it is costing them,” he said on Platts Energy Week TV.
Inhofe said “we’ve got a rough two years” ahead, but added that he will continue trying to turn back EPA rules, including with Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions. The mid-1990s law, which was part of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-Ga.) “Contract with America,” gives Congress an opening to overturn federal agency regulations. Resolutions under the act are immune from Senate filibuster.
However, it has been used successfully just once, and new efforts would face big Senate obstacles (not to mention likely veto threats). Recent attempts to use the CRA to target EPA rules have fallen short in the Senate. Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) attempt to turn back rules on smog and particulate-forming pollution from power plants stalled in late 2011.
Inhofe’s separate measure to block rules on power plant emissions of mercury and other toxics fell short in June. But new battles await. The courts may force EPA to rewrite the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule that Paul tried to thwart, while EPA has yet to finalize carbon emissions standards for new power plants and other rules in the offing.
Inhofe is the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee but must leave that post in the next Congress. He will remain on the committee and says his focus won’t change.
“I will continue to do the things that I have been doing actively on the committee, most having to do with overregulation and energy,” he said.Inhofe and other critics of EPA rules allege they will hurt the economy by making coal less viable as a power source, forcing closure of plants and mines and costing jobs.
But EPA defenders say the coal-fired power industry’s woes don’t stem from EPA rules, and instead point to the natural gas production boom that has driven down costs for the fuel source that competes with coal.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/270491-sen-inhofe-on-epa-some-dems-wont-fall-on-the-sword-of-obama
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) believes all is not lost in his push to thwart Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations despite President Obama’s victory and Democrats’ continued control of the Senate. Inhofe, one of Capitol Hill’s most persistent critics of EPA regulations on carbon dioxide and other pollutants, said in an interview broadcast Sunday that new political opportunities await EPA foes.
“There are a lot of Democrats who are coming up for re-election in 2014 who are not going to want to fall on the sword of Obama on this overregulation once the people at home know what it is costing them,” he said on Platts Energy Week TV.
Inhofe said “we’ve got a rough two years” ahead, but added that he will continue trying to turn back EPA rules, including with Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions. The mid-1990s law, which was part of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-Ga.) “Contract with America,” gives Congress an opening to overturn federal agency regulations. Resolutions under the act are immune from Senate filibuster.
However, it has been used successfully just once, and new efforts would face big Senate obstacles (not to mention likely veto threats). Recent attempts to use the CRA to target EPA rules have fallen short in the Senate. Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) attempt to turn back rules on smog and particulate-forming pollution from power plants stalled in late 2011.
Inhofe’s separate measure to block rules on power plant emissions of mercury and other toxics fell short in June. But new battles await. The courts may force EPA to rewrite the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule that Paul tried to thwart, while EPA has yet to finalize carbon emissions standards for new power plants and other rules in the offing.
Inhofe is the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee but must leave that post in the next Congress. He will remain on the committee and says his focus won’t change.
“I will continue to do the things that I have been doing actively on the committee, most having to do with overregulation and energy,” he said.Inhofe and other critics of EPA rules allege they will hurt the economy by making coal less viable as a power source, forcing closure of plants and mines and costing jobs.
But EPA defenders say the coal-fired power industry’s woes don’t stem from EPA rules, and instead point to the natural gas production boom that has driven down costs for the fuel source that competes with coal.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/270491-sen-inhofe-on-epa-some-dems-wont-fall-on-the-sword-of-obama