{"id":8462,"date":"2011-09-01T14:29:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T18:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=8462"},"modified":"2012-12-26T20:59:10","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T01:59:10","slug":"understanding-the-anti-reason-hysteria-of-the-republican-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/government_employee\/09\/01\/understanding-the-anti-reason-hysteria-of-the-republican-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding The Anti-Reason Hysteria Of The Republican Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, Paul Krugman began a New York Times column<\/a> on the anti-science and anti-intellectual stance of today\u2019s GOP by quoting Republican Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, wherein he stated that the Republican Party is quickly becoming the \u201canti-science party.\u201d Most people haven\u2019t heard of Huntsman, Republican pariah-in-residence. And even if they do, they probably won\u2019t listen to him. Why? Because he\u2019s reasonable, and there is simply no room for that trait in the Tea Party movement\u2019s hellish and destructive crusade within the GOP.<\/p>\n

As the Tea Party has gained momentum, reason has evaporated into the ether and has been replaced with polarizing rhetoric often with a religious flair. We\u2019ve seen this with Sarah Palin\u2019s spurious \u201cdeath panel\u201d remarks during the debate over Obamacare, Rick Perry\u2019s prayer-based solution to a Texas drought, and Michele Bachmann\u2019s more recent claims that<\/a>, no matter how much she tries to palliate them with shrill and off-putting laughter, God has had a substantial role in the recent earthquakes as well as Hurricane Irene. Digging a bit deeper, former President George W. Bush, the Connecticut-coddled kid with a specious Texan drawl, kindled the polarization flame again with his famous 2001 appeal to the US Congress where he stated, \u201ceither you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.\u201d And then with the nightmare that was the debt ceiling \u201ctalks,\u201d we\u2019ve witnessed a party willing to drive its country into the dirt over something more powerful than reason: their beliefs.<\/p>\n

In this unfortunate political arena, reason — the pesky little tool that separates us from flea-picking baboons — has no place. What we see unfurling now in the Republican Party and in the remarks of its primary presidential frontrunners is not the result of reason, but rather Christian fundamentalists who pit their God against science and research in a fight they are determined to win. And that, like Krugman said, is terrifying. But it is also something that, for better or worse, is not new in the American story; it is part of our tradition.<\/p>\n

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When wondering how something in the United States got to be so screwy, it often helps to think back to our beginnings with those nettlesome Puritans. Fleeing England due to religious persecution, they set sail to the future U.S. of A., taking their austere garb and convictions along for the ride. Recoiling at the thought of anything remotely royal (and naturally so given their sordid history with the British crown), they were suspicious of those with authority, and by extension, intellect. For instance, in Puritan John Cotton\u2019s \u201cThe Pouring Out of the Seven Vials,\u201d Cotton claimed that \u201cthe more learned and witty you [be], the more fit to act for Satan you will [be].\u201d Surprisingly, not all Puritans felt this way, and oddly enough some of those dissenters went on to found prestigious academic institutions like Harvard and Yale, both of which would produce future highbrow heathens like Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n

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In the Puritan quest for that \u201cbeacon on a hill,\u201d a canonical concept whose biblical roots have been echoed in political stump speeches for centuries, the implementation of their dogma\u2014secular governors accountable to God, women being born with more original sin than men, and the divine duty to punish wrongdoers\u2014caused the climate of this \u201cideal\u201d society to be rife with not only cod and barley but also intolerance, largely based upon apocryphal cries of bored tweens, as evident with the Salem Witch Trials. Singling out those who didn\u2019t seem to fit the mold of their provincial norms, it didn\u2019t matter if the claims didn\u2019t make a scintilla of sense, or if the source was legitimate. All that mattered was what they believed to be true. Belief, then, not only superseded reason; it was its enemy. And that antagonistic relationship haunts us to this day.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward a couple centuries. The United States defeated that evil British Empire, and we were able bodied. We were one nation under God, and we had the one-two punch to prove it. We were a plucky people whose knowledge was more empirical than theoretical. Who needed philosophy books when you had hands and a heart in the \u201cright place,\u201d anyway? When writing about Indiana, for instance, Reverend Baynard Hall scribed that \u201cwe always preferred an ignorant bad man to a talented one [\u2026] and attempts were usually made to ruin the [\u2026] smarter one; since smartness and wickedness were [\u2026] generally coupled.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so, in a typically nonsensical American way, we elected incompetent and wicked jingoes like Andrew Jackson that are remembered largely for their abuse of power and attempts to rid the country of an entire race of people. And why did we do that? We liked their humble, log cabin beginnings. We liked that they seemed like \u201cus.\u201d And so we continued to spread our divine \u201cdestiny,\u201d oppress and enslave in the name of God, and ignore the increasingly conventional wisdom in half of the country that the other half was wrong, plain and simple. And largely because the South\u2019s inability or unwillingness to acknowledge truths other than their own, the United States imploded and went to war.<\/p>\n

Cue the Evangelical Populist Movement. After the Civil War had ended, instead of using reason to reconcile and dig itself out of the rubble, the American South survived on resentment and clung desperately to its archaic beliefs. Manifesting these ill wills in the KKK and Jim Crow laws, this entrenchment only compounded the economic and educational disparities that still make Southerners so angry today. And make no mistake, some GOP leaders know that and capitalize on it.<\/p>\n

Now, take a look at the current scene. Not too much has changed, at least with popular faces of the GOP. Michele Bachmann is an Evangelist who interprets the law under a biblical lens, doesn\u2019t seem to care much for history or facts (just ask her about Lexington and Concord), hides from and campaigns against the increasingly empowered and represented homosexual population, and claims that God caused recent national disasters as well as her decision to run for President. And to this I say, if God does exist, he certainly is a malicious one. Hearkening back to our Puritanical roots (oh, how I\u2019d love to see her in a bonnet and collar), Bachmann has also suggested in interviews that a committee inquire into the lives of politicians to determine if they are pro- or anti-American. One might wonder what being pro-American even means. But don\u2019t worry about meaning. After all, Michele doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

You also have Rick Perry, Eddie Bauer model with a Texas twang, who calls evolution \u201cjust a theory\u201d with \u201ca lot of gaps,\u201d despite, as Krugman states, nearly all of the scientific world\u2019s consensus to its veracity. He\u2019s also added that global warming is just a scheme so scientists can get more money \u201crolling into their projects.\u201d Projects which, given how damning his diatribe is, must be atheistic in nature and therefore God hating. Perry has also been surrounded by a bevy of reason-free radicals in some of his speaking events, these zealots hailing from the neo-Pentecostal sect known as the New Apostolic Reformation. A group that, according to Texas Observer reporter Forrest Wilder, seeks to \u201cinfiltrate politics with government\u201d and believes Christians are \u201cdestined to have dominion over the government and the \u2018Seven Mountains,\u2019\u201d which \u201c[include] media, arts, and entertainment.\u201d And to think we\u2019re afraid of Sharia Law.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Mitt Romney, innocuous Mormon male who seems to be in the throes of a perpetual identity crisis, evidenced by the video below from June of this year:<\/p>\n