JONATHAN CHAIT AUGUST 23, 2011
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National Review's Kevin Williamson argues that nobody should care what Rick Perry or any other elected official thinks about science:
Why would anybody ask a politician about his views on a scientific question? Nobody ever asks what Sarah Palin thinks about dark matter, or what John Boehner thinks about quantum entanglement. (For that matter, I’ve never heard Keith Ellison pressed for his views on evolution.) There are lots of good reasons not to wonder what Rick Perry thinks about scientific questions, foremost amongst them that there are probably fewer than 10,000 people in the United States whose views on disputed questions regarding evolution are worth consulting, and they are not politicians; they are scientists. In reality, of course, the progressive types who want to know politicians’ views on evolution are not asking a scientific question; they are asking a religious and political question, demanding a profession of faith in a particular materialist-secularist worldview.
Progressives like to cloak their policy preferences in the mantle of science, but they do not in fact give a fig about science, which for them is only a vehicle to be ridden to the precise extent that it is convenient. This is why they will ask what makes Rick Perry qualified to disagree with the scientific establishment, but never ask the equally relevant question of what makes Jon Huntsman qualified to agree with it. So long as they are getting the policies they want, they don’t care.
This actually gets at a profound split between American conservatives and their political opponents. Liberals (and, I'd argue, moderates, but I'll just use the term "liberals" for syntactic clarity) care that a politician believes in climate change and evolution because they believe that elected officials should accept science. Williamson argues that this is because liberals require "a profession of faith in a particular materialist-secularist worldview."
In a sense, that's correct. Conservatives harbor strong philosophical opposition to government. They have practical objections to government as well, but the practical objections are merely layered upon deeper moral beliefs. Conservatives argued that the Clinton tax hikes would impair economic growth, and that the Bush tax cuts would increase growth. Subsequent events made those empirical views very hard to sustain, but conservatives did not even slightly alter their viewpoint. Why? Because their belief in low taxes is, at its core, a belief in the philosophy of small government.
If the Clinton tax hikes actually did massively impair work incentives, cause a recession and reduce tax revenue, liberals would revisit their support for it, because they had no reason to support it save the practical goal of raising revenue at minimal social harm. But the failure of the Bush tax cuts to achieve their purported goal is not a reason for most conservatives to renounce them. They serve a deeper ideological goal.
That does not mean liberalism is right. It just means, as Williamson says, that liberals are naturally more concerned with a belief in science. They want leaders will accept the scientific method and are amenable to data. Conservatives want leaders who are loyal to their philosophy. That's why Perry's stated opposition to evolution and climate science does not hurt him among Republicans, except insofar as they fear it might harm him among swing voters.
Perry's staunch climate skepticism is a way of demonstrating a strong commitment to any reform to mitigate climate change. Williamson argues that the "real" debate is whether "the policies being pushed by Al Gore et al. are wise and intelligent." Well, that is one debate. Another debate is whether we should pursue a different set of policies to fight climate change. It's true, as Williamson argues, that one could accept climate science and argue that doing anything to stem climate change is simply too expensive. Yet this position clearly represents a weaker commitment to the values of the conservative movement than full-out climate science denial. One could argue that the costs of climate change are X and the costs of mitigating climate change are Y. But that's a view that implies that if X rises, or Y falls, perhaps we should consider a different answer. Perry is convincingly demonstrating to the right that he will never make that kind of calculation because he denies the entire empirical basis of climate science.
Likewise, Perry's evolution skepticism signals a strong commitment to conservative values over the conclusions of data and experts. On a deeper level, he is demonstrating social solidarity with conservatives against the intellectual elites they resent. He probably won't have to make a presidential decision on teaching evolution, but his answers to questions about it tell you a great deal about how he would govern.
12 comments
I think you are generally spot on in this post (and in your other posts on this theme). One quibble: it's not that "liberals" are empiricists and conservatives are not; it's that the political argument in the US is between right-wing ideologues and the empiricists who are positioned in opposition to the right-wing ideologues. There are certainly left-wing ideologues on the periphery of the US political conversation (Michael Moore, Naomi Klein (well, she's Canadian, but still on the periphery of the US political debate), Noam Chomsky) and that participate in or dominate the conversation in other countries. Likewise, there are empiricists who are positioned in opposition to left-wing ideologues. The editors of the Economist are probably the premier example. Like-minded thinkers in the US (David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan) are somewhat at sea in the US because there really isn't a left-wing ideology to be opposed, and, for that reason, they either adopt (with some caveats) the banner of the "liberals" (Sullivan) or come off as perpetually conflicted and incoherent (Brooks). How great it would be if the political conversation could be between social democratic-leaning empiricists and free market-leaning empiricists, with the Perrys and Bachmanns as equally marginalized as the Chomskys and Moores. For that matter, I think there is even room in the conversation for traditionalist empiricists, which is actually probably a better description of Sullivan and Brooks than free market empiricist (such as Milton Freedman and the Economist)--but that's a longer comment.
- bradigan
August 23, 2011 at 11:23am
I disagree that a politician's views on science do not matter. Bill Clinton said of Al Gore at the Democrat convention preceding Mr. Gore's running for President something to the effect that "when a scientific discovery is made, Al Gore can tell you who will be helped by it." When George Bush was confronted with stem cell research, he went to work on thwarting scientific efforts for those who would be helped by it. Gore saw the potential in the military's use of a predecessor of the internet and he acted on that to our delight. Bush gave us 8 bad years. Science matters.
- Nusholtz
August 23, 2011 at 11:26am
To me, accepting the scientific method and the consensus view of scientists is not a political matter, but is simply a question of whether or not a leader accepts the world for what it is. This is why the evolution and climate denial is a non-starter. I will never vote for a candidate that denies either of those. Except of course if they did so with good science behind them. But if that were the case, we'd be giving them Nobel Prizes and they likely wouldn't be running for President.
- ChrisEB
August 23, 2011 at 11:32am
Perfect example of this: the video of Perry being questioned about abstinence-only education in the schools. Measuring the policy empirically didn't even occur to him, because he is commitment to the idea regardless of effectiveness in actually preventing teen pregnancy.
- nr124831
August 23, 2011 at 11:47am
This should be called "Chait's empirical maxim", "Chait's empirical law", or some such since it's now widely held to be his, and it would cut down on repetitive explanations of the maxim.
- rayward
August 23, 2011 at 11:47am
The QED of the entire argument is the Huntsman candidacy: you have an individual who, while 'conservative,' has a history of comparatively moderate views and policy decisions. He's the lone moderate in the room - and no one is giving him serious consideration.
- Andy_Smith
August 23, 2011 at 12:36pm
nr124831: "Perfect example of this: the video of Perry being questioned about abstinence-only education in the schools." Seems like the video is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngiJhmoFKkw. It is (or at least should be) an embarrassment. That's the exact issue I though of even before reading the comments. I believe federal law requires the use of "research-based" literacy programs for grades K-3. And yet Congress reauthorized funding for abstinence-only sex ed despite studies showing that it was not effective. So what's the message: that when reality conflicts with our ideology, we'll reject reality? Actually, I think that explains a lot of conservative economic policy these days....
- dsimon
August 23, 2011 at 12:53pm
Of course, Williamson would never write something like "People continually question X's qualifications for challenging the fact that the D-Day invasion took place in Normandy in 1944 but nobody seems to want to ask what are Y's qualifications for accepting it." Part of our existence involves accepting things such as the planet Saturn, the chemical structure of water, or the historical existence of a battle at Gettysburg, none of which we can have proven individually for ourselves. We don't know in an absolute sense that Milton's Paradise Lost wasn't written a few years ago and has been at the core of an elaborate hoax.
- ironyroad
August 23, 2011 at 1:05pm
To further my thought, I would LOVE to see the science equivalent of the CBO that would "score" policies on how much they adhere to known science. Every time, Congress submits a bill we'd here about the CSO score (Congressional Science Office).
- ChrisEB
August 23, 2011 at 1:42pm
@ dsimon: Thanks for bringing back the link. It was up on the TNR website for a while then went away abruptly. It is worthy of wide dissemination. Funny thing about how right wing preachers, and some politicians close to right wing preachers, such as Perry, are quick to use the "God's wrath" claim, when misfortune befalls those they scorn - e.g., Katrina was the Lord's means of punishing a modern day Sodom, and AIDS a divine punishment for sodomists. But when misfortune befalls their tribe - say, a hellish drought in Texas and Oklahoma, & other parts of the Red State heartland, no such explanations are forthcoming fom the pulpits of the right. (I think that with few exceptions those who believe in man-caused climate change have, by the same token, been admirably restrained in their claims that recent unfortunate weather events are to be directly attributed to the climate change. That's because, for the most part, believers in the climate change theory - folks like me - pretty much understand that any connection between the larger phenomenon and individual, discrete weather events is tenuous at best. It's the kind of restrained, reasoned, conservative approach to cause-and-effect claims that one doesn't see when ideology and religous certitude rule one's thinking.)
- Haole45
August 23, 2011 at 2:00pm
Another good video is Congressman Ed Markey's opposition to a Republican bill attempting to change a scientific finding regarding pollution and global warming. http://blog.reidreport.com/2011/03/video-rep-ed-markeys-epic-super-geeky-gop-takedown-repeal-gravity/. Then again, we do live in a nation where a state once entertained legislation to (incorrectly) define the value of pi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
- dsimon
August 23, 2011 at 3:42pm
What's really wrong with Williamson's quote is "why they will ask what makes Rick Perry qualified to disagree with the scientific establishment, but never ask the equally relevant question of what makes Jon Huntsman qualified to agree with it." This notion of symmetry is patently false. To credibly disagree with scientific consensus, especially in well established areas such as climate science and evolution, requires deep understanding of the field. To credibly agree simply requires an admission that experts who have spent their lives studying a field and building a detailed structure of knowledge based on experimental validation are likely correct.
- pborden
August 23, 2011 at 8:23pm