Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had another great showing of his presidential mettle recently in London, but in the final moments—like his Packers choking in Seattle—the question came up: “Are you comfortable with the idea of evolution? Do you accept it?” Walker had inches to go for a first down and victory formation, but decided, “I’m going to punt on that one.” With that answer, a new meme has given life to Democrats, who have every reason to be terrified of Walker.
Walker is a popular governor in a blue state, having won election three times in four years. He has the executive experience. He has street cred with economic and social conservatives. Like Urban Meyer, he’s one of those people that just doesn’t lose. He “gets it” as far as being a politician goes: knows what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. No foot-in-mouth disease. His “tone” is moderate while his actions are solidly conservative, and he can also fire up an audience. His arrow is pointing up, and he’s only going to become more popular in Republican circles.
I actually was in college at Marquette University during the years Walker was there. He was a junior and I was a freshman when I interviewed him as a reporter for the Marquette Tribune. Through the fogs of memory—it was 1988—three things stick out. He had a very relaxed style, very comfortable in his skin. He is solidly pro-life (I was interviewing him because he was the head of some pro-life group on campus). His faith is tremendously important to him.
The Misshapen ‘Science’ Bludgeon
Where there is faith, the Left smells blood. So they’re going after his views on evolution. Quite frankly, I’m getting kind of sick of this attack. Not just because it’s offensive to a sizeable chunk of the American population, or because it reflects an incredibly unsophisticated understanding of the place science has in the broader spectrum of thought, but also because science as used by liberals has become something akin to a hypnotic “power word,” a word whose real purpose is to get the critical thinking parts of our brain to curl up in a fetal position while we accept a broad range of “scientifically correct” policies.
For instance, Jamelle Bouie from Slate suggests Walker’s disbelief in evolution could be a “proxy issue” for how he’ll govern on things like disease control, global warming, the ecosystem, education policy, school standards, and carbon emissions.
Huh? If you believe in evolution you’ll curb carbon emissions?
Of course, that science supports any policy in the first place is galactically stupid (to set the mood for the movie I’m about to invoke). Science is descriptive, not prescriptive. It can tell us a meteor is heading to earth. It can’t tell us to get out of the way. Quite obviously, species survive, but it takes an act of legerdemain to insist science shows us how we as homo sapiens are intended to survive, to say nothing of the wild coincidence that how somehow always ends up corresponding exactly with the left-wing agenda. Huh, funny that.
If You Enjoy Meaninglessness, Go for It
If anything, science shows us that nature does whatever the hell it wants and we as homo sapiens tend to follow suit. In the vastness and incomprehensibility of the universe (or is it an infinitely multiplying multiverse? Oh well, details, details) with all its black matter, worm holes, and improbabilities, surely atheist Christopher Hitchens had it right when, as he was dying of cancer, he said, “To the dumb question ‘Why me?’ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: ‘Why not?’”
If that’s your cup of tea, go ahead. Sip it with languid melancholy as you chuckle at the doofuses who dare to believe they are something more than random atoms hitting the universe’s winning lottery ticket (which happens to be roughly a kajillion Powerball balls lining up perfectly, but we digress).
It’s great to cast smart-sounding profundities to your atheist sycophants. Meanwhile, ISIS steals three-year-old Christian and Yazidi girls from their mothers’ laps and, if they’re pretty enough, gives them to ISIS men for marriage, or if not, buries them alive or sells them into slavery. To hear the cosmos say, “Eh, Why not? Kensington, pass the cream, please” isn’t good enough, at least for the likes of Walker and people like him. Cosmic silence is, shall we say, a bit directionless, which might explain why liberal foreign policy in fact is just that, directionless. That’s what happens when you build your ethics on legerdemain.
Scott Walker Should Have Channeled Colonel Jessup
Walker should have answered with a paraphrase of Colonel Nathan Jessup, the Jack Nicholson character from “A Few Good Men” (1992). He should have said to that reporter, “You want the truth on my creationist views? You can’t handle the truth!
“Son, we live in a world that has walls. In the frontier lands that is the human psyche, we built the fort of civilization precariously near the wilderness of nihilism that ever threatens to encroach upon our cultivated abodes. This is a wilderness with beasts, monsters, and savages who want nothing more than to destroy the spiritual and intellectual basis of civilization. That’s why we have walls, walls protecting the truth upon which the West is built. It’s why the West has stood out as the font of humanitarianism for the rest of the world.
“And those walls have to be guarded by men with a steadfast faith in a transcendent God who has given us those truths. Who’s gonna do it? You, Brian Williams? You, Jon Stewart? We have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You curse the Christians. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know, that holding steadfast to the truth of human dignity—man created in the image of God, God’s redemption and restoration of that man to his image through his own involvement in our world—is the reason the West with its Christian roots has stood for something unique in all the world.
“And our existence, while intellectually grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives, bringing dignity to women, ending slavery, standing for the rights even of prisoners, for rules of engagement and law of war.
“You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you know you live off the residual fumes of our Christian past, that your ethics is built on a house of cards, a Christian ethic abstracted from Christian forms. That’s why you want us on that wall, you need us on that wall.
“We use words like truth, natural law, virtue. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending what is good and most redemptive in human nature. You use them as a punchline.
“We have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to people who rise and sleep under the blanket of the very protections a Christian intellectual framework provides, then questions why we hold it. We would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up some first principles with a modicum of consistency not based in legerdemain, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think of my creationist views.”
Of course, Walker’s moderate tone would preclude going total Jessup on the media. But he should know, next time, that he’s a power running back, and he should go for the first down.
