November 9, 2012

"Charles Darwin earned almost 4,000 write-in votes..."

"... against a Georgia congressman who denounced evolution and other scientific theories as 'lies straight from the pit of hell.'"

Bad science everywhere. The science freaks vote for a dead man. They get their minds around evolution, but not death. Darwin's dead. Also, he was never an inhabitant of Georgia or even a citizen of the United States. Can you criticize ignorance with ignorance? If 2 wrongs don't make a right, do 2 stupids make a smart?

When I voted on Tuesday, confronting many candidates running unopposed, I thought about writing a name in the write-in spot for a small fraction of a second, but I'd never make a joke out of my ballot.

I did make a joke to someone with in line, and then I felt bad about it. I was in the A-L line and Meade had to go to the M-Z line. The man ahead of me said something about alphabetical order, and I said "Just don't vote based on alphabetical order," and then I fretted that he might have interpreted my remark as a nonjoke, an imprecation to vote for Obama over Romney/Baldwin over Thompson, which would violate the posted rule against political discussions in the polling place.

40 comments:

AF said...

"The science freaks vote for a dead man. They get their minds around evolution, but not death. Darwin's dead. Also, he was never an inhabitant of Georgia or even a citizen of the United States. Can you criticize ignorance with ignorance? If 2 wrongs don't make a right, do 2 stupids make a smart?"

Are you suggesting that people who wrote in Darwin were ignorant of the fact that he is dead?

Two stupids don't make a smart indeed.

Synova said...

How could the guy be running unopposed?

But whatever... appealing to emotion works.

Because Math is hard... and doesn't love you.

Synova said...

But yanking the emotional chains of people is a good way to get elected. If it's evangelicals who feel besieged or if it's making people believe their lady parts are under attack...

It's all the same shit, and it works.

Automatic_Wing said...

They meant to vote for Darwin Charles, backup point guard for the Atlanta Hawks.

test said...

It's be more interesting if there was a link to Reps full comments. Most of the time the "anti science" targets are criticizing one small element of evolution or someone who claims evolution proves god doesn't exist. I'm not going to mock him unless I can verify what he said.

SteveR said...

Voting alphabetically demonstrates at least an early elementary school level of intelligence, unlike, for instance, voting based on the idea that rich people being taxed can pay off the debt.

Alexander said...

Good ol' Athens. Votes a dead biologist for Congress, goes absolutely apeshit at the proposal to have it house the NBAF.

Science - it matters when politics says it should.

bagoh20 said...

So what happens if a joke candidate wins? And how do you prove someone is not a joke candidate?

Mister Darwin? Is Mister Darwin here? Does anyone have Mister Darwin's cell number?

Anonymous said...

Bad science is only punished if a republican or Christian is responsible for it. If you are a tyrannical technocratic leftist you can write books justfying forced abortions and other forms of manipulative population control, advocate changing cultural and religious institutions to push your agenda, slap a label of science on it, then get the job of science czar under Obama.

test said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
LordSomber said...

A buddy of mine wanted to run against Broun as a write-in candidate with the slogan, "Science!"

Here in the 10th district people vote in the extremes on either end, but rarely from some common sense perspective. Athens is similar to Madison, but honestly, most people here are apolitical. It's either about football or the music scene.

Oddly, before the 2008 primaries, the most signs one would see were either for Hillary or Ron Paul.

We're a blue-ish town in a red state, but we still have a libertarian streak.

edutcher said...

Most Lefties couldn't talk intelligently about evolution to save their lives, but they're soooo superior intellectually because they "believe" in it.

You can believe a theory is correct, but you don't believe in it.

Michael K said...

I thought the story was kind of funny. If the guy is running unopposed it isn't really throwing away your vote. If I had a similar situation with a radical enviro pushing global warming, I might think of writing in Bjorn Lomborg.

Anonymous said...

Talk about a war on science and a war on women. Forced fucking abortions, John Holdren made the case for forced fucking abortions. The sluts who bought into the war on women meme are dumber than a box of rocks. What could be more anti- women than forced abortions and coercive population control?

YoungHegelian said...

Science, like theology, is an occupation best done elsewhere than in political soundbites.

Anonymous said...

Chinese women who have suffered under such tyranny must think American women are idiots. Don't take away my right to kill my unborn child, but I am cool with the guy who wants to force abortions and shove birth control pills down every last women's throat. God fucking help us. We are officially an idiocracy.

edutcher said...

Rustling Leaves said...

Talk about a war on science and a war on women. Forced fucking abortions, John Holdren made the case for forced fucking abortions. The sluts who bought into the war on women meme are dumber than a box of rocks. What could be more anti- women than forced abortions and coercive population control?

Why do you think people like William Ayers have working so hard to dumb down public education the last 40 years?

ricpic said...

Religion is a bulwark against the nihilism at the end of the road the science has all the answers secularists take us down.

Anonymous said...

We now live in a utopia where you fuck all day long and kill all the pesky babies you want, but god damn if you want to have a baby and choose which fucking lightbulb to use.

Renee said...

My children are learning about traits and adaptations in science, the start around 4th grade here at a Catholic school. They were discussing the different adaptations/traits that help in reproduction of the species in different types of animals.

I asked them what are the adaptive traits humans have, that allow reproduction.

Silence....

Quite interesting to have a child talk about eggs/fertilization and DNA, from a mother and a father and yet have little idea how his own species reproduces.

Yes, I've sheltered them. No cable. They'll figure it out by the end of fifth grade.

Known Unknown said...

In related news, Jesse Jackson, Jr. was re-elected with an overwhelming % of the vote.

Unfortunately, he conceded to himself.

Bob said...

Progressives got us direct election of Senators by arguing on inherent intelligence of voters. Making same aurgument for eliminating Electoral College. This tidbit supports that argument how?

Anonymous said...

The anti-science left is worse than the anti-science right because they think they are smart because they sit next to the smart kid in class. I'm with the smart kid, so "science", yeah. I love how they boil down a diverse set of complex disiplines to "science". It's like saying we need to find a cure for "cancer". It's more complicated than that.

Smilin' Jack said...

...I'd never make a joke out of my ballot.

Huh? A "Georgia congressman who denounced evolution and other scientific theories as “lies straight from the pit of hell.”" was running unopposed. That ballot was already a joke. Why not have a few laughs with it?

Chuck said...

If a white member of Congress says or does something crazy, it's news; "the funny/weird/quirky story of the day." Charles Darwin, write-in candidate. 4,000 yuppies with "Evolution" amphibian bumper stickers, organizing on Twitter.

If a black member of Congress from Detoit or Los Angeles or Houston says or does something crazy, it's buried.

Exhibit A: Ongoing news about Jesse Jackson Jr. Winning a congression race from a room at the Mayo Clinic.

$9,000,000,000 Write Off said...

Plus Darwin was wrong. Genes are selected, not species. So they voted anti-science, too.

dc said...

I have a BS in chemistry and I think the theory of evolution is bs.It has more holes in it than a slice of swiss cheese.I do find it amusing when people with non science degrees accuse me of being antiscience....or in this case a law prof stating that people like me are ignorant.

n.n said...

They fail to distinguish between science and philosophy (or religion). In their effort to marginalize competing interests, they have expanded the boundaries of science to merge with the latter, and in the process have served to corrupt the only objective methodology available to analyze and exploit the physical world.

Science is necessarily constrained to a limited frame of reference. Evolution as a description of origin is a religion or, more charitably, a philosophy. While evolutionary principles can be observed, tested, and reproduced with varying degrees of success.

It's interesting to note that the most ardent supporters of Darwin's revisiting of evolution are also the most fervent and even fanatical supporters of behaviors (e.g. pro-choice, homosexuality) which constitute evolutionary dysfunction.

coketown said...

The MO of the New Atheists has been to out-stupid the people they're allegedly superior to.

Like the guy who wore a pasta strainer on his head for his drivers license photo, claiming a religious exemption.

No, you can't criticize ignorance with ignorance. You just end up making the other side look slighter more appealing.

Caroline said...

Why be sensible? Politics is not sensible. Everything has become politicized; and when it comes to politics, the rationale is represented in blog comment threads, where opposing sides talk past each other, never willing to concede a point, never looking for common ground: Hurray for our side, because the other side are haters, and I hate haters. Where's the sense in that?

People want to follow who is cool, who can be the snarkiest, who "understands them" best. (Oh yeah, they understand you alright-- but not in the way you think.) No one wants to listen to someone making sense. Stop making sense.

Anonymous said...

behaviors (e.g. pro-choice, homosexuality) which constitute evolutionary dysfunction.

This isn't even true. Many animals will kill or even eat their young. (or the young of a competing male), which I assume you think is worse than abortion.

As for homosexuality, why would a recessive trait that affects the reproductive capability of a small minority of the population be evidence of "evolutionary dysfunction".

myq said...

I voted for Darwin and stand by the vote--as AF suggests, yes, I am aware that he is both dead and ineligible to serve. Broun is an embarrassment to northeast Georgia and has been for several years. Of course I didn't think Darwin would win, but even if I felt constrained by the categorical imperative or something to vote as though my vote was going to be decisive (which I don't) I would still prefer to be represented in Congress by an empty chair than by Broun (though I acknowledge that I did not research what actually would have happened if Darwin had gotten the most votes).

As the organizers of the Darwin for Congress campaign made clear, the main goals of the campaign were not to defeat Broun, but rather to express symbolic opposition to Broun's service on the House Science Committee, and in the longer term to show that a hypothetical challenger to Broun in 2014 would have a base of support. My vote was an entirely non-joking expression of support for both of these goals.

Revenant said...

We had a victory for science-based voting here in California: the proposition demanding that genetically modified foods be labeled got voted down.

Gabriel Hanna said...

The good Congressman denounces evolution as "lies from the pit of hell", his very words, and it is the Charles Darwin voters who are called "anti-science" by the good folks here at Althouse.

This is why it is the "ladyparts" accusations stick. It is because some conservatives have chosen to live up to the caricature that progressives have drawn of them.

Synova said...

No, Gabriel. I suppose it's possible that someone specifically said that the Charles Darwin voters were "anti-science" but I missed it.

As for me, my claim was that this guy denouncing evolution is the equivalent to the "emotion" voters on the left, the very *same* people that think that "lady parts" is a rational argument.

It's not.

The "ladyparts" arguments stick for the same reason this guy got elected again... because appeal to emotion works and voters are not rational.

Nothing I do or say, and nothing anyone else does or says, will make "ladyparts" a rational argument to a rational person.

Gabriel Hanna said...

@Synova: 10:26 am, 11:33 am, 11:58 am.

Nothing I do or say, and nothing anyone else does or says, will make "ladyparts" a rational argument to a rational person.

I agree 100%, and was never saying otherwise. But this stuff other posters here are saying about evolution is exactly the sort of thing progressives assume conservatives say. And this is why "labyparts", though not rational, is plausible.

Astro said...

This reminds me of the YouTube video of the woman dressed as a 'vagina' urging people to vote for Obama.
...Except she wasn't dressed as a vagina as she claimed at the start of the video, she was dressed as a vulva.

test said...

Gabriel Hanna said...
But this stuff other posters here are saying about evolution is exactly the sort of thing progressives assume conservatives say


I'm curious which comments you mean. Virtually all by conservatives seem to dispute the anti-science characterization of conservatism rather than evolution itself. The two I found that question it at all only say that there are "holes" and seem to be pointing at how critics assume a more complete theory than is the case.

Gabriel Hanna said...

@Marshall:The two I found that question it at all only say that there are "holes" and seem to be pointing at how critics assume a more complete theory than is the case.

What you have said is not an accurate characterization, you've conveniently left out such statements as "total BS". Even if I accepted the two halves of your characterization, the first half ("holes") is false, the second half ("critics") is a caricature of some people. Both are rooted in ignorance of evolution and hostility to it.

Which many Althouse commenters have repeatedly demonstrated here over a period of years, and not just in this one thread.

DEEBEE said...

IMO these had to be younger voters for whom Jon Stewart is god of the politics of the sardonic.