Now that the triumph of Barak Obama at the polls is a little more than a week behind us, I have sufficiently come down from the adrenaline high of the election to think clearly about what this could mean for the United States and the world. Consider that my state of mind is not just swimming in the mellow euphoria of being on the winning side, but is tempered by knowing that the avatars of intellectual chaos that make up the Bush Administration are still in power and still have plenty of opportunities to inflict considerable damage on our nation.
 Benjamin Franklin; Founding Father, world-class scientist, revolutionary, and intellectual troublemaker. |
Let’s face it; even at the best of times the American people do not really value intellect and intelligence and facts. There are plenty of other countries that do better than we do at such things. We do get it right often enough that in spite of our long and persistent tradition of anti-intellectualism, know-nothingism, surplus fear, fundamentalism of all stripes, and mindless authoritarianism, American retain a core of ingenuity and fearless intellectual inquiry. I think we have Benjamin Franklin to thank for some of this; as the preeminent scientist of his age, he and others like him among the Founding Fathers did what they could to make sure that the new republic would be safe for the thinker who chose to do so in the midst of pressures to conform to what non-thinkers where thinking.
It is easy to say that Bush and his inner circle are the problem, but that would be premature. They are simply the outward manifestation of a larger, deeper problem. They have exacerbated this problem, it is true. They have deliberately and systematically tried to re-cast American government to incorporate the unthinking, ignorant ideologue at the expense of the scholar, the honest researcher, the scientist. They have suceeded to the point where someone who does not even know that Africa is a continent can not only be a state governor, but be seriously considered as Vice President of the United States.
Like many others who prize reason and fact over rhetoric and authoritarianism, I am hopeful that a self-made constitutional scholar, Senator, and now President-Elect can begin the long, hard task of purging the sands of ignorance and ideology from the machinery of government. This task has been begun to a large degree by citizen journalists, scientists, independent scholars, and activists. They have shown that when the means are available (the Internet, in this case), facts can carry weight. Even a well-funded propaganda campaign will start to unravel if the facts are published loudly and long enough. Printer and author Franklin would have approved.
Blind ideology and blunt authoritarianism are clearly the greatest threats to sane, responsible government. The next generation’s task will be to undo what the proponents of abusive government have constructed and contain its proponents until their intellectual pathology can burn itself out.
In the summer of 1873, naturalist and early evolution advocate Thomas Huxley wrote a remarkable letter to his wife in which he reflected on his future career. Among other things, he made the following observation:
| We are in the midst of a gigantic movement greater that which preceded and produced the Reformation and really only a continuation of that movement. But there is nothing new in the ideas which lie at the bottom of the movement, nor is any reconcilement possible between free thought and traditional authority. One or the other will have to succumb after a struggle of unknown duration, which will have as side issues vast political and social troubles. I have no more doubt that free thought will win in the long run than I have that I sit here writing to you, or that this free thought will organise itself into a coherent system, embracing human life and the world as one harmonious whole. But this organisation will be the work of generations of men, and those who further it most will be those who teach men to rest in no lie, and to rest in no verbal delusions. I may be able to help a little in this direction–perhaps I may have helped already.1 |
History has continued to bear out Huxley’s observation; seen over the long term, traditional authority does not endure, although it tries to assert itself in many ways, even by means of violence. This does not absolve those citizens of the Real World from the obligation for vigilance, nor from the need to counter and resist those who would undo the freedoms of mind and heart with the time-worn tools of ignorance and fear. Time is on our side, the moreso if we are willing to expand this pocket of sanity that will form in the White House this coming January.
1Life and Letters of Huxley, vol. I, pp. 427-428, as cited in Apes, Angels, & Victorians. The STory of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution, 2nd edition by William Irvine, (New York: Time Incorporated), 1955, p. 342.