Liberals were aghast at President Bush, that pro-life evangelical Christian, for his alleged hostility to science. But Victor Davis Hanson argues that it is the current administration of President Obama and his postmodernist supporters who are showing the greatest hostility, not only to science, but to reason itself:
Barack Obama promised us not only transparency, but also a new respect for science. In soothing tones, he asserted that his administration was “restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making.”
In our new Enlightenment of Ivy League Guardians, we were to return to the rule of reason and logic. Obama would lead us away from the superstitious world of Bush’s evangelical Christianity, “intelligent design,” and Neanderthal moral opposition to human-embryo stem-cell research.
Instead, we are seeing an unprecedented distortion of science — indeed, an attack on the inductive method itself. Facts and reason are trumped by Chicago-style politics, politically correct dogma, and postmodern relativism.
He goes on to show what he means by discussing the government’s handling of the economy, the party line on global warming, and the treatment of radical Muslims such as Maj. Hasan. He concludes:
In short, we are witnessing the rise of a new deductive, anti-scientific age.
Instead of Christian, southern-twanged fundamentalists, we see instead kinder, gentler federal bureaucrats, globetrotting Ph.D.s, liberal hucksters, and politically correct diversity officers.
All are committed to the medieval fallacy that exalted theoretical ends justify very real tawdry means.
The result is the triumph of superstition, and the dethronement of science.
So does this herald what will come after postmodernism? Secularized superstition?
Notice that there isn’t much relativism among the true believers on the left, unless they are trying to undermine objective religions and philosophies. They themselves are very dogmatic about what they believe and about what they expect others to believe.
HT: Bruce Gee
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