They don’t make Republicans like that anymore

Here’s a terrific bit of American history from Glenn Branch. In the February 1916 issue of National Geographic, the author of Life Histories of African Game Animals wrote about the evolution of “the primates” and of “the monkeys and anthropoid apes and finally the half-human predecessors of man himself.”

This raised the ire of creationist preacher Theodore Graebner of the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, who fired off a letter to the writer of that National Geographic article asking him to clarify this discussion.

The writer wrote back to Graebner:

MY DEAR SIR:—

That sentence seems to me to be clear. At any rate, what I meant was that one of the original mammalian lines was that of the Primates, which originally consisted of low lemuroid forms. From the original stem the monkeys broke off at some date when the anthropoid apes and the predecessors of man were still part of the same stem. Then this second stem divided, the anthropoid apes splitting from the branch which led to the half-human predecessors of man. In other words, I regard these half-human predecessors of man as descendants not from the anthropoid apes, but both as descended from remote ancestors, who had split off from the monkeys; all, of course, tracking back to the early Primates. Of course, the order of Primates includes all of them alike. If you turn to Professor [Henry Fairfield] Osborn’s book, you will see the matter gone over in some detail.

Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Yes, that Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of these United States. A Republican.

Consider for a moment how unthinkable it would be, today, for any Republican politician of national stature to write an article for National Geographic reaffirming the scientific truth of evolution. Imagine what would happen to such a person’s political future within the party. Imagine the uproar from the angry white Christian base of the GOP if a Republican running for president in 2016 were to write a letter to a clergyman that said anything like what Teddy Roosevelt’s letter above said.

But then, of course, Teddy Roosevelt’s acknowledgement of scientific truth is only one of dozens of reasons that he would be utterly unacceptable as a candidate in today’s Republican Party.

The Rev. Theodore Graebner, however, could probably do very well in Republican politics these days.

What a difference a century makes.