[greenyes] Shortsighted

["Peter Anderson" <anderson@no.address>]

    One of my fondest memories in my political development in 1960 was 
watching Spencer Tracey in the movie Inherit the Wind slay the forces of 
darkeness in that Dayton courtroom, with the Darrow and Mencken characters 
verbally slicing and dicing ignorant fundamentalism.

    Little did I realize then that our act of showing progressive 
superiority was to eventually cut our own throat, when just about 50 years 
later Roe v. Wade brought evangelical America out of their churches and into 
the political arena on the side of the right wing, which was antithetical to 
all those progressive values the populist movement they once belonged to, 
had championed.

    I don't often agree with the American Enterprise Institute (below), but, 
in this case, he is exactly right.

    I, and so many others who thought we were so smart, did something 
incredibly stupid and self destructive of our deeper values all those long 
years ago.

    May we learn from those mistakes and start rebuilding a majority 
movement today.

                                                                             
Peter


WALL STREET JOURNAL - August 5, 2005

HOUSES OF WORSHIP

When the Lines Were Drawn
By CHRISTOPHER LEVENICK

Eighty years ago last month, at the trial of John Scopes, the first shots of 
the culture war were fired. Scopes's crime? Teaching his high-school biology 
class a lesson that was thought to deny the biblical account of human 
origins, in violation of Tennessee's new Anti-Evolution Act.

To nobody's surprise, Scopes was found guilty -- he had clearly broken the 
law -- but the verdict did little to resolve the difficulties over teaching 
evolution in public schools. This year alone, 13 states have introduced 
legislation that would require schoolteachers to take a more critical 
approach toward evolutionary theory.

If the issues at stake in the Scopes trial seem familiar, so too should the 
way they unfolded. As in any good culture-war campaign, much of the 
controversy was staged. The law that Scopes broke was a symbolic measure, 
signed by a governor who thought it would never be enforced. Indeed, its 
leading advocate thought it should have no penalty provision. Scopes himself 
was no martyr for the cause of science: Local businessmen had asked him to 
stand for a test case, hoping that the publicity might improve the declining 
fortunes of Dayton, Tenn. As for the trial, it proved principally a chance 
for fundamentalists and the American Civil Liberties Union to duke it out 
before a national audience.
"...
"...
"...
"...
Yet the most profound change of all has occurred in American political 
culture. At the time of the trial, the nascent progressive movement drew 
much of its strength from the perfectionist impulses of evangelical 
Protestantism. That alliance began to dissolve at the trial, when two lions 
of the American left turned on one another.

Leading Scopes's defense was Clarence Darrow, a champion of progressive 
causes and an outspoken agnostic. Among the prosecutors was William Jennings 
Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a stalwart 
defender of traditional Christianity. The two had long worked together for 
social reform, but in Dayton Darrow treated Bryan with contempt. In the 
trial's climactic scene, Darrow called Bryan to the stand, where he sneered 
at the witness for "insult[ing] every man of science and learning in the 
world because he does not believe in your fool religion."

And so the culture war came. For the first time, coastal elites descended on 
small-town America, calling its citizens stupid and their beliefs backward. 
And though fundamentalism may have looked worse at the time, the longer term 
damage was to progressivism; it was at Dayton that the movement began to 
lose its popular appeal.

Bryan, after all, was to the left of most Democrats today, but his followers 
found that they could not keep company with those who so disdained their 
faith. Nowadays, when liberalism's leading strategists wonder what's the 
matter with Kansas, they could do worse than to look back to Tennessee --  
and to their own caustic dismissive of serious Christians.


Mr. Levenick is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.


FOR FULL ARTICLE: 
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112321404353805934,00.html






Copyright 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and 
use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by 
copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please 
contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.




_________________________
Peter Anderson, President
RECYCLEWORLDS CONSULTING
4513 Vernon Blvd. Suite 15
Madison, WI 53705-4964
Ph: (608) 231-1100
Fax: (608) 233-0011
Cell: (608) 698-1314
eMail: anderson@no.address
web: www.recycleworlds.net

         CONFIDENTIAL
This message, and all attachments thereto,
is covered by the Electronic Communications
Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C., Sections 2510-2521.
This message is CONFIDENTIAL. If you are
not the intended recipient of this message,
then any retention, dissemination, distribution
or copying of this communication is strictly
prohibited. Please notify me if you received
this message in error at anderson@no.address
and then delete it.