The Republican Brain (4 page)

1
incorrectly asserting
Conservapedia
, “Abortion Breast Cancer Studies,” accessed September 16, 2011. See
http://conservapedia.com/Abortion_breast_cancer_studies
.

1
contrary to medical consensus
National Cancer Institute, “Abortion, Miscarriage, and Breast Cancer Risk” fact sheet, noting, “having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.” Available online at:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/abortion-miscarriage
.

2
theory of relativity Conservapedia,
“Theory of Relativity,” accessed September 15, 2011.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_relativity
. The page has been edited since the author first accessed it, and may be edited again. Screenshots were saved.

2
a long webpage of “counterexamples” Conservapedia,
“Counterexamples to Relativity,” Accessed September 15, 2011,
http://conservapedia.com/Counterexamples_to_Relativity
.

2
“continues to read the Bible”
Conservapedia
, “Counterexamples to Relativity.”

2
“action-at-a-distance by Jesus”
Conservapedia
, “Counterexamples to Relativity.”

2
GPS devices
. . . PET scans and particle accelerators Chad Orzel,
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog
, New York: Basic Books, 2012.

2
more . . . Bible references were added
As of August 2010, when many blogs were refuting
Conservapedia's
claims about relativity, 24 “counterexamples” were cited. As of September 15, 2011, there were 36.

3
different approach to editing than Wikipedia
Interview with former
Conservapedia
contributor Trent Toulouse, September 24, 2011.

3
“We've got our own way to express knowledge” Conservapedia
video uploaded to YouTube, May 29, 2008, accessed September 15, 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxMYstiV74
. The video is also available via People for the American Way's “Right Wing Watch” at
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/conservative-way-knowing
.

5
Many conservatives believe President Obama is a Muslim
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Growing Number of Americans Say Obama is a Muslim,” August 19, 2010, noting, “Roughly a third of conservative Republicans (34%) say Obama is a Muslim.” Available online at
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1701/poll-obama-muslim-christian-church-out-of-politics-political-leaders-religious
.

5
“not clear” whether he had been born in the United States
Project on International Policy Attitudes, “Misinformation and the 2010 Election,” December 2010. Available online at
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf
.

5
Manchurian candidate
David Kupelian, “Yes, Barack Obama
really is
a Manchurian candidate,”
WorldNetDaily.com
, October 29, 2008, available online at
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=79411
. See also the book,
The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists, and Other Anti-American Extremists
, by Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott, 2010, WorldNetDaily Books.

5
“government takeover of health care”
On this see David Corn, “Why the White House Couldn't Fight the ‘Obamacare' Lie,”
Mother Jones
, May/June 2011, available online at
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/frank-luntz-obamacare-lie
.

5
“death panels”
Brendan Nyhan, “Why the ‘Death Panel' Myth Wouldn't Die: Misinformation in the Healthcare Reform Debate,”
The Forum
, Volume 8, Issue 1, available online at
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/health-care-misinformation.pdf
.

5
increase the federal budget deficit
Project on International Policy Attitudes, “Misinformation and the 2010 Election,” December 2010. Available online at
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf
.

5
subsidize abortions and the health care of illegal immigrants
High levels of belief in these claims by Fox News viewers was documented in an NBC survey conducted from August 15–17 2009. For survey methodology and questions see
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/NBC-WSJ_Poll.pdf
. For a summary of findings, see “First Thoughts: Obama's good, bad news,”
MSNBC.com
, August 19, 2009, available online at
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/NBC-WSJ_Poll.pdf
.

5
having an abortion increases a woman's risk of breast cancer
National Cancer Institute, “Abortion, Miscarriage, and Breast Cancer Risk” Fact Sheet, noting, “having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.” Available online at:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/abortion-miscarriage
.

5
mental disorders
Trine Munke-Olsen et al, “Induced First-Trimester Abortion and Risk of Mental Disorder,”
New England Journal of Medicine
, January 27, 2011, Vol. 364: No. 4, 332–9, noting, “The finding that the incidence rate of psychiatric contact was similar before and after a first-trimester abortion does not support the hypothesis that there is an increased risk of mental disorders after a first-trimester induced abortion.”

5
fetuses can perceive pain
Susan J. Lee et al, “Fetal Pain: A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence,”
Journal of the American Medical Association,
August 24/31, 2005, Vol. 294, No. 8, 947–954, noting, “Evidence regarding the capacity for fetal pain is limited but indicates that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester.” Available online at
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/8/947.full.pdf+html
.

5
same-sex parenting is bad for kids
American Psychological Association, Research Summary on Sexual Orientation, Parents, and Children, noting “the development, adjustment, and well-being of children with lesbian and gay parents do not differ markedly from that of children with heterosexual parents.” See
http://www.apa.org/about/governance/council/policy/parenting.aspx
.

5
homosexuality is a disorder
American Psychological Association, “Sexual orientation and homosexuality,” noting, “most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation”; “lesbian, gay, and bisexual orientations are not disorders. Research has found no inherent association between any of these sexual orientations and psychopathology”; and “To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation (sometimes called reparative or conversion therapy) is safe or effective.” See
http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx
.

6
Fox news viewers
Project on International Policy Attitudes, “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War,” October 2003. Available online at
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/IraqMedia_Oct03/IraqMedia_Oct03_rpt.pdf
.

6
37 percent of authoritarians
Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan D. Weiler,
Authoritarianism and Polarization in America Politics
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 45.

6
stimulus bill didn't create many jobs
Project on International Policy Attitudes, “Misinformation and the 2010 Election,” December 2010. Available online at
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf
.

6
trip to India
FactCheck.org
, “Trip to Mumbai,” November 3, 2010. Available online at
http://factcheck.org/2010/11/ask-factcheck-trip-to-mumbai
. See also
Snopes.com
,
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/india.asp
.

6
Congress banned incandescent light bulbs
PolitiFact, “Banned light bulbs? Is the government saying no to incandescents?” May 24, 2011, available online at
http://www.PolitiFact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/may/24/government-banning-incandescent-light-bulbs
.

6
only 18 percent of Republicans and Tea Party members
Public Religion Research Institute/Religion News Survey, “Climate Change and Evolution in the 2012 Elections.” Available online at
http://publicreligion.org/research/2011/09/climate-change-evolution-2012/
.

Part One

Politics, Facts, and Brains

Prelude

Liberal Fresco on a Prison Wall

Seven years ago I published a book called
The Republican War on Science
. It was all about how the political right was wrong, and attacking reality on issues where the evidence was incontrovertible—climate change, evolution, stem cells, contraception, the health risks of abortion, and on and on and on.

The book certainly got noticed. It made the
New York Times
bestseller list. It generated volumes of discussion, and even an entire book dedicated to discussing its arguments.

Changing minds on the other side of the aisle, though? Not so much.

I don't think I fully realized, at the time, that I was following a script written long before. I was dreaming a dream of how it
ought
to work when false claims are aired, espoused, or defended for any reason, political or otherwise.

The dream was that the power of human reason would eventually stamp out lies, prejudices, and falsehoods, delivering a truly enlightened society. It would be a society in which ideologically driven misinformation would gradually decline or disappear, vanquished and chased from the public sphere by rational arguments (like mine). It would be a society in which everybody could agree on the core facts about the world, especially those that matter to public policy and the future.

It was only years later that I learned about the man who, perhaps more movingly than any other, had shouted this liberal, scientific vision from the rooftops. His name was the Marquis de Condorcet, and he was the single greatest champion of human reason during a time when human passion proved far more powerful: The French Revolution.

I want to begin these pages with his story, because nothing better demonstrates how moving—and yet also how tragically flawed—such a vision turned out to be.

Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Cariat, the Marquis de Condorcet, was born in 1743 into the French penny aristocracy. His family held a title, but not any wealth. His father, a soldier, died just after he was born. His mother, devoutly religious, dressed him like a girl; soon he was off to study under the Jesuits, whose dogmatism he righteously hated.

No wonder he would turn from it all, rebel, and pursue a life of science and reason.

Moving to Paris, Condorcet blasted to the top of French science with an early study on integral calculus. He would eventually become permanent secretary of the French Académie des Sciences, and a round denouncer of religion and superstition in all its forms—a flagrant atheist of the sort that it had only recently become possible to be.

His contemporaries described him in paradoxes: the “rabid sheep,” the “volcano covered with snow.” In person, he was shy and inarticulate, as well as sickly and unhealthy. Yet he could explode with passion when inspired by ideas.

As he ascended in Enlightenment circles, Condorcet got to know luminaries like Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Tom Paine. But he embarked on an intellectual quest perhaps more ambitious than any of theirs, seeking nothing less than to derive a “science of society.” Condorcet's motto was “social mathematics,” and his creed probability. We can't know much with certainty, he reasoned, but for many things we can at least know their likelihood—a fact with vast political implications.

Applying such principles would make government more enlightened, scientific.

As the revolutionary period neared—and the political distinctions of “left” and “right” were first defined, based upon whether or not one wanted to overthrow France's
ancien regime
—Condorcet got to test his ideas. He was elected to the newly formed Legislative Assembly in 1791 and became its president. He was also elected to the 1792 Convention, the new republic's first governing body, and served as its vice president.

Yet in this maelstrom, reason did not prevail—and neither did Condorcet. He wasn't a very good politician; certainly, he was no straight-arrow decider like George W. Bush.

Instead he was a man of too much nuance at a time of too strong passions, and before long he fell on the wrong side. Condorcet's allies, the moderate Girondists, were thrust out of the convention on June 2, 1793. Condorcet had played a central role in drawing up a constitution for the new republic, based on his probabilistic principles. But it was tainted with the perception of Girondism, and the Convention ultimately rammed through an alternative, Jacobin constitution instead.

And here was Condorcet's fatal mistake—he couldn't keep silent. He had to stand up for reason and argue back. So he circulated an anonymous pamphlet blasting this constitution, but his identity was exposed and the Jacobins called for his arrest. He escaped, went into hiding, and started writing his greatest work, the
Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind
.

Condorcet would have been laboring over it as his Girondin friends were guillotined, and when he himself was condemned to death for conspiring against the Republic.
The Sketch's
greatness thus derives not solely from its contents, but also from its unique character as an unfolding nonfiction tragedy. It's the literary equivalent, wrote the famed anthropologist James George Frazer, of a “great fresco on a prison wall.”

After reading Condorcet, you can never think about “reason” in the same way again.

Condorcet's
Sketch
is the most powerful work of nonfiction I've read. In 2009 while a visiting associate at Princeton University, I was first introduced to photocopied excerpts of the work—but that just wasn't enough.

So I paid nearly $100 on Amazon for my own copy. I can't think of a book that moves me more; but then, I'm a liberal who cares about science and ensuring a more enlightened society. I would love it, wouldn't I?

But Condorcet's vision doesn't just stir me—it saddens me deeply. Reading Condorcet is like dousing liberal-scientific assumptions about human rationality in what Ted Koppel once called an “acid bath of truth.”

Condorcet began at the dawn of humanity with “man” in a “state of nature.” He then showed how humanity had proceeded to elevate itself to an apotheosis of reason that has no boundary, save the “absolute perfection of the human race.” The “perfectibility of man is truly indefinite,” Condorcet claimed—meaning that “truth alone will obtain a lasting victory.”

Granted, there would be some setbacks along the way. In Condorcet's narrative, the enemies of progress are always the same two baddies: dictators and priests—and especially Christianity. He didn't call his much despised strongmen and holy men “conservatives”—but of course, that's who they often were.

The good guys in the story, meanwhile, are science and its heroes—Copernicus, Galileo, and so on; let us call them the “liberals”—and a series of great innovations: the alphabet, the printing press, global trade and the 16th- and 17th-century voyages of discovery. And they, ultimately, are the winners of the grand pageant of history.

In Condorcet's account, free inquiry and critical thinking—“that spirit of doubt which submits facts and proofs to severe rational scrutiny”—must prove unstoppable. It's virtually a law of nature. In the long run, our better faculties will enable not only the expansion of human reason, but the creation of political systems based upon universal human rights, social contracts, majority rule, and so on—precisely the sort of constitution Condorcet tried to enshrine in France as the terror descended.

But how would Condorcet's future society handle lies, delusions, and politicized misinformation? How would it handle a
Conservapedia
? How would it handle anti-evolutionists, or global warming deniers?

In Condorcet's vision, such nonsense is stamped out by the widespread dissemination of reasoned arguments—aided by one key technology, the printing press. For Condorcet, this machine is the savior of mankind. It ensures that “no science will ever fall below the point it has reached”—because once knowledge can be recorded, stored, and widely disseminated, it's impossible to suppress.

And the enlightenment imparted by printed arguments isn't just for the elites, Condorcet explained, but for the masses. “Any new mistake is criticized as soon as it is made,” he wrote, “and often attacked even before it has been propagated; and so it has no time to take root in men's minds.” Before long, he forecast, every individual would be equipped “to defend himself against prejudice by the strength of his reason alone; and finally, to escape the deceits of charlatans who would lay snares for his fortune, his health, his freedom of thought and his conscience under the pretext of granting him health, wealth, and salvation.”

In Condorcet's future, there would be no fortune tellers, no lotteries or casinos, and no convincing the public that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was working with Al-Qaeda. People would see through it all, and run the hucksters out of town.

Condorcet really believed that if you put the facts out there, the best arguments will prevail and people will become more enlightened and reasonable. True to form, that's exactly what he did when he signed his death warrant by publicly criticizing the Jacobin constitution. But that's what he had to do: Reasoned argument was, for him, the core mechanism driving the “progress of the human mind.”

He wasn't just consistent—he was heroic in that consistency.

Although they might not state it quite so frankly, today many liberals and scientists would appear to agree with Condorcet. They love to argue, and strive to disseminate reason as widely as they can. This is the modus operandi of our universities, our think tanks and foundations, our media and publications. In a sense, we're all Condorcets now—or at least we act like it.

Yet if we return to the master, we find that Condorcet's account of the “progress of the human mind” contains little account of the workings of the human mind. Modern psychology and cognitive neuroscience didn't exist yet, so you can't really blame him. But Condorcet's descendants have far less of an excuse.