By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, May 20, 2016
Why do liberals hate science?
The Left has long claimed that it has something of a
monopoly on scientific expertise. For instance, long before Al Gore started
making millions by claiming that anyone who disagreed with his apocalyptic
prophecies was “anti-science,” there were the “scientific socialists.” “Social
engineer” is now rightly seen as a term of scorn and derision, but it was once
a label that progressive eggheads eagerly accepted.
Masking opinions in a white smock is a brilliant, albeit
infuriating and shabby, rhetorical tactic. As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan
famously said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own
facts.” Science is the language of facts, and when people pretend to be
speaking it, they’re not only claiming that their preferences are more than
mere opinions, they’re also insinuating that anyone who disagrees is a fool or
a zealot for objecting to “settled science.”
Put aside the fact that there is no such thing as settled
science. Scientists are constantly questioning their understanding of things;
that is what science does. All the great scientists of history are justly
famous for overturning the assumptions of their fields. The real problem is that
in politics, invocations of science are very often marketing techniques
masquerading as appeals to irrefutable authority. In an increasingly secular
society, having science on your side is better than having God on your side –
at least in an argument.
I’m not saying that you can’t have science in your
corner, or that lawmakers shouldn’t look to science when making policy.
(Legislation that rejects the existence of gravity makes for very silly laws
indeed.) But the real intent behind so many claims to “settled science” is to
avoid having to make your case. It’s an undemocratic technique for
delegitimizing opposing views and saying “shut up” to dissenters.
For example, even if the existence of global warming is
“settled,” the policies for how to best respond to it are not. But in the
political debates about climate change, activists say that their climatological
claims are irrefutable and so are their preferred remedies.
If climate change is the threat they claim, I’d rather
spend billions on geoengineering to fix it than trillions on impoverishing
economic policies that at best slightly delay it. It doesn’t matter; I’m the
Luddite buffoon for thinking ethanol subsidies and windmills are boondoggles.
Even more outrageous: If you dispute, say, the necessity
of spending billions on windmills or on killing the coal industry, you are not
merely wrong on climate change, you are “anti-science.”
Intellectually, this is a monument of asininity so wide
and tall, even the mind’s eye cannot glimpse its horizon or peak.
For starters, why are liberalism’s pet issues the
lodestars of what constitutes scientific fact? Medical science informs us
fetuses are human beings. The liberal response? “Who cares?” Genetically
modified foods are safe, sayeth the scientists. “Shut up,” reply the liberal
activists. IQ is partly heritable, the neuroscientists tell us. “Shut up,
bigot,” the liberals shriek.
Which brings me to the raging hysteria over the plight of
transgendered people who need to use the bathroom.
The New York Times
recently reported about A. J. Jackson’s travails in a Vermont high school.
“There were practical issues,” Anemona Hartocollis writes. “When he had his
period, he wondered if he should revert to the girls’ bathroom, because there
was no place to throw away his used tampons.”
Now, one can have sympathy for the transgendered – I
certainly do – while simultaneously holding to the scientific fact that boys do
not menstruate. This is a fact far more settled than the very best climate
science. Perhaps it’s rude to say so, but facts do not cease to be facts simply
because they offend.
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio is pushing to fine
businesses that do not address customers by their “preferred name, pronoun and
title (e.g., Ms./Mrs.) regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth,
anatomy, gender, medical history, appearance, or the sex indicated on the
individual’s identification.” The NYC Commission on Human Rights can penalize
offenders up to $250,000.
Many liberals believe that “denying” climate science
should be a criminal offense while also believing that denying biological
science is a moral obligation.
In the law, truth is a defense against the charge of
slander, but for liberals, inconvenient truth is no defense against the charge
of bigotry.
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