Darwin and Democrats

I am taking the coolest class this semester, Church and State. We are required to take one course that qualifies as "perspective," and this one looked much better than the deceptively-appealingly-titled "Film, Literature and the Law," which former victims pronounced the nastiest bit of law school they'd ever endured (the good thing about the law school grapevine is you find out about the deadly courses and can steer clear from at least some of the rocks).

This week we are discussing the creationism vs. evolution debate, starting Monday with the Scopes trials and finishing up today with Intelligent Design. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the Flying Spaghetti Monster would be a topic of class discussion during my law school career, but there ya go.

All this has me thinking, pondering how the Democrats lost the hearts and minds of the American heartland, and if it is even possible for them to ever get them back. Willam Jennings Bryan, the star prosecutor and the man frequently portrayed as a knuckle-dragging Bible literalist against the backdrop of Clarence Darrow's erudite itellectualism, was a Democrat and a man who spent his life fighting for the little guy. He supported unions and fought for decent working hours and social reform. His objection to the theory of evolution came from his horror at Social Darwinism, a philosophy that treated the downtrodden as lesser beings whose deaths would strengthen the human gene pool by eliminating the weak. The notion that a greater good was served by not helping the poor was abhorrent to him. He was a deeply religious man who knew his Bible well, but he was not anti-intellectual - he had himself studied evolution and adhered to the theory until he saw it being twisted in this manner. His belief that it was wrong came from his observation of its abuse.

The pro-science side of the debate, however, cannot be simply identified as the Republicans. There was no neat flip-flop of sides, no Great Vowel Shift of political sentiment that explains away the differences. No, the good, Democratic folk of Dayton, Tennessee - who'd been teaching evolutionary theory to their kids for decades, since all science textbooks of the time did - staged the entire arrest of John Scopes (who couldn't honestly remember teaching evolution at all) in response to an ad by the very young ACLU, which was looking for a Tennessee teacher to volunteer to be arrested in order to challenge the anti-evolution law that Tennessee had put on the books and then promptly ignored - the science textbook chosen by the Board of Education taught evolution. Any teacher would have done the job, but the Dayton civic fathers snatched up the opportunity to bring commerce into their community in the form of the Scopes Monkey Trials.

Think about it. The theory of evolution and the church lived side by side for a number of years before Scopes, and for a good long time afterward, parallel and in relative peace. God created the universe, and evolution explained the science. It's only a problem if you have to insist that mythic truth and scientific truth be the same thing - which is where Fundamentalism creates all kinds of problems. But that is another debate.

The thing is, until the last few decades, the Democratic party stood for the rights of the little guy, and for the basic values of morality - the stuff we call family values today. God talk was not verboten, and they weren't afraid to say that some things were wrong. But somehow, in the attempt to make people not just free but absolutely equal, things like family values and morals got cut astray and the Republicans - no slouches, and not in the least afraid of pissing people off - snatched them right up. They have never really dropped their Social Darwinism, but now they couch it in terms of spiritual superiority instead of genetic. But they are canny, and can count voters, and will cheerfully take in any mouth breather capable of pulling a voting machine. They will sell these people a litany of smug superiority and moral hatred, black and white answers to all life's problems, while heartlessly poisoning their water and destroying their environment, and people will take it because they want solid answers.

The Democrats have painted themselves into a terrible corner. They can't speak out against anything except big business and intolerance, because they will insult a constituency, and you can't have that. But there's no guidance in that. There is only a continuing litany of complaints and attacks on what the heartland feels are basic truths.

Now, I'm not saying that back in the halcyon days of sweeping Protestantism, America was a place of perfection. Believe me; I grew up in a backwater town where the fact that I was Catholic meant some of the kids at school weren't allowed to talk with me. Certainly the civil rights movement and the women's rights movement and the environmental movement, all spearheaded by Dems, are tremendous improvements in our ways of life. But recall: Martin Luther King was a Baptist minister, and he talked about God a lot. The Christian God. In today's world, his message might be lost to the censure of those concerned with noninclusivism. And that would be tragic.

The Democratic party is well on its way to being a fringe political group, leaving us with an essentially one-party system. The way I see it, they have two choices: accept that role and keep pushing on the fringe, or learn to step on some toes, risk hurting some feelings, and move back toward the center.