Balkinization: Running for President: So Easy a Caveman Could Do It

Comments:

Gotta admire the pandering to get the home-schoolers vote! Ugh . . .

# posted by

Watching politicians in action sometimes does give reason to doubt that mankind has evolved from lower forms of life.

Evolution does work both ways. Organisms can de-volve just as they can e-volve. Parasites, for example, frequently lose organs, limbs, etc. because they rely on the host to provide them. What you saw last night is perfectly consistent with evolution.

# posted by

Mark Field : 4:30 PM

Prof. Balkin:

There is something to be said for this. Watching politicians in action sometimes does give reason to doubt that mankind has evolved from lower forms of life.

Evolution has no notion of what "lower" forms of life are. That's a concept that finds most support in the Genesis command to "go forth and have dominion". I personally see nothing incongrouous in monkeys being on the same level as Republicans.

Cheers,

# posted by

Arne Langsetmo : 4:39 PM

Actually, i have to backtrack a second and note that, in my attempt to be humorous, i probably wasn't entirely accurate. i have no doubt that Brownback and (probably) Huckabee actually *don't* believe in evolution.

# posted by

Calvin TerBeek : 4:47 PM

I'd be rather surprised if they were the only three. I suspect some of the others just weren't paying attention to the question.

# posted by

emfink : 6:03 PM

I propose a constitutional amendment mandating acceptance of evolution by natural selection in order to run for President. No one who does not accept it is qualified. Candidates would have to publicly state their acceptance and could not contradict it and remain on the ballot. Once elected, they could contradict it, but that should be made an impeachable offense.

# posted by

Henry : 7:05 PM

When I wrote "No one who does not accept it [evolution by natural selection] is qualified [to be President]," I didn't just mean under my proposed constitutional amendment. I meant that a person who denies obvious realities is unqualified; the past six years have certainly shown us that.

# posted by

Henry : 8:14 PM

Seeing as how 48% of Americans believe that humans were created by God in our present form "sometime in the last 10,000 years," (according to a recent Newsweek/Princeton poll) I'm honestly surprised that more presidential contenders haven't taken this stance. When half the country believes in something, it's often convenient for a politician to envince that belief as well.

It is perfectly acceptable for the president of a republic to hew to the common beliefs and sensibilities of a significant portion of the citizenry. If our next president believes in "intelligent design" and that Darwin was demonstrably wrong, I will have to accept it as a defeat of the counter-majoritarian secular elite who have heretofore clung to the mechanisms of political power.

And then I shall move to the Netherlands and burn my passport, I shall (though I have said this before).

# posted by

S.G.E.W. : 9:37 PM

I hate to pick nits, Jack - but evolution does NOT hold that human beings evolved from lower forms of life. Evolutionary theory recognizes no standard of "higher" or "lower" other than differential ability to reproduce, and given a change in external conditions today's "higher" can be tomorrow's "lower" and vice-versa.

# posted by

David Luban : 9:48 PM