RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last summer, fed up with Democrats’ claim that theirs is the “Party of Science,” we pointed out that it is in reality the Party of Science Fiction. We hope others have had their fill, too, and public opinion will force the Democrats to grow up.

“Science” is never invoked by the political left to illuminate, educate, or guide. It’s used to terminate discussion, to shut down debate. It’s employed in exactly the same way “racist” has been used for decades. Not as a legitimate charge but a bomb thrown into a conversation in an effort to “other” the person or persons the smear is directed toward. It’s a means closing off further dialogue, a bully’s tactic.

Those who respect an open marketplace of ideas, who believe that more speech rather than less is healthy for society, might wonder why the left wants to halt debate. It’s a good question with a clear and obvious answer: The zealous adherents to progressive politics know their ideas are empty of substance and therefore need to shout down, cancel, and indict those who dare think differently.

That would be the primary but not sole reason for those on the left to incessantly yell “science” and virtue-signal their beliefs. Many who appeal to “science” do so for status. It’s a convenient – and shallow – way of showing the rest of us that they’re intellectually and morally superior. They desperately want to think they’re on the right side of something, anything. Evidently doing so satisfies in them a need to overcome their deep insecurities.

Using “science” – we employ quotation marks so as not to allow confusion about which is a sham and which is real – as a political weapon has been a favored strategy of the global warming alarmists, who protesteth too much that they “believe the science,” “trust the United Nations’ reports,” and are on the side of “the scientific consensus.”

The practice has of course carried over to the coronavirus pandemic. Anyone who questions whatever it is the Democrats are believing and peddling at any given moment is branded as an anti-science rube.

But this isn’t how science works. Science is continually observing, evolving, questioning, experimenting, and discovering. The left-wing machine just picks a belief and sticks with it, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. That’s not science. That’s ideology.

On one hand, the “science” bunch is providing the rest of us with a few laughs. Watching self-important adults behave as middle-schoolers can be amusing. Think of the decades of climate warnings that weren’t just wrong but spectacularly inaccurate. We also chuckle at the spectacle of the left being the political home of those who say they are grounded in science as well as those who believe that Earth is a woman named Gaia, and that there are “at least three genders.”

But on the other hand, those convinced of their superiority are dangerous, because the “Party of Science” controls the White House, Congress, some of our largest states, most big cities, the media, the entertainment industry, and the education of our young. Public policy twisted into economic- and freedom-killing rules and regulations in the name of “science” is the first floor in a tower of tyranny.

C.S. Lewis said “those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” It’s just as true that those who are persuaded of their own righteousness will subjugate us without a moment’s hesitancy.

Remember this the next time Democrats try to justify a new program, increased wealth redistribution, or an abridgment of liberty by urging the country to trust the “experts,” who just happen to be the researchers, academics, and intellectuals the left agrees with.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board