Just Say No to Professor Pinker and (shudder) President Gingrich
Texas didn’t make it into the top ten listing of “conservative” states, according to the latest Gallup poll. I am not sure what to make of this read on the land of my childhood. I am, frankly, completely baffled by what “conservative” means these days. Corey Robin has a new book I need to read that will likely help. But, in the meantime, I am paying particular attention to the rhetoric around “progress” and “technology” in this Republican primary season. This makes for some whacky reading, as Newt Gingrich seems to match dear old Gene Roddenberry in his unbridled faith in technology to make our world a shiny, happy place. (Or should I say to make the solar system a shiny, happy set of places?) When Gingrich starts in about colonizing the moon, for instance, he seems less “conservative” and more, well . . . “progressive,” only we don’t usually use that word for someone who also wants to teach impoverished children a lesson by making them clean toilets. Yet there are some time-worn, icky connections between faith in scientific progress and disdain for people who seem not to progress.
