"It's a simple fact:" A Prez needs some grip on reality
Wed Apr 13, 2005 at 06:26:47 PM PDT
Last week there was a very interesting diary posted here called No wonder Bush fought the AWOL/Deserter charge which basically explained how Bush isn't really even qualified to be President, seeing is how he was a deserter from the military and all. Oops. Am I not supposed to use that word "deserter" when speaking of the CinC? Oh dear.
To me it goes without saying that he had already disqualified himself for the office by his violations of the Constitution in denying African Americans the right to vote... but I have still another reason why I think he should be disqualifed for service, and it's right here:
For the record, when President Bush was asked about evolution he said "On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth."
Someone who can make a statement like that simply isn't qualified to be in charge of the world's largest military arsenal or the world's largest economy - with its resultant impact on the environment. He doesn't even have the most basic grasp on the issues necessary to make an informed decision. There have been a lot of great diaries here on ID and Creationism vs. Science lately, so I don't need to go over this again, but I would like to reference this quote from The Science of Evolution (itself a pretty good rundown of the issues involved):
It's a simple fact: Nobody working in biology today could even pose the right questions, let alone find the right answers, without having at least a basic understanding of evolutionary principles and mechanisms. And the basic principles and mechanisms of evolution are so fundamental, lie so much at the core of all modern science (including in fields like geology, archaeology, astronomy, etc.) that it really is no exaggeration to say that, "in today's world, without the science of evolution there would be no science."Evolution has shaped and molded all the living things into what they are today. Any scientist working in the life-sciences who in this day and age failed to accept the evidence of evolution and failed to have at least a basic understanding of the historical evolutionary processes through which all the different living species came into being (and which also shaped the ways in which different species interact with each other) couldn't possibly make any truly new and significant contributions to advancing and developing any of the life sciences because they would be trying to work with a highly distorted picture of the features and dynamic processes which characterize living organisms and entire living systems.
Common Dreams has a story today - US Takes the Lead in Trashing Planet - dealing with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and this story opens with a quote from Mr. Bush: "It [the Kyoto Protocol] was not based upon science." So we have someone who thinks "the verdict is still out..." in a position to tell us whether something was based on science or not.
If you have been reading Dkos lately, you have probably already read about the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, but the Common Dreams article is definitely worth a read. A good quote:
"Any progress achieved in addressing the goals of poverty and hunger eradication, improved health, and environmental protection is unlikely to be sustained if most of the ecosystem services on which humanity relies continue to be degraded," the study said.
The study offered several scenarios of how humans can halt the degrading of the planet. The most obvious strategies involve a global economy where the sharing of education, skills, technology, and resources leads to a reduction in poverty and pressures on local environments. The worst possible scenario is one called ''Order from Strength," which results in ''a regionalized and fragmented world, concerned with security and protection, emphasizing primarily regional markets, paying little attention to public goods, and taking a reactive approach to ecosystem problems."
We are definitely going to need good leadership in the years ahead to address these issues. And if anything we've seen over the last few years how wishful thinking does not translate into good leadership. Creationists need to stick to preaching at Sunday revival meetings, not running our national government.
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