The other day, a very young boy in New Hampshire got the better of Rick Perry with a question about evolution: Perry responded, "That's a theory that is out there - and it's got some gaps in it."
Perry then went on to assert to the boy: "In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution. I figure you're smart enough to figure out which one is right."
Except the US Supreme Court has ruled that it is a violation of the Constitution to teach creationism in schools.
Let's take another example that disproves evolution in the likes of Governor Perry. Texas has the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. When queried by an interviewer about why the governor supports taxpayer funding of abstinence education in the Lone Star State when it doesn't work, Perry adamantly defended the program. This is not only a Victorian outlook, it contradicts the right-wing notion that every government program should be judged by its effectiveness.
And then there's Michele Bachmann, who just this week stated that Americans are concerned about the "rise of the Soviet Union." Maybe she was confused because it is the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Wall being erected. As with most embodiments of creationism, Bachmann's frame of reference moves backward in time, not forward.
BuzzFlash at Truthout noted earlier this year, "a fundamentalist Christian may feel reassured that – at the Creation Museum in Kentucky – a dinosaur wears a saddle to show that all life began simultaneously with a divine spark."
Maybe the Creation Museum should replace the dinosaur with a wax replica of Rick Perry and put a saddle on his back.
Evolution, on its path to the future, just passes some people by.
(This story was originally published on Buzzflash on 19 August 2011 and has been republished with permission.)
