Ernie Fletcher: Clearly not intelligently designed, definitely not evolved

Ernie Fletcher would love nothing more than to change the subject.  Kentucky's first Republican governor in my lifetime, thanks to Paul Patton's pecadilloes, he started his term by taking a dump on the state's teachers (and other state employees) before waltzing into his own little cronyism scandal.  Rather than owning up to his mistakes and taking it like a man, he issued pre-emptive blanket pardons for anything anybody involved might have done.  The only people left who truly support him are the ones who have drunk so much of the Kool-Aid that they frequently burst through walls and exclaim, "Oh yeah!".

So, clearly, Ernie needs the state to start talking about something else, and his State of the Commonwealth (remember, we're a commonwealth, for some reason) Address was the perfect time to set new ideas afloat.  The brazenly Orwellian "Right to Work" initiatives should have been enough, but business-friendly anti-labor legislation just doesn't light too many fires.  Wherever could he go?

His answer: intelligent design.  If Wicked Governor Ernie has his way, we'll join Kansas and Dover, PA as the next national punchline.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Fletcher said he encouraged schools to teach the concept because it's "the foundational principal of our nation."

"Our inalienable rights are based on the self-evident truth
of those endowed inalienable rights. And all I was saying is that from
my perspective that's not a matter of faith and it's not a matter of
religion," Fletcher said. "It's a matter of something called
self-evident truth."

[...]

"What we have from our founding fathers is there was a
creator and the assumption there and from self-evident truth was that
that creator was an intelligent creator and that he endowed us with
certain inalienable rights," Fletcher said, loosely quoting from the
Declaration of Independece. "If you take away the fact of this basic
understanding of our nation, what basis do you have inalienable rights
placed on, which was the foundation of our nation? That's all I'm
raising."

Others have said it, but I'll say it anyway: Ernie is referring to the Declaration of Independence, which was nothing more than our way of telling England to piss off.  It had no legal binding then, and has none now.  When it came time to write stuff that would actually mean something, there was no mention of one's creator or anything self-evident.  When they got around to guaranteeing some rights they felt were important, the very first one was about how the government ought to stay out of religion.

Hopefully it won't go anywhere; as the absolutely essential BluegrassReport.org has catalogued, even the right-wing editorialists and boards in the state have given Ernie a hard time about this.  (This link shows one of many.)  Then again, all Ernie really did was assert that nothing in the state law prohibits local school districts from teaching ID, and with at least 120 local school boards in the state, it's almost guaranteed that one of them will take the bait. 

Once they do, we'll have the usual why-do-liberals-hate-Jeebus-so-much shouting matches.  We'll have distinguished biologists one one side and if-we-evolved-from-monkeys-why-are-there-still-monkeys sound bite antiscience on the other, and the media will treat them as if their points are equally valid.  No small amount of time, money, and effort will be spent waging the war, and meanwhile the tech companies that Fletcher wants so badly to lure here with his "Right to Bust Unions" initiative will instead go to a state that can be counted on to teach actual science to its potential workforce.

But at least they won't be talking about Ernie.

Comments

[Anne]

The only people left who truly support him are the ones who have drunk so much of the Kool-Aid that they frequently burst through walls and exclaim, "Oh yeah!".

LOVE

[Pepper]

How did Kentucky wind up with that hoser, anyway? I know Paul Patton banged someone who wasn't his wife, but was he really as bad as Fletcher?

I am proud that some people on the right are on to his tricks, though.