By Design
This is sure to get some press in the coming days, and so breaking with WCRS tradition, I'm going to blog about it on the day it happened, not weeks later. Here we go:
During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.The "both theories" is a reference, of course, to intelligent design and evolution.
''I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,'' Bush said. ''You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.''
I saw this first on Instapundit, and Reynolds has an inimitably link-rich post filled with a variety of libertarian/conservative blogs coming down hard on Bush.
A few thoughts. Evolution is a scientific theory. Intelligent Design is not, if for no other reason, because it is not falsifiable. Scientific theories get taught in, among other places, Biology classes. Things that are not scientific theories get taught, if at all, in other places, for other purposes. I'd like to believe that Jeff Goldstein has an angle on this point, but like Reynolds, I doubt Bush shares his subtlety.
Still, I'm at least encouraged that we're only hearing about this because a reporter asked him a question, instead of because he was proposing Congress pass something called the All Children Must Learn Intelligent Design Act. And this is not a minor point for me -- I've voted for Democrats for President before in rejection of the GOP's cultural turn to the right. I'm not at all happy that Bush said this, but I'm not fearful either it will ultimately result in a policy change.