The Land Of Opportunists! (Could this happen?)
I had a rather amusing thought about America when reading a recent newspaper article about the theory of evolution vs creation (a.k.a. intelligent design)
Anyway, it seems that George Bush supports the notion of creationism. So the following idea struck me, and maybe political analysts or students out there could tell me if this could happen in the two-party system in the US.
Now let's say one of the two parties... a major right-of-centre conservative one supported by many religious people (including Dubya himself), became populated by many of Bush-a-likes, and this strange scenario where students are being taught to take the hypothesis of creation seriously, really takes off, thanks to this party's control of the American government.
This I see as possible because it seems there is growing conservatism in America, according to what I see on telly. Indeed George Bush himself is said to have retained the presidency on "moral" issues (in other words religious issues). If there are some fundamentalists in the educational system who have enough power to influence the system of entire states to carry anti-evolution messages on *Science* books, then I don't see why there couldn't be more. And if this notion can make its way all the way to the president, then maybe all the senators, governors and ministers of education (or whatever the equivalent), may too be susceptible.
Now let us say for a moment that the other slightly left-of-centre down-to-earth party decide that this is all ridiculous. They should be teaching Science in Science class. BUT, because of the growing religious conservatism in the so-called "Bible Belt", they are afraid to come out and say this because then every bible-thumper in America will vote for the religious-right party. So they pretend that they are OK to send the message to the religious voters, "Look, we can be religious too".
So, now we have the two major parties in the country supporting this dodgy party line, and science teachers shaking their heads in disbelief, but being forced to tell their pupils that God created the earth in 6 days 6,000 years ago, for fear of being caught by the "patriot" act or something, and several generations of kids grow up believing this before someone cops on.
Could it happen?
