Field Day

Sadly, No! seems to know all the best rocks to turn over. This is almost as good as the next one. From Andrew Ferguson at the Weekly Standard (and that alone should tell you something):

One reason AEI stands as the capital’s premier research organization is that it alone would think to assemble a quartet of intelligent and accomplished people to debate the implications of Darwinism for political thought and public policy. Specifically, the panel’s title was “Darwinism and Conservatism: Friends or Foes?”

Y'know, that's come up before -- in fact, it was a bunch of racist conservatives -- oh, well, all right, then.

Here's the line-up:

Its moderator was Steven Hayward, the biographer of Ronald Reagan, and in the quartet he conducted were Larry Arnhart, a political scientist from Northern Illinois University; John Derbyshire, an author and a blogger for National Review Online; John West, a political scientist formerly of Seattle Pacific University and now of the Discovery Institute; and his colleague at Discovery, George Gilder, the legendary author of Wealth and Poverty, Microcosm, The Spirit of Enterprise, and Life After Television. (Gilder is routinely and correctly called a visionary, partly because he’s the only man on earth who can imagine life without television.)

Larry Arnhart is the one I commented on here, who left a comment whining because I obviously hadn't read any of his books. With that as an example, why should I? It's not like I don't have enough to read, and I'm really over subjecting myself to limp science and flaccid philosophy. (Although if he wants to send me review copies, I'll be happy to review them wherever I think they'll get the widest possible exposure.)

As for the "visionary" George Gilder, I live life without television. That must make me the Messiah.

I do have to say, though, that our favorite patrician racist (see below), John Derbyshire, did say something intelligent:

in his remarks, Derbyshire objected that such questions, which were after all the point of the panel he had traveled to Washington to be on, were nonetheless pointless. “Conservatism and Darwinism are orthogonal,” he said. “Neither one implies the other.”

He was obviously the most intelligent person on the panel. Of course, it's all relative.


(snicker)