Happy Bicentennial Birthday to the Brilliant Bearded Boys of 1809!I find it interesting that Lincoln, who was quite controversial in his day, is now so completely revered, while Darwin has seemed to become more and more controversial over time.
Of course, as I was reminded by a Fresh Air segment last week, Darwin is basically just controversial in the U.S. and Turkey. The rest of the world doesn't have much of a problem with him.
I'm fascinated by how some people become lionized over time. I always wonder how it happens. For instance, how come such a large segment of the U.S. population detests Carter as a weak president who couldn't free hostages, but worships Reagan, who exchanged WMD for hostages- so that the terrorists could then just replace them with new hostages and get more WMD from the U.S., all to advance an illegally-financed war. Throwing in the drug dealing was a nice touch, too.
I guess that almost qualifies as an off-topic rant. Sorry. Reagan-worshippers frustrate me like Creationists do Brian.
But I'm still fascinated by the process. I admire Lincoln quite a lot, but I'm fascinated by how much his reputation has passed into myth, and by how quickly it seems to have happened. And- back to Reagan-I guess I'm depressed because it seems to me the process is happening undeservedly to our 40th president.
I also spent some time today trying to imagine how differently things would have turned out if the Union had not been held together. I kept coming back to the likelihood of further fractures, and of something resembling eastern Europe. Quite a mess.
As for Darwin: I muddled through The Origin of Species a few years ago. Quite a lot interested me, quite a lot that bored me, annd the rest I couldn't understand. I found nothing in it that would cause me to rant from a pulpit.
1 comment:
Can you imagine if the Confederacy had won the war? Every state's science curriculum would be like Kansas'
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