Biologist P.Z. Myers explains his noted rhetorical felicity in response to a column by John Hawks advising restraint in the Evo/ID controversy:
It is correct that if I were talking to a student or a parent, trying to persuade them to abandon misbegotten notions of creationism that are affecting the student's ability to be a good biologist, I wouldn't call them lunatics. It isn't very effective to try and persuade an individual by calling them idiots, and in most cases I don't think the creationist students I occasionally get are idiots-just sadly misled.
However, I was not attacking such individuals, but the president of the US and the preachers at the Discovery Institute. You know, the responsible people who are lying to the public or working to disseminate destructive delusions.
Oh, but Hawks has that covered; his last sentence suggests that the people they "know and respect" should not be so harshly criticized, lest we alienate them. I strongly disagree. It is the leaders and enablers who must be vigorously attacked, the ones who abuse those positions of authority and respect to poison minds.
[I]t is my responsibility as a scientist to oppose ignorance, especially ignorance that has power and influence. Let them find comfort and forgiveness for stupid mistakes in their religion, because I sure as hell am not going to give it to them.
Don't tell me to be dispassionate or less unreasonable about it all because because 65% of the American population think creationism should be taught alongside evolution, or that Americans are just responding to common notions of "fairness". That just tells me that we scientists have not been expressing our outrage enough. And yes, we should be outraged that the president of our country panders to theocrats, faith-healers, and snake-oil artists; sitting back and quietly explaining that Bush may be a decent man who is mistaken, while the preachers are stridently condemning all us evilutionists to hell, is a damned ineffective tactic that has gotten us to this point.
I say, screw the polite words and careful rhetoric. It's time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer on the lunatics and idiots. If you don't care enough for the truth to fight for it, then get out of the way.
Goddamn, but don't even suggest that we're being too partisan. I am on the side of reason and human rights, and my only failing is that I'm not partisan enough.
His only failing? Oh, what ineffable joy it must be to be P.Z. Myers.
Anyway, we can be grateful to Myers for nicely summing up for us the Left's preferred modus operandi in debate of any kind: Try to defeat your opponent through the power of your ideas. If that fails then kick him in the groin. And Myers says, after admonishing all and sundry not to expect him to be less unreasonable, that he's on the side of reason? The man sounds more like a narcissistic neo-nazi brown-shirt.
