It is fair to say that “Darwin’s dangerous idea,” as Daniel Dennett has described it, has caused more trouble to the ordinary conscience than just about any other scientific hypothesis. We cannot easily reject the theory of evolution, which explains so much that we observe in the lives of plants and animals; and we cannot easily accept it either, when it comes to understanding human beings. It is not only the religious world-view that seems so precarious in the light of it. All kinds of moral aspirations, set against what we can know or surmise about our hunter-gatherer ancestors, seem to be so much wishful thinking. How can we entertain the liberal hope for equality between the sexes, for universal human rights, for a global community without wars, when we reflect on the harsh conditions in which our species is said to have evolved, and for the need, in those conditions, for belligerence, relations of domination, and an innate division of labor between woman and man? For a long time in the wake of Darwin’s Descent of Man , social scientists and anthropologists argued that human beings are not simply biological organisms, whose behavior is to be explained by their inherited constitution, but also social beings, whose most important traits are “socially constructed.” On this view culture is an independent influence, which works on the raw material of human biology and changes it into something finer, more malleable, and more responsive to moral and spiritual ideals. In this way, thinkers like Durkheim and Weber hoped to rescue human nature from Darwin by describing another input into our behavior than our biological inheritance. Not only did this give a new purchase to religion; it liberated morality from the constraints of evolutionary thinking. Morality was returned to its throne as a guide to life, by which wisdom and reason override the demands of instinct and desire. But the respite from Darwin was only short-lived. Evolutionary psychologists have since turned their attention to culture itself, arguing that culture is not, after all, an independent input into human behavior. Culture too, they argue, is part of our biological inheritance. It is not simply that there are extraordinary constants among the many cultures that we observe: gender roles, incest taboos, rites of passage, festivals, warfare, mourning, religious beliefs, moral scruples, aesthetic interests. Culture is also a part of human nature: it is our way of being . We do not live in herds or packs; our hierarchies are not based on strength or sexual dominance. We relate to one another through language, morality, and law; we sing together, dance together, worship together, and spend as much time in festivals and story telling as in seeking our food. Our hierarchies involve offices, responsibilities, gift-giving, and ceremonial recognition. Our meals are shared, and food for us is not merely nourishment but the occasion for hospitality, affection, and dressing up. All these things are comprehended in the idea of culture and culture, so understood, is uniquely human. Why is this? The social scientists respond that culture is uniquely human because we created it. But the Darwinians reject that answer as a fudge: if we created culture, what explains our capacity to create it? The answer is that this capacity evolved. Culture is therefore an adaptation, which exists because it conferred a reproductive advantage on our hunter-gatherer ancestors. According to this view, many of our cultural traits are local variations of attributes acquired during the Pleistocene age and now “hard-wired in the brain.” But if this is so, cultural characteristics may not be as plastic as the social scientists suggest. There are features of the human condition, such as gender roles, that people have believed to be cultural and therefore changeable. But if culture is an aspect of nature, “cultural” does not mean “changeable.” Maybe these controversial features of human culture are part of the genetic endowment of mankind. This new way of thinking gains credibility from the evolutionary theory of morality. Many social scientists suppose morality to be an acquired characteristic, passed on by customs, laws and punishments in which a society asserts its rights over its members. However, with the development of genetics, a new perspective opens. “Altruism” begins to look like a genetic “strategy,” which confers a reproductive advantage on the genes that produce it. In the competition for scarce resources, the genetically altruistic are able to call others to their aid, through networks of cooperation that are withheld from the genetically selfish, who are thereby eliminated from the game. If this is so, it is argued, then morality is not an acquired but an inherited characteristic. Any competitor species that failed to develop innate moral feelings would by now have died out. And what is true of morality might be true of many other human characteristics that have previously been attributed to nurture: language, art, music, religion, warfare, the local variants of which are far less significant than their common structure. If we accept the argument of the evolutionary biologists, therefore, we may find ourselves pushed toward accepting that traits often attributed to culture may be part of our genetic inheritance, and therefore not as changeable as many might have hoped: gender differences, intelligence, belligerence, and so on through all the human characteristics that people have wished, for whatever reason, to rescue from destiny and refashion as choice. But to speculate freely about such matters is dangerous. The once respectable subject of eugenics was so discredited by Nazism that “don’t enter” is now written across its door. The distinguished biologist James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, was recently run out of the academy for having publicly suggested that sub-Saharan Africans are genetically disposed to have lower IQs than the Westerners who strive to help them, while the economist Larry Summers suffered a similar fate for claiming that the brains of women are at the top end less suited than those of men to the study of the hard sciences. In America it is widely assumed that socially significant differences between ethnic groups and sexes are the result of social factors, and in particular of “discrimination” directed against the group that does badly. This assumption is not the conclusion of a reasoned social science but the foundation of an optimistic world-view, to disturb which is to threaten the whole community that has been built on it. On the other hand, as Galileo in comparable circumstances didn’t quite say, it ain’t necessarily so. SOME CONSERVATIVES take comfort from this, arguing that liberal egalitarian values are, after all, no more than wishful thinking, and that the attempt to impose them through the school and university curriculum goes against human nature and is therefore doomed to failure. To take this line, however, is to announce the defeat of liberalism by conceding the defeat of conservatism too. Conservatism is founded, like liberalism, on the assumption that human beings are free, that they can to a certain measure shift the boundaries that constrain them, and that there is a right and wrong in human affairs which are not simply dictated by biology. It is imperative, therefore, to find another response to the evolutionary picture. The real question raised by evolutionary biology and neuroscience is not whether those sciences can be refuted, but whether we can accept what they have to say while still holding on to the beliefs and attitudes that morality demands of us. From Kant and Hegel to Wittgenstein and Husserl, there have been attempts to give a philosophy of the human condition that stands apart from biological science without opposing it. Those great thinkers told us in their several ways that we are both human beings and persons. Human beings form a biological kind, and it is for science to describe that kind. Probably it will do so in the way that the evolutionary psychologists propose. But persons do not form a biological kind, or any other sort of natural kind. The concept of the person is shaped in another way, not by our attempt to explain things but by our attempt to understand, to interact, to hold to account, to relate. The “why?” of personal understanding is not the “why?” of scientific inference. And it is answered by conceptualizing the world under the aspect of freedom and choice. Our world is a palimpsest, and over the book of nature, written in the language of cause and effect, there is another and incommensurable text, written in the language of freedom. We cannot rewrite the book of nature so that it accords with our hopes and ideals, for these have no place in that book. But we can rewrite the book of freedom, and that is where the contests lie. Consider, then, the dispute over gender and gender equality. Liberals do not deny that there are two biologically fixed kinds of human being—the male and the female; but they deny that there are two culturally fixed kinds of person—the masculine and the feminine. For the liberal, the division of roles, rights, and duties that conservatives defend is neither decreed by nature nor endorsed by the moral law. The response of conservatives should be to defend this division of roles, rights, and duties for what it is—the foundation of the most important personal relation that we have, which is the relation that binds a man and a woman in marriage. I don’t think I have ever written a sentence more politically incorrect than that one. Nevertheless, as Galileo was wise enough not to say, if you don’t like it, that’s your problem.
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Facing Up to Darwin
Back in the mid-’90s, Lincoln was riding high. Ford’s primo brand was actually outselling GM’s Cadillac division, which at the time was purveyor of stolid starter caskets to the AARP crowd. It was Lincoln that birthed the idea of taking a big SUV from the lower-key Ford line, chroming everything that wasn’t plastic and then reselling it as a kind of 4×4 McMansion to go into the garages of actual McMansions. You know, the Navigator . On the strength of this monster hit, Lincoln became A Number One, the Duke of New York (and the rest of America, too). Then… nothing. Well, nothing but miscues and debacles like the Blackwood, Aviator, and Mark LT. And misfires like the coulda-been-a-contender LS sedan. That one was genuinely sad. Not because the car was a stinker, but because it wasn’t — and because of what it might have been. It was good-looking — and it was rear-wheel-drive, with a manual transmission available. Instead of developing it, Lincoln just dropped it. Lincoln built lemons — while Cadillac built a better Navigator out of the Chevy Tahoe — and then upped the ante by revamping its entire passenger car lineup to appeal to people who have not fallen and can’t get up. Now Cadillac is A Number One . But Lincoln is apparently not croaked yet. At the Detroit Auto Show, Ford CEO Alan Mulally announced a $1 billion commitment to Lincoln’s revival, and showed the press a new concept car that bears the “DNA” of seven soon-to-be-here Lincoln models, the first reportedly based on the show car and scheduled for production circa 2014. That’s good to hear — but unfortunately, the new car has an old name: MKZ. There is already an MKZ in Lincoln showrooms and the problem is it’s not leaving Lincoln showrooms. At least, nowhere near enough of them are leaving showrooms. In 2011, about 27,529 MKZs found buyers. Total Lincoln production for the year — that is, all of Lincoln’s current models combined — added up to just 85,643 units. It’s a small number in such a big market. Part of the reason why is the current MKZ is too obviously a Ford Fusion with a higher price tag. A much higher price tag: $34k to start vs. about $20k to start for the mere Ford. Just as the current MKS is a tarted-up Taurus. And the MKX is a not-well-disguised Ford Edge. Cadillac, meanwhile, went clean sheet and renamed its new models — none of which (other than the Escalade SUV) shared any “DNA” with mere Chevys. For whatever reason, the public accepts badge-engineered big SUVs like the Tahoe-Suburban based Escalade (and the Expedition-Navigator, which Lincoln of course still sells). But when it comes to cars , not so much. Cadillac tried badge-engineering at a distance by smuggling in a rebadged European GM (Opel), the Catera — calling it the “Caddy that zigs.” Except it didn’t sell . It was only when Cadillac brought out all-new (and Cadillac-exclusive) models like the CTS that the joint really began to jump. Can Lincoln turn things around? Time will tell, of course — but it’s not going to be easy or inexpensive. The lux market is even more competitive now than it was in the ’90s — when the big-name Japanese players were still second-tier players. The MKZ show car has presence. It looks the part. It reminds me of the last Lincoln car I had any interest in — the ’80s-era Mark VII. That car was a looker and a runner. And so, it sold. Then Lincoln screwed the pooch with the Mark VIII – a bathtub-looking oddity that never caught on and which ended up killing off what had been a very successful franchise. Arguably, Lincoln’s demise as a premium car brand can be traced back to the disastrous redesign of the Mark series — which ended with the cancellation of the slow-selling Mark VIII after a mediocre five-year run in 1998. Lincoln never recovered its mojo and other than the Navigator blip, it’s been a slow-slide into also-ran status for Ford’s once-proud luxury nameplate. So, here’s to hoping the 2014 MKS is more than a really nice next gen Fusion. And maybe change the name, too.
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Lincoln’s Future… If There’s a Future
He is still the favorite to win. He is the incumbent President of the United States. He flies on a big blue airplane that gives him free media exposure whenever he lands. He gets to bring along politicians with whom he can curry favor. It is hard to pick off an incumbent President. But there are warning signs on the horizon for Mr. Obama. It is not just a sagging economy that may actually be on the way down, not up. Battleground state voters are leaving the Democratic Party. According to National Journal , “Over 825,000 registered Democrats in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina and Pennsylvania have departed the party rolls since President Obama’s election in 2008.” USA Today reports that Republicans have become resurgent in key swing states too. “Since the heady days of 2008, a new USA TODAY/Gallup Swing States Poll finds the number of voters who identify themselves as Democratic or Democratic-leaning in these key states has eroded, down by 4 percentage points, while the ranks of Republicans have climbed by 5 points.” Republican voters are also paying more attention and are more engaged. In key swing states, Obama trails both Romney and Gingrich. “But wait,” the television pitch man might say, “there’s more!” A Harvard University survey “of more than 2,000 young voters, age 18 to 29, finds their support for Obama, so crucial to his 2008 victory, has dwindled.” The kids still like their Obamessiah more than they generic Republican, but they think he is going to lose. An Associated Press-GfK poll “finds a majority of American adults (52%) say the Democrat should be defeated come Nov. 6, while only 43% say he deserves a second term.” And Obama’s divide and conquer strategy of pitting haves and have-nots against each other might not work. In addition to it running against the grain of the individualist DNA Americans have in them, a new Gallup poll suggests Obama’s class warfare strategy might actually backfire. It is always hard to beat an incumbent. But Barack Obama is making it easier than it has been since Carter was President.
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Bad News for Barack Obama’s Re-Election
Naturally it appears at National Review Online in Jim Geraghty’s Campaign Spot titled “Newt Gingrich Said What ?” A sample In June 2005, the New York Times raved about a “balanced and thoughtful” report from a bipartisan task force headed by Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, declaring, “Lawmakers should take the time to at least thumb through this report, especially those who have been demanding Secretary General Kofi Annan’s resignation, supporting the ill-conceived nomination of John Bolton as the United States ambassador to the United Nations and backing the latest benighted attempt to withhold America’s legally obligated dues.” In October 2005, Gingrich called for “universal but confidential” DNA testing. In April 2006, Gingrich appeared to suggest that too many U.S. troops were in Iraq. I’m sure there is an army of gnomes out there, this very instant, researching every exotic statement Gingrich has uttered in his career. This will be a full employment plan not only for those gnomes but their children because every time Gingrich has had a thought he has told a newspaper somewhere about it. In the long run, I think this exercise is a wash because anyone who supports Gingrich has already factored in his stream of consciousness style.
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Latest Gingrich Oppo Dump
