They seem like us, and yet they are not.
Hey, just who is this
David Llewellyn, the lawyer Raghu Mathur hired to defend the district in the SOCCCD “prayer” lawsuit?
Well, among other things, Mr. L is on the staff of a Sacramento radio show and webpage called
In the Public Square.
IPS's website offers a handy and informative “statement of purpose”:
IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE … is a talk radio program hosted by John Snyder that is broadcast on KTKZ 1380 AM in Sacramento … It is also a webpage organization aimed at engaging secular audiences in conversation about contemporary issues, culture and politics.... In the Public Square exists to provide an intelligent and genial forum for the discussion of important issues in contemporary life from a Christian perspective….
CIVILITY 'R' US. Sounds good. IPS also embraces “civility,” “eschewing ad hominems and invectives and slander.”
IPS host
John Snyder is described as having a “country-fried attitude imported from the red states.”
Beyond Snyder, IPS has a staff of a dozen or so, including someone named “Mr. Curmudgeon,” who is described as “abrasive and irascible.”
And Mr. L? David Llewellyn is called “Mr. Constitution,” and he is IPS’s “declared ‘generalist’ and commentator on all things legal and cultural.”
THE LAW AND EVOLUTION. On the IPS website, I found one “paper” and two commentaries written by Llewellyn. The paper, entitled
“Evolution, Public Education and the Law” (9/12/08), lays out the history of what L calls the “Lincoln-Darwin Debate” as it has played out in the U.S. courts.
Lincoln, says L, embraced noble “self-evident” truths and rights provided by God. Darwin, on the other hand, spurted forth a very different ideology, one that has also had immense social impact.
What is that ideology? Well,
[Darwin discovered] the scientific principle of natural selection, thereby establishing the theory of evolution, which has become the prevailing scientific explanation of the origins of the universe, life and human life, without need for the intervention of a Creator God.
In today’s America, says L, the debate continues to rage between the Lincolnian
“conceived in liberty”-“created equal” philosophy and “the social influence of the central tenet of evolution, ‘survival of the fittest.’”
LLEWELLYN DOESN'T GET IT. Uh-oh. Already it is evident that L doesn’t understand Darwin’s science. “Natural selection” (or evolution, the phenomenon that natural selection helps to explain) is not an attempt to explain “the origins of the universe, life and human life.” It is, rather, a mechanism to account for the apparent fact of evolution (i.e., the apparent fact that species change over time).
How can L not know that?
Darwinian biology does not exclude God, for it has a limited scope. It does not offer a view regarding that which it does not seek to explain, e.g., the origin of life or the universe.
And in what sense is “survival of the fittest” the “central tenet” of evolution? (By the way, the phrase is not Darwin’s.) It seems to me that “survival of the fittest” is a rough approximation of the
result of natural selection, a mindless process of change driven by random variations in the context of competition for survival.
Well, whatever.
At one point, L declares that “People can and do believe in biological evolution who reject the philosophy and cultural influence of social Darwinism.”
“Social Darwinism”? My Mac's dictionary defines the phrase as follows:
the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals. Now largely discredited, social Darwinism was advocated by Herbert Spencer and others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform.
No surprise there. Those familiar with the historical philosophy of Social Darwinism are aware that it is not to be confused with Darwin’s science, which, as Darwin himself understood, was incapable of justifying some action or practice (such as racism or exploitation).
But L seems to use the phrase to refer to the alleged Darwinian philosophy in the above debate or to modern evolution-based biology.
Could it be that L is unaware of the meaning of the term “social Darwinism”?
Maybe he thinks that there's some
other influential philosophy, which he mistakenly labels "social Darwinism," that is erroneously associated with Darwin's science. Maybe so. But then what's his beef with Darwin? (It seems to me that the one group who can be counted on to misinterpret Darwin is L's own anti-evolution bunch.)
I have not read the rest of this lengthy paper, though, in perusing it, I gather that L is sympathetic to the idea that “evolution” isn’t science but is in fact an ideology or religion.
Good grief. It's science. (And insisting that it's "just a theory" is just confused.)
They know nothing, and yet they are confident.
SARCASTIC CIVILITY? One of L’s commentaries on the IPS website is pleasantly entitled
“Thank God for the Disdainful Mouthiness of the Left” (9/12/08). Despite IPS’s professed fidelity to civility and eschewery of ad hominems, their man L here discusses the “MSM” (aka “main stream media”) and its “snarling” contempt for Sarah Palin. The “Left,” says L, responded to Palin’s prayers about the war in Iraq as follows:
"There is no God, to have a will, to favor a war, to free the oppressed — and all of the biblical prophets to the contrary be damned," they [the Left or the MSM] have pontificated. (Author’s free translation.)
L snidely suggests that the Left/MSM sees itself as God:
they believe that they are god…, that their Creation myth pronouncements of "Let there be President Barack Obama, and it was so" and "they saw President Obama, and it was very good," are the words of god, that all people must bow down before them and worship the one-eyed glowing idol in their living rooms upon which they appear….
I think he's pissed.
The ever-civil Mr. L ends with: “Well, at least the Left still have their irreligion and anti-gun moral superiority to cling to.”
In another commentary (
Thirteen Reasons to Hate Governor Sarah Palin [9/5/08]), L directs still more sarcasm at the “left” and the “media”—again for their criticism of then-VP candidate Sarah Palin, whom L clearly admires. (He thinks she’s
smart.)
Some leftists, alleges L, have criticized Palin’s decision to carry on with the campaign despite her responsibilities to her newborn and to her pregnant daughter.
L fumes:
Imagine that Chelsea Clinton got pregnant and someone suggested that Senator Hillary Clinton was disqualified to run for President because she had an unmarried, pregnant daughter. Preposterous, right? But the blind rage of the Left makes that argument unabashedly, and idiotically, against Governor Palin. ... Should all women quit their jobs if their daughters get pregnant? That’s what the Left and its media commentators are saying, apparently unconcerned for their runaway hypocrisy. It’s insulting to all women, liberal as well as conservative, and dangerously lunatic. Who can trust these people to think rationally on any controversial social or political issue?
The left, says L, is
blind, idiotic, hypocritical, lunatic, and irrational.
And that’s just one paragraph! How’s that for civility?
Mr. Pyne seemed mean and rotten. He did not reach the age of 50.
Who can explain him?
Mr. L's logic ain't so hot either. In making his charge of hypocrisy against the left, remarkably, Mr. Llewellyn ignores two facts: (1) Palin herself has a new child and (2) though Chelsea Clinton is nearly 30 years old, Palin’s daughter is a teenager.
Same difference, I guess.
L also notes that Palin has a 19-year-old son in the military who is ipso facto “better qualified than Barack Obama to be commander-in-chief.”
Wow. That's some logic.
Mr Llewellyn believes in strong finishes. He ends his commentary with a real doozy:
“The Left ignored Alaska , and now the wicked Queen of the West has arisen to trouble their dreams of one-world domination.”
Yeah, that's my dream. I wanna dominate. Just one world though. Don't need two.
