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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29257 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Anyone want to talk about test cases? Rosa Parks' name has come up again to remind us that there is a group of people who didn't know the incident was staged by the NAACP as a way to put segregation on trial. I hope that everyone knows test cases are a thing and I'm a little curious what percentage of the famous judicial cases this would apply to. I guess it tarnishes people's fuzzy feelings about the scrappy individual with pure motives facing off against evil oppression but it doesn't change the facts of the case. Personally I have the impression that the judicial system is skewed against the poor and un-savvy and rewards those who have resources behind them and know how to work the system. So it does seem to the outsider as if everyone could benefit from having an organization behind them to raise attention and mount a strong defense. Rosa Parks may have been one person but her case ended up helping the many not-so-sympathetic individuals who were also victims of the unjust system. So when you hear about a high profile case, does it matter if the person was specifically set up as a test case, and if it matters, why?

I recognize correctly-enacted laws as the rightful rulers of man, which makes me a small-r republican, despite my libertarian beliefs. Test cases smack of trickery, propaganda, and total war between cultures, and have the feel of a play or other fiction where people like me are sneeringly portrayed as the bad guy.

I dislike such guerrilla lawfare mostly because they involve someone breaking the law on purpose, even though I applaud the pragmatic attempts to clear out wrong-headed laws and the clever use of the system to change the system. They make it seem like the law is just there to punish people who disagree, not to protect society from malice.

Ironically, my family was involved in one of the most famous test cases of all time. A new civil liberties group, formed to push back against anti-Communist overreach, was shopping around for a case to test Tennessee’s law against teaching evolution, and in the process make their name.

Scopes' involvement in the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial came about after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that it would finance a test case challenging the constitutionality of the Butler Act if they could find a Tennessee teacher who was willing to act as a defendant.

A band of businessmen in Dayton, Tennessee, led by engineer and geologist George Rappleyea, saw this as an opportunity to get publicity for their town, and they approached Scopes. Rappleyea pointed out that while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching of human evolution, the state required teachers to use the assigned textbook, Hunter's Civic Biology (1914), which included a chapter on evolution. Rappleyea argued that teachers were essentially required to break the law. When asked about the test case, Scopes was initially reluctant to get involved. After some discussion he told the group gathered in Robinson's Drugstore, "If you can prove that I've taught evolution and that I can qualify as a defendant, then I'll be willing to stand trial."

He admitted to a reporter that he knew he had skipped the chapter on evolution, but the reporter held back the story until after the appeal had been decided in Scopes’ favor.

A relative of mine, Harvard geologist Kirtley F. Mather, was very familiar with Creationist arguments against evolution, so he and Darrow practiced some questioning with Mather portraying one.

Kirtley Mather, a descendant of Increase Mather and Cotton Mather, famous for their involvement with the Salem Witch Trials, later founded an anti-propaganda group, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. It was shuttered during WWII, and has at least one successor organization. The Motte has a lot in common with the IPA, which pushed back against culture war overreach in its day.

A new civil liberties group, formed to push back against anti-Communist overreach, was shopping around for a case to test Tennessee’s law against teaching evolution, and in the process make their name.

Ironically, as I said above, I think this was a Pyrrhic victory. The new group probably did make their name, but this whole case gave impetus to the groups believing Christianity was being oppressed and the power of the state was being used to crush it. That this is still a live issue in schools in certain parts astounds me; my biology teacher was a nun and we certainly never skipped the chapter on evolution. Then we said the Angelus if science class was being held when it was 12 o'clock noon. There was no conflict, and certainly no "The Bible says..." one way or the other.

Does teaching evolution in k-12 classrooms matter very much for non-sacred-cow reasons? Creationists have enough epicycles in their model that it gives the same results as evolution, except for a few edge cases, and anyone who’s majoring in biology is taking evolution classes anyways.

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