Cato employee Jason Kuznicki found my questions about evolution and climate change “patronizing”, but he was kind enough to answer them. So I have another question for him: can he tell me why he thinks Will Wilkinson and Brink Lindsey are no longer at Cato?
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mistermix
I believe that question has been asked and unanswered for a while over at the League.
DougJ®
I’ve asked it at least once before.
BGinCHI
He thinks “human activities” caused it?
Like shuffleboard? Or a cake walk?
It’s just like the pivot in question #1: evolution is correct, but it can’t tell us how life started.
What is it with these fucking guys? They’re like high school contrarians who always have to disagree even if they agree, just to show that they have an identity.
eldorado
i’m assuming brink linksey was fired for having the first name of brink.
Warren Terra
You’re not being fair to him if you don’t include his follow-up comment:
And by “fair” I mean “just”, not “generous” or “kind”, because with that first one he gives the game away. The implication of DougJ’s comment was clear: the Conservative consensus, Doug implies, is that evolution is not true and (especially) that anthropogenic climate change is not true. It’s really pretty trivial to find dozens of elected Republicans and Conservative “thinkers” who enthusiastically promote these notions. Kuznicki’s rejoinder is to put forward the Stalin slander (can you find one elected Democrat who’s even inclined to the slightest ambiguity in their condemnation of Stalin? any significant opinion leader?); the “individual broccoli mandate” – but not in terms of its constitutionality, only its desirability, which essentially no-one will defend; and fair-trade coffee. Of all of these, only the last approaches reasonableness, and it’s not like one can’t buy cheaper coffee and apply the savings to social justice in other ways. Actually, I thought it’s the libertarians who are supposed to support the marketing of fair-trade coffee as an alternative to regulation.
gex
@BGinCHI: As I said in the other thread. People on the conservative side of the spectrum believe that nothing can be really known except that which the Bible or their mangled version of Adam Smith tells them.
gex
I’m pretty sure this winter’s extreme weather is because of extreme Stalinism that the Dems refuse to denounce. Those bastards!
freelancer
@BGinCHI:
That’s actually not a hedge. There are many hypotheses on the origin of life: self-replicating molecules and such, just not proven (yet).
mr. whipple
Tough shit. Call the private sector whaaaambulance.
gex
Geez, I’d denounce Stalinism if anyone on the left were advocating it. Libertarians don’t get to use the Tea Bagger redefined version of the word that makes anything on the communist spectrum exactly equivalent to whatever the Democrats are doing.
I will, however, denounce willful obtuseness.
BGinCHI
@Warren Terra: Shorter Kuznicki: Just because a majority of people on our side of the political fence are stupid doesn’t mean we’re stupid.
Superluminar
Um…i’m not a libertarian by any means — in fact i identify as a socia1st — but here you’re asking someone to publically criticize their fucking employers for terminating other employees’ contracts. In what world do you think that would work out well for the person doing the complaining?
I find much of JK’s writing to be glib, but I can’t blame him for not wanting to shit publically on his source of income.
BGinCHI
@freelancer: What?
It’s the Origin of Species, dude, not the Origin of Life. Darwin’s theories are about development.
Hunter Gathers
We should start a “Let’s get these libertarians laid so they’ll finally shut the fuck up” fund. Since there is no way that we could convince their mothers to actually love them, getting them prostitutes is clearly the only way they’ll close their neck holes.
By the way, when was the last time libertarians condemned slavery?
Steve
Maybe DougJ’s post was a cheap shot at conservatives (not in my book, but what do I know). But why would someone who says “I’m not a conservative” be offended by it?
DougJ®
@Superluminar:
He opened himself up to it by going on and on about how he’s not paid to say what the Koch brothers want him to say and so on. He should have kept his mouth shut then if he’s going to keep his mouth shut now.
eyelessgame
@Warren Terra: This. This this this.
They really think creationism and AGW-denialism is equivalent, in political power, to pro-Stalinist communism. In this country.
How can we even have a discussion with people who are that reality-disabled? What the fucking fuck?
gwangung
@BGinCHI:
Quoted for truth.
And that’s pretty much the attitude of the leaders of the Republican Party.
freelancer
@Warren Terra:
Well we’re talking to guys who write for the League, so it’s fair to ask…
1. Do you reject Zoroaster?
2. And all his works?
The Stalin thing makes ZERO sense. I was going to say that Stalin has as much to do with the “Left” as Libertarianism has to do with Somalia, but then that doesn’t jive because the Libertarian/Somalia comparision is actually somewhat valid.
freelancer
@BGinCHI:
Maybe you didn’t see it and we talked past each other, but you and I are arguing the same point.
Gin & Tonic
Given that Stalin was more-or-less directly responsible for the deaths of many of my relatives, sure, I will denounce it. What is the motherfucking point, though? I haven’t heard anyone with a functioning brain cell advocating *for* Stalinism.
The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts
I think there’s a misreading of JK’s followup response in the comments, as I mentioned on Cole’s follow-up post.
Warren Terra
@The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts:
Hey, Cole stole my comment!
And Cole wrote a whole post about it complete with bar graphs, all inside five minute of my posting the comment! It is of course impossible that he independently had a reaction to JK’s absurd follow-up similar to my own.
Superluminar
@DougJ
jesus christ dude! Please look at that comment again and tell us how what you said constitutes a valid argument. I normally love your posts, and i see what you’re trying to do here strategically, but you are waaay off base with this shit dude.
joe from Lowell
I’m sorry he finds them patronizing. It really should be true that those questions are incredibly easy for conservatives, that only a tiny fraction of them would have the slightest trouble getting them right, and that feeling the need to ask them demonstrates an unfair and inaccurate perception of most conservatives’ knowledge, intelligence, and reasonableness.
But, you see, none of those things are true. Most – yes, most, the majority, over half – of conservatives can’t or won’t answer those questions correctly.
That’s sad, but it’s not DougJ’s fault.
DougJ®
@Superluminar:
I’ve asked him this question before.
BGinCHI
@freelancer: Oops. Apologies. Wasn’t trying to be snarky….
Arclite
It was good of him to give sane answers to obvious questions. And good for him to recognize that the warming is anthropogenic.
I AM VERY curious what the equiv questions are on the liberal side. Is there dogma that liberals take at face value that flies in the face of observed reality?
maus
@joe from Lowell:
It’s the Andrew Sullivan brand of conservative libertarian. Oh gosh, we’re all smart! It’s those other guys, we’re the silent majority!
No, you aren’t.
maus
@Arclite:
I appreciate that the only counter that they have is the huffpo brand of antivax and homeopathic bullshit, which the vast amount of Liberals don’t actually believe (the same percentages, I’m sure are found in Conservative circles.)
Arclite
@maus: Is the anti vaccine stuff a liberal position? I guess you do see some “granolas” adopting the position, but definitely not majorities. Also, too: aren’t there religious conservatives that don’t get vaccinated (Jehovah’s Witnesses or something, I forget which ones refuse medical treatment)?
But by and large, I thought Pro Vaccine was the pro science position, which is a “liberal” position.
themann1086
Also too, fuck him for bringing Rawls into this. He’s not fit to clean Rawls’ corpse.
E.D. Kain
@Superluminar: Yes, this. DougJ – do you publicly speculate about the decisions of your employers? Does it make you somehow less intellectually honest because you choose not to?
cthulhu
@maus: I have been trying to think what would be something that a majority or sizable minority of liberals believe counter to available facts and I couldn’t come up with anything. Now certainly there are such blocks when the facts are ambiguous or mixed or unavailable. For example, I would guess that most liberals assume some, maybe many, innocent people have been put to death in the recent era of capital punishment but one might be hard-pressed to PROVE this with available information (though certainly a few suggestive cases exist).
scarshapedstar
God, so much whining over there, and from ostensibly reasonable people who don’t even need to be asked these condescending questions. Y so sensitive?
I don’t think I’ve seen “When did you stop beating your wife?” invoked so many times since the last time I trolled a pro-lifer with the classic “if you were in a burning fertility clinic and there was a petri dish containing 1,000 zygotes on one side and a three-year-old on the other, and you could only save one, which would you save?”
The correct answers are “yes” and “yes”, guys. I thought these questions were meant to be an olive branch, as in “See? We’re united against the pants-on-head-retarded teabaggers!” Instead, they stirred up the Al Gore Is Fat Chorus.
scarshapedstar
@Superluminar:
Let’s recap (paraphrasing)
DougJ: You never say anything that might piss off your Koch overlords.
JasonK: I’m free to write whatever I want.
DougJ: Great! Then explain why they fired the last guys who pissed them off.
Superluminar: Dude, he can’t explain THAT! Geez!
DougJ: Then why’d he say he’s free to write whatever he wants?
Superluminar: Whuh?
At least that’s what I’ve taken from this exchange…
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@E.D. Kain: Yeah DougJ! Do you claim to be free to speculate about the motives of your employers and then coincidentally ‘choose’ clam up when touchy subjects arise?
Huh? (pokes in the chest) Do ya?
Given the quasi-journalist role political bloggers play and public-intellectual posturing that you pompous asses over @ LOOG traffic in, yes. Kuznicki is less intellectually honest. It makes him a quisling coward to boot.
chopper
@Gin & Tonic:
yeah, this. that was one big fucking red herring outta kuznicki.
DougJ®
@E.D. Kain:
I don’t go on and on defending them.
Jason has two choices: not claim he’s free to say whatever he wants at Cato or not clam up when he’s asked a question about Cato he doesn’t like.
He can’t have it both ways.
Pococurante
WTF is it with you these days DougJ.
He’s right, he does.
How lovely that BJ now has its own version of Jesse Watters.
chopper
@Pococurante:
so dougj asks a general question of the entire league as well as ‘other conservative blogs’, and the fact that one dude at the league has already talked about the subject means doug is a big jerk.
apparently jason thinks he is the entire LoOG. fits in with the holier-than-thou superiority bullshit that flies over there i guess.
scarshapedstar
@Pococurante:
He wasn’t directly addressed and, indeed, titled his post “I’m not a conservative…”
But, sure, he can join the reasonable list. *dusts off hands* What about the rest of ’em? Their silence is deafening, and we can only hold back the Glennuendo for so long.
Jason Kuznicki
But I can have it both ways. Everyone does!
I am given wide discretion to comment on matters of public policy. See my most recent Cato Policy Analysis, in which I argue that there is a reasonable role for the state in the institution of marriage. “Privatize it” was for years the Cato line, and I dissented. That’s perfectly allowed.
I am not, however, given wide discretion to comment on personnel matters at the Cato Institute, which are not matters of public policy.
This is for three reasons.
First, doing so would be terrible professional etiquette wherever I worked, as several people have already noted. I strongly agree with Superluminar @12.
Second, I had no role whatsoever in the decision. This is not unusual when someone’s supervisor (Will) and their supervisor’s supervisor (Brink) depart. I know very little, what I have to go on is not necessarily reliable, and my responsibility in the matter was nil. You should be unsurprised that I have nothing much to add.
Third, those who know more than I do are still free to comment, if they wish. If you’re honestly wanting answers, take it up with them. I believe Brink himself discussed it in a video on Bloggingheads. That might be a good place to start.
Jason Kuznicki
@BGinCHI:
If you’d read the entire comment on the origin of life, you would know that my “pivot” existed only as a setup to deny any possible form of Bible-based creationism.
I wrote:
Read that last part again and again, quietly to yourself, until you understand. I’m an atheist, and I don’t think the Bible tells us anything useful about the for-now mysterious origins of life. If anything does eventually tell us, it will be science.
scarshapedstar
Jason,
I’d actually kinda quibble with
I think it’s quite unfair to tar as unscientific anyone who says they have a good theory as to the origin of life.
It’s been demonstrated that nucleotides can form spontaneously and abiotically from numerous compounds (e.g. formamide) in the presence of heat and UV. It’s been demonstrated that you need at most (probably less, but nobody’s found a shorter sequence yet) 165 bases of RNA to create a self-replicating ribozyme which satisfies pretty much every requirement of life (after all, organisms are just temporary housing for genes).
Sometimes people hedge so much that you can’t really be sure they believe what they’re saying, is all.