QOTD

Yuval Levin on The Corner:

[T]he left actually has a much more complicated set of problems with science that are explored far more rarely than those of the right. Scientific advance, for instance, is the great engine behind capitalism, and is in that respect responsible for much that the left has disliked about the west since the 18th century. Much of what progressives oppose is precisely progress. Science, extended beyond its appropriate bounds, is also the chief contemporary threat to our continued allegiance to the principle of human equality, which has been at the heart of the liberal worldview. Put simply, science seems to demonstrate we are not equal--this after all is the problem many on the left had with The Bell Curve. Of course, it only seems that way if you take a very peculiar view of what the principle of equality actually is. We are equal not in our natural capacities--obviously we are not all equally strong, or smart, or tall, or healthy--but in our standing as human beings in relation to something higher than ourselves. But the left is no longer well equipped to offer that defense of equality, since it requires all manner of premises they have given up. And so it has little defense to offer, and grows open to the temptations of the case for inequality, with its attendant abuses of the weak. . .

None of this is to say the left has abandoned equality, or the weak. Only that the notion that science is a cause of the left is much more complicated and problematic than it seems in our politics these days. Those on the left, like Al Gore in his new book, who assert sole ownership of "reason" or "science" should think hard about the fine print.