Curt Schilling the Science Guy

by William McGurn,

From climate change to restrooms, Democrats are increasingly the anti-science party.

Let us stipulate that ESPN, as a private institution, was entirely within its rights to have sacked Curt Schilling for his combative Facebook post on the continuing national saga that is North Carolina restrooms. Let’s stipulate too that the way the former Red Sox pitcher advanced his case—sharing a meme featuring a grotesque fat man in a blonde wig pretending to be a woman—was not the line of argument that, say, William F. Buckley would have chosen.

But let us also note the irony. Mr. Schilling’s main contention—“a man is a man no matter what they call themselves”—is supported by DNA and those pesky X and Y chromosomes. In short, in this fight between science and authority, Mr. Schilling is in the amusing position of being the Galileo, with ESPN filling in for the Holy Office.

Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, puts it this way: “Curt Schilling is of course correct with the science in saying that claiming to be a woman when you have the chromosomal and anatomical structures of a man does not make you such. You’re still a man no matter what you think or how you dress.”

It’s an interesting detail that has gone largely unaddressed since Mr. Schilling delivered his knuckleball. Nor is it hard to see why. For it contradicts the dominant narrative in which Democrats take their positions from a clear-eyed look at the science while Republicans are blinded by their religious, social and economic orthodoxies.

This was the trope Barack Obama invoked in his maiden inaugural address, when he promised to “restore science to its rightful place.” Well, the American people have now had almost eight years of it. Turns out that restoring-science-to-its-rightful-place comes with its own set of dogmas and orthodoxies.

It’s not just letting men into women’s restrooms, either. On a host of issues, upholding the progressive catechism these days apparently requires seeking out and punishing heretics too.

Start with climate change. It may well be, as Barack Obama declared in Paris in December, when he committed the U.S. to the global war on temperature, that “99.5 percent of scientists and experts” believe man-made climate change a fact and that “we have to do something about it.” His eventual presidential successor, he suggested, must never question this consensus.

Is there anything more inimical to the spirit of science than the idea of squelching further inquiry, freezing our existing understanding in place and silencing opposition? Because this is precisely what such phrases as “settled science” or “scientific consensus” are designed to do.

Indeed, in this climate (pun intended), we now have moves to criminalize scientific dissent. Only last month, a collection of state attorneys general met with activists to discuss ways to go after Exxon for its alleged heterodoxy on global warming.

Which hints at the real game, which is less about the earth’s warming than the hope that green enthusiasms can be used to push through a progressive economic and regulatory agenda with few questions asked.

Or take abortion. In progressive dogma, the right to abort a fetus is not only settled science but settled law, which means you’re not only not allowed to question it, you must not stray from the approved vocabulary.

For example, if a couple is happy about a pregnancy, the two are perfectly free to share sonograms with friends and relatives and celebrate the pending arrival of their unborn child. But if this child is to be aborted, any talk of “person” or “child” becomes verboten, lest folks get too accurate an idea of what is happening.

Alas, even the truest believers slip up. So it was earlier this month on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when Hillary Clinton—who has in this election dumped the word “rare” from the earlier “safe, legal, and rare” Clinton formula on abortion—referred to the “unborn person” as having no constitutional rights.

Each election season, the American people are treated to Republican candidates who fumble badly when challenged on, say, evolution or abortion. Fair enough. But the president and his allies also have orthodoxies that limit their openness to free inquiry and objective reality. The difference is these go largely unchallenged outside the conservative press.

Wouldn’t it be entertaining if someone would ask President Obama if Curt Schilling is right or wrong about the science?

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