Supporters of Darwin’s theory continue to distinguish themselves on America’s college campuses—not for their reason and logic, but for their incredible ill manners and an almost pathological inability to engage in civil discussion. Last week, a factually-challenged attack on intelligent design was published in The Nevada Sagebrush, the student newspaper at the University of Nevada, Reno. Nothing new in that; I see ill-informed articles on intelligent design all the time. But after my colleague Rob Crowther posted a short comment suggesting that readers might actually want to hear from intelligent design proponents themselves (imagine that!), the Darwinist thought-police came out in force. One writer who is so courageous that he hides behind the pseudonym “bobxxxx” fulminated:
Robert Crowther… and the rest of the theocratic morons of the Dishonesty Institute are traitors who want to destroy America’s science education. If it was up to me they would be put in prison for treason. They are enemies of America, no better than terrorists, and they should be treated like terrorists.
Traitors? Terrorists? Enemies of America? ID proponents should be “put in prison” for freely expressing their views?!! Perhaps the University of Nevada should consider requiring its students to take a course on the First Amendment. It’s pretty obvious that some of them don’t understand the value of free speech.
When another person had the temerity to observe on the newspaper’s website that “anti-Intelligent Design advocates often post nasty, name calling, ignorant, and often just plain slanderous comments on websites but the ID support[er]s rarely respond in kind,” he provoked a denunciation from someone calling himself “Jumbalaya,” who opined:
In the early 1940s, many of the German militants occupying France were known to be real polite as well. But you know what…?
THEY WERE STILL NAZIS!
Good manners don’t excuse ID supporters for the filth they’re pushing to the public.
This is not free speech; it’s an attempt to suppress free speech by demonizing and intimidating others so they will be afraid to speak up. I have a suggestion for the Darwinist purveyors of such hate speech: If you really want to identify the opponents of a free society, try looking in the mirror.