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At The Atlantic, Julian E. Zelizer writes—Is America Repeating the Mistakes of 1968?

Today, America has a president who understands the urgent need to address the problems of institutional racism that have been broadcast to the entire world through smartphones and exposés of a racialized criminal-justice system. But this conflict is taking shape right in the middle of a heated election season—one that includes a candidate who has made draconian proposals for national security and who appeals to the “Silent Majority.” Following the events in Dallas, Donald Trump released a statement that read: “We must restore law and order. We must restore the confidence of our people to be safe and secure in their homes and on the street.”

This is not the first time this has happened. When questions over race and policing were front and center in a national debate in 1968, the federal government failed to take the steps necessary to make any changes. The government understood how institutional racism was playing out in the cities and how they exploded into violence, but the electorate instead was seduced by Richard Nixon’s calls for law and order, as well as an urban crackdown, leaving the problems of institutional racism untouched. Rather than deal with the way that racism was inscribed into American institutions, including the criminal-justice system, the government focused on building a massive carceral state, militarizing police forces, criminalizing small offenses, and living through repeated moments of racial conflict exploding into violence.

In July 1967, during the aftermath of the devastating race riots in Detroit, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey—each of which started after incidents of police brutality against African Americans—President Lyndon Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known popularly as the Kerner Commission (for the chairman, Otto Kerner), to examine the roots of the violence. The rioting had taken place at a politically fraught time for Johnson. Southern Democrats and Republicans were leading a resurgence of the conservative coalition following the midterm elections of 1966. The disastrous Vietnam War had consumed all of the president’s remaining political capital, and conservatives on Capitol Hill were forcing him to make a decision between spending for guns or butter. Meanwhile, the civil-rights crusade had splintered, with the Black Power movement insisting that activists needed to take a bolder stand on issues like housing discrimination, policing, and unemployment.

Desperate to do something, but not in a position to do much more than defend his existing accomplishments, Johnson created the high-profile commission. The president stacked the commission with established political figures who were moderate and committed to the existing economic and political system. He wanted them to demonstrate to the public that the administration took the problems seriously—but he also wanted them to avoid recommendations that would embarrass him. Johnson was deeply cognizant of the economic and racial problems afflicting cities, but he felt that there was not much more he could do politically at that moment in time. Which is why the first version of the report was killed.

Commission staffers had produced a blistering and radical draft report on November 22, 1967. The 176-page report, “The America of Racism,” recounted the deep-seated racial divisions that shaped urban America, and it was damning about Johnson’s beloved Great Society programs, which the report said offered only token assistance while leaving the “white power structure” in place. What’s more, the draft treated rioting as an understandable political response to racial oppression. “A truly revolutionary spirit has begun to take hold,” they wrote, “an unwillingness to compromise or wait any longer, to risk death rather than have their people continue in a subordinate status.” Kerner then nixed the report, and his staff director fired all 120 social scientists who had worked on it. 

Nevertheless, the final Kerner Report was still incredibly hard-hitting: “This is our basic conclusion: Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

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At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—House Republicans plan to throw as many as three million people off food assistance: 

Poverty is never a life status to aspire to, but it seems to be getting harder and harder to avoid, and increasingly punishing if you're there. With austerity so in vogue these days, it's getting even worse. Last month, the Senate passed a Farm Bill that slashes food assistance through the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) by $4.5 billion over the next decade.

"Oh, yeah?" said the House Agriculture Committee. "We'll just up that by about about $12 billion more." In that post, Laura Clawson explained who exactly this would hit. If you're a family of three, and have total income of more than $24,100 annually, you'd be out of luck. And food.

Last weekend I attended the 2016 Socialism Conference here in Chicago. This four day event featured more than 100 panel discussions on topics ranging from the state of the Chinese economy, to Marxist critical theory, Donald Trump and Right-wing populism, social movements, the Bernie Sanders campaign, and the political economy of birth and death. This is the second year in a row that I have attended this event. As I did last year, I found the conference to be intellectually stimulating and the speakers, for the most part, quite compelling.

While wandering about the conference, I thought about the irony (hypocrisy?) that is a group of Marxists conducting a four day meeting over the July 4^th weekend where they discuss “revolution” and social change in a building complex named for an American isolationist and newspaper tycoon and owned by a multi-billion dollar corporation.    

I was also annoyed and more than a bit angered by how too many people do not understand the difference between making a speech and asking a question. Of course, this is ultimately the moderator’s fault.  It is their job to clamp down on the mix of egotistic grandstanding, social anxiety, and rudeness that drives some attendees to become confused, thinking that it is they who should be the focus of attention, as opposed to the invited guest panelists, and presumed experts on the topic being discussed.

I also meditated on how Bernie Sanders, as a Democratic Socialist, shares many of the concerns and worries as the organizers of the Socialism 2016. However, Bernie Sanders is not a Marxist; he is an old school Social Democrat. For many of the attendees at Socialism 2016, Sanders is not radical enough. He is an impostor and a fraud whose criticisms of casino capitalism (and the solutions he proposes to fix it) are insufficient. Predictably, many conservatives would lump Sanders and Marxists together as one and the same thing—even though such a conclusion would represent a fundamental error of inference.

And like Sanders, Barack Obama was not spared criticism. The excellent scholars on the Black Politics After Obama panel offered a devastating analysis of the “hope and change” promised by the United States’ first black president Barack Obama and how his two terms in office have done little to improve the life chances of African-Americans.

Moreover, while the election of Obama was a type of symbolic victory in the long Black Freedom Struggle, the African-American community, by most measures, is doing worse of in 2016 than they were when he took office. Black Americans (and others) need to confront this inconvenient and unpleasant truth even while we may have great affection for Barack Obama, the person.

These are impressions and feelings. They are important. But as a social scientist, I almost always find myself compelled back to the data, the hard facts, which can help us to separate what we feel from what we know empirically.

As I left the conference on Sunday, my thoughts kept returning to recent public opinion polls and other research which suggests that in the aftermath of the Great Recession, almost unprecedented wealth and income inequality, and the resurgence of Left-wing populism in the form of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and Occupy Wall Street, that a good number of Americans seem amenable to socialism.

On this question, The Washington Post reports:

In a recent YouGov survey, respondents were asked whether they had a “favorable or unfavorable opinion” of socialism and of capitalism…As you can see, overall, 52 percent expressed a favorable view of capitalism, compared with 29 percent for socialism. Republicans, those in families earning more than $100,000, and people age 65-plus had an especially high regard for capitalism compared with socialism, but respondents in almost every demographic category demonstrated the same preference to some degree.

There were just two exceptions to this pattern: Democrats rated socialism and capitalism equally positively (both at 42 percent favorability). And respondents younger than 30 were the only group that rated socialism more favorably than capitalism (43 percent vs. 32 percent, respectively)…

These divides were amplified by generational differences:

Just 34 percent of respondents age 65 and older said they would be willing to vote for a socialist, compared with about twice that level among respondents younger than 30.

This Gallup question is of course about willingness to vote for a certain kind of candidate, rather than preferences in voting for that kind of candidate vs. another.

To interpret these polls properly they must be placed within a larger political context. Unlike Western Europeans, the American public has long been described by political scientists as “non-ideological”. While extreme party and political polarization exists in the United States at present, most voters do not hold values that cohere neatly within a narrow definition of political ideology. For example, conservatives may say they want a “smaller government” but also want to keep their social security and other benefits. Moreover, when respondents report that they support “socialism” such language may mean different things to different people depending on their levels of political knowledge.

In addition, voters may support policies that involve a more robust social safety net, protections for unions, and a higher minimum wage, but may not necessarily locate such goals relative to a broader political value system that fits neatly within a conservative-liberal dichotomy or continuum.

But ultimately, the socialism I heard discussed at the Socialism 2016 conference is, in many ways, not the “socialism” that a growing number of Americans—in particular young people—want for their country.

I would suggest that what they are giving voice to in their support of “socialism” is a yearning for a fairer, more equal, and just society. The American people want a sense of hope in what feels like an era of hopelessness for their economic futures, those of their children, and communities at large. These desires for economic justice and opportunity are driving the populist wave in the United States (and around the world)—on both the Left and the Right.

In an era where the twin regimes of neoliberalism and the culture of cruelty dominate the United States, this political vision is “radical” even while being soundly within the best parts of the American political tradition.

The notion that the United States government and other elites had a responsibility to protect, grow, and nurture the (white) middle class was central to the policies of a series of American presidents from the pre World War 2 years, to the beginning of the Cold War, and ending in the late 1960s. Of course, initiatives such as the New Deal, and later the G.I. Bill and FHA/VA home mortgage programs were imperfect: for example, they discriminated against African-Americans and other non-whites and helped to buttress Jim and Jane Crow. Nevertheless, they provided a vision of a government where positive freedom and positive liberty were facilitated by economic opportunity and uplift for a good part of the (white) American public.

The New Deal could have been the beginning of an even grander project. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Economic Bill of Rights” would have strengthened the social safety net while helping to protect the human dignity and economic security of the American people. To accomplish such a goal, Roosevelt’s proposed Economic Bill of Rights included the following principles:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• The right to a good education.

These types of policy initiatives were the product of post-World War 2 American prosperity and a very specific arrangement of economics and international power that heavily subsidized the country’s economy and its workers. This past cannot be recreated.

While the power of the neoliberal regime may feel omnipresent there are in fact opportunities for resistance both locally and nationally. The Bernie Sanders campaign is one such site of contestation. The Black Lives Matter movement is another space where people are standing up against power. The successful efforts in states such as California to raise the minimum wage and to provide guaranteed time off are acts of resistance against gangster capitalism as well.

A politics of hope is insufficient. It must be mated with organizing and educating the public about how 1) there are many forms of capitalism and 2) that capitalism, consumerism, and democracy are not necessarily synonymous or interchangeable with one another.

When the American people say that they want “Socialism” what they really mean is a true “We the People” democracy, one that serves all of us equally and not just the 1 percent and other plutocrats.

From time to time over the last several months, an email has shown up in my inbox stating we are living in a simulation or asking what I thought about the idea. That idea has been around for a long time, much longer than the Matrix or cyberpunk sci-fi has been around, much longer that computers have existed. But given the popularity of video games and computer modeling nowadays, it has taken on a more credible wrapping.

The more recent flurry of interest arose mostly from an Oxford philosopher named Nick Bostrom, who proposed the following trilemma in a paper in the Philosophical Quarterly back in 2003:

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation.

If 1 or 2 turn out to be the case, we are not living in a simulation. But if 3 is true then there would be billions, maybe trillions, or trillions of trillions, of high quality simulations carried out in the far future. And therefore, statistically, we are far more likely to be inhabitants of one of those quasi-realities than we would be as creatures in the “real” or “base universe. Come below, my fellow sims!

Thirty years ago, the Battalion Chaplain took each platoon of the 54th Engineer Battalion on a tour of Dachau. Five companies, four platoons each - twenty trips to Dachau. I don't know how he did it. Thirty years ago, when I was nineteen and visited Dachau for the first time, it was a life changing event for me. I grew up on a diet of John Wayne movies, and thought battlefield was where one found glory, where a boy became a man. Where the heroes never died, and good always triumphed over evil.  

After Dachau - I knew that that was all a lie. War, and places like Dachau exist because evil often triumphs over good. I often wonder how the Chaplain was able to go through such a horrible place so many times. Acting as our tour guide, telling us of the atrocities the Nazis had committed. Walking us through a museum that documented the torture, that documented the evils of mankind - day after day for twenty days. During our European trip, I took my son on a tour of Dachau - so he could see the horrors of the holocaust first hand. As we toured the museum, and the barracks, the gas chamber, which was mercifully never used in Dachau, my normally cheerful, thoughtful son grew quieter and more withdrawn. I could see the impact this tour was having upon him.

The sculpture in the photo above depicts prisoners being tangled in the electrified barbed wire fence that encircled the camp. The prisoners were not trying to escape - they were committing suicide. It was their only escape from the constant, never-ending torture that was performed upon them. Death was preferable to them. The SS even took that away from them - they dug a moat around the fence so that the prisoners could no longer fling themselves at the electrified fence and die a relatively painless death (painless as compared to being tortured day in and day out).

In the barracks you see the progression of cruelty, at first the prisoners had an area about the size of a twin mattress, albeit, they were all crammed together. As the years of systematic killing went on the size of the beds shrunk, until finally they were literally sleeping on top of each other.

Above is the entrance to "the showers" at Dachau. As a part of the tour you have to walk through them. While this room, mercifully, was never used at Dachau, rooms like it were used at camps throughout Europe. As you stand in the room where you would have undressed you have to wonder what the victims were thinking - did they think it was an actual shower as it said above the door? Did they know it was their death? Did they welcome death after the abuse they suffered at the hands of the Nazis?

Then you step into the shower room - I cannot describe the feeling. All I knew was that I wanted out of that room as quickly as possible.  

From the gas chamber you enter the room where the bodies were held prior to going into the crematorium. Then you enter the crematorium - which was operated by prisoners (even though the gas chamber was not used, they still had a large number of dead to cremate). The prisoners running the crematorium were separated from the general population of the camp, and every 4-6 weeks the prisoners running the crematorium were killed so they would not be able to tell the other prisoners what was happening.  

The inscription in the photo above is, loosely, “To honor the dead and warn the living." After walking through Dachau a second time, and I hear the rhetoric from America's right-wing, I have to ask, has humanity learned nothing? This is where hatred, fear, and xenophobia leads us, and that is what I hear from America's right-wing. They fear everything, feel they must carry a firearm to protect themselves, they fear immigrants, especially of one religion, and they have irrational hatred for those whose views oppose their own.

I expect to be bombarded with hate filled messages on my Twitter feed telling me how I am wrong, and how I am the hate filled one - the hypocrisy in their posts will be lost on them. It is up to us to make sure what happened in Germany of the 1930s does not happen again here - we must never allow this to happen again, anywhere.

In 2015, the two million annual visitors to California’s Joshua Tree National Park spent almost $97 million in the surrounding communities. Those same visitors created 1,341 job,s which had a cumulative benefit to the local economy of $128 million, according to an April 21, 2016 statement from the National Park Service. And still, knowing how much his constituents rely on the existence of a National Park within his congressional district, Republican Rep. Paul Cook has done everything within his power to hinder any growth of the Park Service, which will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in August.

Paul Cook is one of 20 Republican representatives and senators, known as the Anti-Parks Caucus, who actively work to sell off public lands to private parties for exploitation. The American Legislative Council (ALEC) has led the charge in western states, and broken ground for action on a federal level. Most of the members of the anti-parks caucus are members of the tea party, have been challenged by a tea party candidate, or are in uncompetitive districts where they have little to fear from their failure to represent their constituents. As a result:

A Center for American Progress analysis found that between January 2013 and March 2016 members of Congress filed at least 44 bills or amendments that attempted to remove or undercut protections for parks and public lands—making the 114th Congress the most anti-conservation Congress in recent history.

The Summer Olympic Games are scheduled to start in Rio de Janeiro in a matter of weeks on Aug. 5, and by all accounts, Brazil has an Olympic-size mess on its hands.

The country has been hit hard by Zika, a mosquito-borne virus linked to neurological diseases such as Guillain-Barré syndrome and birth defects such as microcephaly, an abnormal smallness of the brain. Because of Zika, some top-name athletes, such as seven of the world’s top golfers (including No 1-ranked Jason Day), have chosen to skip the Olympics. Other athletes are staying home, claiming “scheduling” or “injury” conflicts, but the reasons may be more Zika-related. Here’s a partial list of other top athletes who will be no-shows in Rio. Some male athletes say they will attend but are considering freezing sperm ahead of time. Some countries are issuing athletes official full-coverage uniforms treated with mosquito repellent.

Zika’s not the only health concern. The raw sewage that flows into Rio’s Guanabara Bay, where open-water swimmers, sailors, and windsurfers are scheduled to compete, is rife with superbacteria. The drug-resistant bacteria can cause skin, urinary, gastrointestinal, and pulmonary infections. These bacteria, usually found in hospital waste, produce an enzyme, KPC, which is resistant to antibiotics.

Brazil’s economy was riding high when the country was awarded the games in 2009—remember when the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russian, India, and China) were the envy of the world? Now, “Brazil is mired in its worst recession since the 1930s,” according to a USA Today story. “Unemployment has reached 10 percent, as has the yearly rate of inflation.”

What else could go wrong? Plenty. The sign at the Rio airport that says “Welcome to Hell” isn’t kidding.

If you are in that glorious corps of political junkies, you probably don’t need me to tell you that there has, to this point, been a fairly sparse amount of state-by-state polling of the provisional November showdown between the presumptive major party nominees: Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. National polling, of course, is a set of data where we enjoy a fairly nice cross-section. But the states, those 51 separate contests on Election Night where we actually get down to the business of actually electing our presidents? Not so much.

If you dig, however, the numbers get a little bit more respectable. I spent the last week or so compiling every state poll pairing Clinton and Trump that I could get my hands on. The final tally was, surprisingly, a bit wider than I thought. Starting with (of all things!) a PPP poll in Kentucky thirteen months ago and continuing through this week, we have had 246 different surveys in the states pairing Trump and Clinton.

Poring over those numbers, what surprised me more than any analysis of the state of play (others have trod this ground, and done it well), was an analysis of which states were getting attention...and which ones were not.

Curiously, a state’s status as a perennially competitive presidential contest seems to have mattered fairly little in the decision on whether or not it got polled. To wit: the state of Utah has been polled nearly twice as many times as Colorado and Nevada...combined.

Follow us past the break to look at the numbers, and to understand why some states get polled more than others, and why competitiveness has little to do with it.

Leading Off

● United Kingdom – referendum on EU membership (June 23)

What happens to a country when its voters, against almost all advice from both elected officials and a wide range of experts, decide to disregard all of it and vote for a nation-defining change anyway? The United Kingdom, the European Union, and the world are now finding out, after the British people voted by a small but definitive 52-48 margin to leave the European Union, consequences be damned. Britons have set their country on a course to a brave new world and can only hope that in the end, they find a better one than Aldous Huxley imagined. But don't hope too hard.

There are many, many angles to explore when it comes to "Brexit," the ugly portmanteau coined to describe the British exit from the EU, so we'll start at the start: Why did U.K. voters vote the way they did? While the few elite voices supporting Brexit often pointed to diminished British sovereignty as a consequence of EU membership, voters themselves overwhelmingly saw Brexit as the only way to control mass immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe. All members of the European Union are part of a single economic market, of which a key pillar is freedom of movement, just as in the U.S.—itself a single economic market—where goods and people are free to move from state to state without impediment. That means any citizen of an EU country can move to any other EU country with almost as little effort as an American moving from Oklahoma to California.

Starting with the admission of a number of Eastern European countries to the EU in the 2000s, there's been significant migration to the U.K., particularly from Poland. But there's a much greater difference in both GDP levels and culture between EU member nations than there is between states in the U.S., which of course share a single primary language. And with the U.K. government essentially powerless to curb immigration, voters who feared or resented the influx of poorer, non-British immigrants saw Brexit as the only way to control their country's borders—and they took it. (Sound like the backers of any presidential candidates you know?)

Support for "Leave" was widespread across England and Wales, two of the U.K.'s four constituent countries, which both voted 53-47 for Brexit. The cosmopolitan big cities where residents have generally embraced both immigration and a more pan-European identity backed "Remain," but elsewhere, Leave not only prevailed overwhelmingly, it cut across traditional ideological fault-lines, too. Labour heartlands in the north of England voted for Leave, for instance, but they were mostly matched across the swingy Midlands and the Tory south. Indeed, Leave carried every region of England outside of London and also largely won in Wales outside of the capital of Cardiff. Proponents of Remain had banked on fears of economic insecurity driving swing voters back to them in the end, as Leave was widely forecast to significantly hurt the British economy in both the short and long-term, but enough voters either didn't believe that message or didn't care.

They say the best defense is a good offense. As the GOP prepares for its convention in Cleveland, Republicans have little other choice. After all, the Party of Lincoln is about to officially crown the pathological liar, race-baiting bigot, and parasite posing as a populist Donald Trump as its nominee for president of the United States. Voters in Ohio and around the country would do well to remember that many of the GOP's best and brightest are shunning the Buckeye State altogether rather than be seen trying to defend the indefensible.

Which is why Republicans and their water carriers are launching an all-out attack on Secretary Hillary Clinton over her email practices at the State Department. When Rep. Trey Gowdy's $7 million Benghazi committee finally wrapped up the eighth and final investigation to find no wrongdoing in the tragedy that claimed four Americans in Libya, the manufactured uproar over the Justice Department's conclusion that Clinton's ill-advised email server did not constitute a basis for criminal prosecution became the only arrow left in the Republican quiver.

So while Donald Trump baselessly accused Clinton of bribing Attorney General Loretta Lynch, his hitman Carl Paladino tweeted, "Lynch Loretta Lynch." Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz demanded FBI Director and former Bush Deputy Attorney General James Comey explain to Congress why he refused to charge Secretary Clinton. On the op-ed pages, Bush torture enthusiasts Michael Mukasey and Marc Thiessen predictably produced bogus indictments of their own. And on TV, Mukasey's predecessor Alberto Gonzales, perhaps best-known for telling the Senate "I don't recall remembering that" about the Bush administration's U.S. Attorneys purge he oversaw, questioned Comey's "credibility and judgment."

But as the Party of Trump gets the band back together to smear Hillary Clinton, it's worth recalling just how effective this same cast of characters was on defense. After all, while suffering only a few prominent casualties like convicted felon Scooter Libby, the administration of Republican George W. Bush managed to survive eight years of almost nonstop scandals. From its historic failure on 9/11, the manipulation of Iraq intelligence, the prosecutors purge, and its 22 million missing emails to the Abramoff affair, Plamegate, illicit NSA domestic surveillance, and so much more, Team Bush weathered it all.

Here, then, is a look back at just 15 of the tactics Republicans used to get it done.

Police continue to kill people of color at disproportionate levels because they are implicitly the alter ego of our country—but with the power to execute. All Americans aren't racists, just like all police officers aren't racist. The problem is that those officers who are have the authority to act on their prejudice.

Alton Sterling, a black man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was gunned down in cold blood by police officers. Several videos show that Sterling was neither a clear threat, nor was he threatening. Sterling had one problem: He was a black man involved a police altercation that should not have occurred.

Sterling was selling CDs in front of a convenience store, as he has for a long time. A 911 caller reported that Sterling had a gun in his pocket, which he brandished when approach by the caller. Baton Rouge cops Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake responded to the call in front of Abdullah Muflahi's Triple S Food Mart.

Soon after their arrival, those police officers body slammed Sterling to the ground. From the video, it was evident both officers had Sterling pinned down. One can hear one officer shout, “Gun!” Given the action visible in the video, it’s clear that the shout was merely legal protection for the subsequent shooting.

Some will say the cops feared for their lives because Sterling allegedly had a gun. Ironically, Louisiana is a lenient open-carry state. Open-carry makes it more complicated for officers to discern friend from foe but to the police, a black man with a gun is always a foe. Our laws are supposedly color blind, but that’s clearly not true when it comes time to execute many of those laws.

And then the day after the killing of Alton Sterling, another unhinged police officer in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights, Minnesota, killed Philando Castile, an innocent black man.

So much death. Apparently, ISIS decided that the month of Ramadan was an extra special time for killing. A spokesman urged followers to “make it, with God’s permission, a month of pain for infidels everywhere.” Another statement—which included an instructional guide on how to use poisons—reminded its readers: “Dont forget Ramadan is close, the month of victories.”

Let’s start by expressing deepest condolences for and solidarity with all those who lost someone to an attack either ordered or inspired by ISIS. That includes, just in the last few weeks, not only the victims in Orlando, but hundreds of other people from Iraq to Bangladesh to Turkey to Saudi Arabia, the majority of whom are Muslim—as is the case overall for victims of ISIS. It is vitally important that we in the West recognize and stand with ISIS’ Muslim victims, as so many in Muslim communities worldwide stood with the victims of the attacks in Brussels and Paris, for example.

In addition to sympathy, however, I felt anger. Anger at those who would intentionally kill innocent people simply to show that they could, in order to strike terror in the hearts of anyone, anywhere, who might want to go to a public place or travel through an airport. These acts seek to stop people from being fully human, from doing things that we once took for granted, but which are part of what makes life worth living—namely, experiencing the world around us.

Before going any further, let’s be clear about something: The moral responsibility for these murders lies solely with those who carried them out, those who ordered them, and those who encouraged them. But beyond responsibility lies the question of how ISIS came to be, and what we can learn from this history.

The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, known popularly as “The Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial,” began on July 10,1925, in Dayton, Tennessee.

In March 1925, the Tennessee state legislature passed a bill that banned the teaching of evolution in all educational institutions throughout the state.

The Butler Act set off alarm bells around the country. The ACLU responded immediately with an offer to defend any teacher prosecuted under the law. John Scopes, a young popular high school science teacher, agreed to stand as defendant in a test case to challenge the law. He was arrested on May 7, 1925, and charged with teaching the theory of evolution. Clarence Darrow, an exceptionally competent, experienced, and nationally renowned criminal defense attorney led the defense along with ACLU General Counsel, Arthur Garfield Hays. They sought to demonstrate that the Tennessee law was unconstitutional because it made the Bible, a religious document, the standard of truth in a public institution. The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan, a former Secretary of State, presidential candidate, and the most famous fundamentalist Christian spokesperson in the country. His strategy was quite simple: to prove John Scopes guilty of violating Tennessee law.

The Scopes trial turned out to be one of the most sensational cases in 20th century America; it riveted public attention and made millions of Americans aware of the ACLU for the first time. Approximately 1000 people and more than 100 newspapers packed the courtroom daily. The trial, which garnered extensive headline press coverage both nationally and internationally, was the first ever to be broadcasted live on the radio. A New York Times editorial pointed out that the case, "gives scientific men a better opportunity than they have ever had to bring their teaching home to millions."

This might just be an historical curiosity, if it weren’t for the fact that anti-evolution and anti-science forces in our nation are still proposing legislation which attempts to prevent Darwin, and evolutionary science to be taught in schools. When that fails, attempts are made to teach faux “creation science” and “intelligent design” as if they are legitimate academic disciplines. Making this even worse, is the fact that former Republican presidential primary candidates and the presumptive nominee are vocally anti-evolution and anti-science. That should not only be an embarrassment for us as an advanced technological nation, but should be one of the major reasons to reject Republican adherents of pseudo-science at the ballot box in November.

The only thing that is evolutionary about Republicans has been “How Anti-Evolution Bills Have Evolved”

The camouflage was impeccable. With the name “Louisiana Science Education Act,” the bill posed as a document on the side of truth and science. By claiming to promote “critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories,” it seemed to endorse levelheaded rationality. And by denying that it sought to “promote any religious doctrine,” it cleverly deflected accusations of being an effort to replace the teaching of evolution with the religious beliefs of creationism—which is, of course, exactly what the bill was.

In reality, the Louisiana Science Education Act sought to undermine science education in the most insidious way: by giving teachers the authority to teach religious materials in class as an alternative to the scientific theory of evolution. Unfortunately, it worked. By avoiding any mention of creationism and encouraging a “critical analysis” of evolution, the bill skirted claims that it would violate the U.S. Constitution by encouraging the teaching of religious doctrine. In 2008, it was successfully passed by the state senate and signed into law by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

I teach four fields anthropology, and one of the cornerstones of that approach is teaching biological (physical) anthropology and evolution. The Republican war on science being waged today affects me, my students, the general public and future generations. Republicans are attempting to hurl us backwards to 1925. It is our job to stop them.