Tag: Clarence Darrow

The Day Religion Clashed With Science

Crossposted from Daily Kos

On July 21, 1925, a court in Dayton, Tennessee found the defendant, John Scopes, guilty of teaching the theory of evolution in high school.  Writing in the Baltimore Evening Sun, journalist H.L. Mencken had some harsh words for anti-intellectuals opposing Scopes’ viewpoint


What its people ask for — many of them in plain terms — is suspended judgment, sympathy, Christian charity, and I believe that they deserve all these things… The civilized minority in the State is probably as large as in any other Southern State.  What ails it is simply the fact it has been, in the past, too cautious and politic — that it has been too reluctant to offend the Fundamentalist majority.  To that reluctance something else has been added: an uncritical and somewhat childish local patriotism. The Tennesseeans have tolerated their imbeciles for fear that attacking them would bring down the derision of the rest of the country.  

[F]undamentalism, after all, made men happy — that a Tennesseean gained something valuable by being an ignoramus — in other words, that a hog in a barnyard was to be envied by an Aristotle.

Clarence Darrow & Yogi Berra

Photobucket Photobucket

The topic below was originally posted at the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Arguably America’s greatest trial lawyer, Clarence Darrow, famously once said,

“First and last, it’s a question of money. Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice, not the slightest in the world.”

Reading this morning’s headlines about A.I.G. utilizing nearly $165 million of their $170 billion tax payer financed bailout for bonuses, reminded me of Darrow’s insight. The excuse being offered after all is that a “contract is a contract” and A.I.G. must fulfill their obligations.

Isn’t it curious how contracts are deemed sacrosanct for Wall Street beneficiaries but not blue-collar members of unions in the auto industry? Unions are expected to get “realistic” and ” renegotiate” their contracts but moneyed elites are allowed to carry on as before. Anyone who has the temerity to point out the contradiction is “unreasonable,” “angry,” “extreme,” or heaven forbid, one of those “crazy left wing bloggers.”