Who Is More Evolved?

James Lewis has an article today at American Thinker regarding the National Geographic‘s suggesting that liberals and atheists are more evolved and smarter than conservatives. However, Lewis asks,

Why does (the Left’s) blind “idealism” and its unquenchable power-craving lead to such disastrous results, over and over again? Why does the British medical system have patients parked on gurneys in dirty hallways? Why are their waiting times for life-saving operations so much longer than ours? Why does Prime Minister Gordon Brown advocate using your organs after you die without your permission?

Lewis notes that plenty of people with high IQ can still be dummies, fixed on bad ideas that are impractical (like President Obomber and Nancy Smelgrosi).

In my opinion, the Left has hardly shown any evidence of “evolution” in intelligence when they continue to push for government policies that do nothing but cause destruction and havoc. And how is “adopting nontraditional social values and preferences,” as the Geographic article suggests, an example of intelligence, or being evolved? Just look at the Left’s continued advocacy of drug use and promiscuous sex. In fact, I would argue that promoting drugs, a behavior of self-destruction, especially among today’s youth, is regressive and goes against evolving. And irresponsible, promiscuous sex is in the category of short-term, immediate gratification, as well as possibly dangerous, and reinforces one’s more immature and regressive impulses. One could argue, contrary to the Left’s assertion that “going with your urges” is a defeat of “repression,” etc., that such behaviors that go against self-control actually work towards repressing emotions and intellectually evolutionary activity. It is the self-control that exemplifies a more evolved human being.

However, regarding Lewis’s reference to the Left’s idealism that leads to failed and counter-productive policies, I must say that such characteristics are among some conservatives as well, particularly “neoconservatives.” I think the real point is that neither “liberalism” in the modern sense nor neoconservatism is more or less “evolved.” Rather, it is statism that is at the root of devolution. And the conservatives’ counter-productive war policies over the last 20 years are my evidence of the devolution from the Right.

The Left’s compulsion to use the State—government—as the means to carry out desired ends is a problem among the Right. The best examples of that are the neoconservatives’ compulsion to depend on the national government and military to protect America’s safety and security, and the conservatives’ sheepish, naive following of immoral policies such as the “Bush Doctrine” and foreign military expansionism. Philip Giraldi at Antiwar.com catches the essence of that in his article this week, The Rogue Nation, discussing the use by the U.S. Military of the unmanned drones killing unarmed, innocent, non-combatant civilians in the Middle-East,

….If Iran were operating the drones and bumping off its enemies in places like Dubai you can be sure the reaction would be quite different….

and the idea of our federal government having the power to seize and even kill Americans without trial and without any questioning of evidence against the suspects.

…The death list involves a due process of sorts in that a government official makes the decision who shall be on it based on guidelines but it does not allow the accused to challenge or dispute evidence….

Now, I’m with the conservatives on traditional, conservative family values. Smarter people aren’t necessarily more “evolved.” Plenty of statists and barbarians have been smart people. In my opinion, however, the moral relativism of the Right is just as bad as that of the Left, and what connects the two sides is their dehumanizing of others and their love of The State.