I was fascinated when I realized that 3 seemingly disparate experiences – Tucker Carlson’s interview with Bill Nye, reading CS Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, and Martin Scorsese’s Silence – pointed to a common theme. Life requires us to juggle many things simultaneously. Usually, there’s no common thread. In this case, there is. The contemporary scene has a habit of producing popularizing zealots who then seek to amputate from public discussion any opposing views. Case in point: Bill Nye, The Science Guy.
Occasionally, I channel surf over to Fox News (like I do the other cable news channels). I happened to catch Tucker Carlson in an exchange with Bill Nye over Nye’s desire to prosecute climate change “deniers”.
Here’s Bill Nye calmly explaining the criminalization of alternative opinions in an earlier discussion.
Simultaneously, I’ve been reading C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength with one of its early plot threads being a plot among “progressive” faculty to eliminate dissent.
This, in turn, brought to mind Thomas Hibbs’s review of Martin Scorsese’s Silence. The film centers on the attempt of Japan’s powerful in the 17th century to exterminate Christianity from the land.
All three illustrate what Jean Francois Revel identified as the “totalitarian temptation”. Zealots can feel so strong in their “truth” that they seek to extinguish disagreement. It matters not if the temptation is exhibited by the 17th-century Japanese shogunate, or a conspiring faculty member at Lewis’s fictional Bracton College, or an ex- Boeing engineer and comedy script writer masquerading as an expert on all things scientific (Nye).
The quality of Tucker Carlson’s interaction with Nye wasn’t the best. Yet, Nye’s inner totalitarian crept forth. He justified prosecution of dissenters because the evidence for “climate change” is asserted to be indisputable. Further, “deniers” are a threat to his quality of life. Thus, there you have it: he goes from evidence of climate change to its apocalyptic dimensions to filling up the jails with anyone with the temerity to question Al Gore. His logic – or lack thereof – is breathtaking in its sweep.
The whole thing reminds me of the 19th century’s shallow understanding of genetic inheritance and subsequent calls for euthanasia and the selective breeding of humans. The zealots didn’t stop at voluntary measures. They wanted to recruit the state into their fixation. It all didn’t work out so well for Carry Buck. The question of her forced sterilization reached all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927. In a grotesque display of legal pretzel-logic unhinged from morality, writing for the majority of the Court, Oliver Wendell
Holmes declared Carry Buck to be persona non grata and subject to forced sterilization by the state of Virginia. He announced, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough”. Maybe Holmes proved that a smidgen of science can indeed be dangerous.
Nye isn’t a scientist, as in a scholarly researcher of theoretical science. He’s got just enough exposure to the discipline to be dangerous, like Holmes. He’s most threatening as he mimics power-hungry adademics. They are an element all-too-familiar to C.S. Lewis as he walked the corridors of Oxford and Cambridge for almost 40 years. In That Hideous Strength, Lewis has a character with Nye’s predilections in the person of Lord Feverstone. Feverstone explains to his younger protege, Mark,
“Man has got to take charge of man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of the rest – which is another reason for cashing in on it as soon as one can. You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of.”
Nye seems to be “cashing in” as his notoriety climbs. He also exemplifies the Feverstone complex of “man taking charge of man”. For Nye, and for the rest of us, that means a secular Inquisition of state attorney generals, civil forfeiture, and the placement of skeptics on the list for elimination with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of ISIS fame.
As for Scorsese’s Silence, how much does Nye parallel the 17th century Shogunate in its persecution of Christians? Only a matter of degree. Nye, it appears, would not sanction the water-boarding of “deniers”, but might be assuaged by confiscation of their personal wealth. But such is only speculation on my part.
Doubt, caution, humility, and modesty are not words to describe Nye. I suggest arrogant, self-anointed, and totalitarian is closer to the truth. He’s an example of the new man of public affairs, particularly of the Left. He’s got the minimal amount of scientific knowledge to take on the airs of a scientist, but not enough to avoid being reckless and imprudent.
RogerG
Sources:
“Religious Speech and Action Silenced”, Thomas Hibbs,
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445194/silence-movie-martin-scorsese-shusaku-endo-novel-christianity-japan-statism-review
The Totalitarian Temptation, Jean Francois Revel, 1978, https://www.amazon.com/Totalitarian-Temptation-Jean-Francois-Revel/dp/0140048413
“Attorney General Lynch Looks Into Prosecuting ‘Climate Change Deniers”, Hans von Spakovsky, The Daily Signal (a publication of the Heritage Foundation), 3/10/16, http://dailysignal.com/2016/03/10/attorney-general-lynch-looking-into-prosecuting-climate-change-deniers/
“Bill Nye, the science guy, is open to criminal charges and jail time for climate change dissenters”, Washington Times, 4/14/2016, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/14/bill-nye-open-criminal-charges-jail-time-climate-c/
“Buck V. Bell”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell
That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis, 2003 ed., p. 40.