More timely than ever, sad to say...

Who would have thought we'd be having these debates again? Certainly not I, back when I first saw Inherit the Wind almost 30 years ago. To watch the movie then was to witness a piece of history, a fascinating depiction of a time when religion trumped science, when faith trumped knowledge, when fiction trumped fact. How far we had progressed as a society since those less-than-enlightened days!

Or so I thought at the time.

How could I have known that 30 years later, the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt would be hijacked by a gang of extremists whose primary goal is to turn back the clock on science, on intellect, on progress. To be advocates for an educational system that favors mythology over reason, like that shown in the movie. To create a toxic mix of dominionism, Christian reconstructionism and unrestrained capitalism (such strange bedfellows!), and weave it inextricably into the fabric of American society itself.

Inherit the Wind is no longer the past. I fear it is the future.