The mighty Borepatch pulled a chair up by the lobby bar, took a sip of his freshly made Yoo Hoo mojito, and told the Czar:

About your latest missive, I couldn’t help but think that while large parts of the world sees their miracles in the form of Our Lady, the Media sees them in wearing a white lab coat.

The white lab coat is a stereotype. And it has become a stereotype because it is a parody of an outmoded belief. But many liberals do indeed rely on outmoded archetypes: rich people look like the monopoly guy, Republicans support the military industrial complex, bankers are robber barons, the savage is noble, and the scientist wears a white lab coat.

Odd how the media is absolutely convinced that this makes them more sophisticated.

This is an area of interest on which Confucius and the Czar overlap. Indeed, the Volgi has often commented that modern Liberalism is very much a religious belief. Not just the way they substitute government for God, but in the proselytizing manner with which they preach and deal with heretics.

The Czar of course agrees with His Effluence. And the high priests of liberalism are too often the scientists.

Ever seen a religious person misquote the Bible or bend an interpretation to suit their own ends? Like the guy who once pointed out his tatto that said “Leviticus 18:22” because he hates homosexuals so much, and how you chuckle and say “Leviticus 19:28” while poking his tat?

Most liberals do that with science all the time—they cherry-pick their social studies and findings to create a false but comforting aura that they are abiding by fact and reason. Jonah Goldberg does a superb job of shredding this in chapter 4 of The Tyranny of Clichés, but the Czar will readily go much further by repeating how badly liberals have done with science. So much so that even moderate liberals are finally calling it out, too. It’s undeniable.

Borepatch, of course, is one of the best-known even-handed analysts of global climate change claims, and you can see how many liberals will argue with his observations with the same weird panic and rueful laughing that Bible literalists deal with evolutionary science. Or try talking rationally to someone who believes in Bigfoot. Serious discussion lasts for about two minutes before the other side goes batshit crazy…because you are attacking a core matter of his faith.

Not that it should be a core matter of faith; really, belief in evolution does not undercut religious belief in any serious way: ask a Catholic. And does the Sasquatch guy really profit or lose if you disprove a seemingly invisible race of apes in British Columbia? Does it really matter to the liberal if oceans rise 3mm each year, in the event global warming is real and we do nothing?

Of course not: but the people who believe so passionately in these things are generally sitting on a belief system that’s a three-legged stool. You cannot kick out one leg of the stool without the whole thing falling down. This is because these passionate few are so shallow in their belief system that it would not take much to destroy it by, you know, forcing them to rethink all their positions.

And of course, as Borepatch suspects, it takes a person this shallow to conflate science with faith.

The media, who are as liberal as they come, fail to realize that science is committed to finding the truth—but it is never the truth itself. Science is a process, not a solution. It is a test—not an embodiment of knowledge.

Heck, it’s even in the word itself. The sc- in science is common in all Latin words that invoke change or transformation: cognoscere (to recognize), scintillare (to twinkle), discere (to learn over time), miscēre, (to mix together), and thousands of other examples. Science is a process of change or transformation.

To believe you have the final answer, even though the process continues, is a matter of faith.

*For those who came in late, Confucius is the Gormogons’ Œcumenical Volgi.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.