Most young people, unless they have seen the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind with Spencer Tracy and Fredrick March, have no inkling of the 1925 trial in Tennessee that became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. It pitted two of the most famous men of their day, William Jennings Bryan, one of America’s most outspoken critic of the theory of evolution and a fundamentalist against Clarence Darrow, an agnostic civil libertarian who defended the teacher and the textbook under examination.
Steve Bragg at Double Toothpicks (Are we going to he[double toothpicks] in a hand basket?) pointed out in his post Today Marks “Eighty Years Of Scopes Monkey Business”some of the anomalies of the trial and how the famous movie is basically propaganda that obscures the real issues that were being debated. At that time in the history of the south, evolution was being used to justify racially motivated eugenics.
The important point that Steve makes is “Given how the minions of the MSM paint the movie Inherit The Wind as the Gospel truth, and try to force into its mold any debate involving creation or even intelligent design, we are in desperate need of learning the truth about this trial. ”
I would agree. We have indeed inherited the wind, the wind of Darrow’s close-minded procedural manipulations to stifle open debate. You can see his progeny on the floor of the Senate and walking the halls of government throughout our land.
Update: An excellent article on the Scopes trial from First Things as well as the excellent Web site on the trial by British freelance writer Andrew Bradbury. HT Mike’s Noise
