Eighty Years of Scopes Monkey Business
Eighty years ago Thursday the famous Scopes Monkey Trial ended in Dayton, Tennessee. Time for a quiz:
History tells us that two great lawyers faced off. On the one side was (A) a progressive and a pacifist, an educated man who rejected the idea of a young earth and worried about efforts to peddle racism and eugenics in the South. On the other side was (B) a master orator who defended some flagrantly racist ideas long since discredited by science. Lawyer A sought a full and fair debate over the evidence. Lawyer B used a procedural tactic to shut down the debate so that only his position was heard.
Surely Mr. A would be the darling of any contemporary liberal journalist, right? But Mr. A was William Jennings Bryan, the creationist.
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