A reader sent me a link to this survey: TNR asked a number of conservative pundits their opinion on evolution. It's a silly exercise—none of these people have any competency on the issue—but hey, no one actually expects pundits to know anything anyway. I'm not going to try and analyze their statements in any detail, since they're brief and founded on vapor, but I thought I'd at least categorize and summarize them with a diagram. This is a purely metaphorical lineage, mm-kay? I don't really think Pat Buchanan gave birth to Tucker Carlson (that image makes me glad lunch is over.)

Look below the fold to see the summary.

"They get one thing right". Like it sounds, they come down positively on the side of reason, science, and evolution in this one survey. I know nothing of the details of their knowledge or where they got it, so for all I know Goldberg saw it on Star Trek and Krauthammer was told the right answer by the little voices in his head, but give 'em credit for the right answer.

"Honestly Ignorant". These are the fellows (Hmm. They all have a Y chromosome. What does that mean? They were afraid to quiz Coulter?) who admitted a lack of knowledge and more or less said we should err on the side of science. Except Podhoretz, though, who seems to have begged off completely. Actually, I think this is the most respectable group, at least—given these guys' qualifications, they all should have said they'd leave it to the biologists to figure it out.

"Ur-Wafflers". This bunch were also willing to confess ignorance, but thought that meant that policy should favor chucking in some creationist swill into our education system. Except Kristol, who finds himself here for the sin of never even looking at his kids' science texts.

"God-Sucking Acephalics". Brainless apologists for religion, as in this example from Frum: "I don't believe that anything that offends nine-tenths of the American public should be taught in public schools. ... Christianity is the faith of nine-tenths of the American public. ... I don't believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle." Gah.

"Primordial Slime". These are pure ignorance, the rank creationists of the bunch. I suspect they don't think much about evolution at all, except maybe to make knee-jerk protestations of anathema. I have to put Norquist at the bottom of the list for this gem:

Whether he personally believes in evolution: "I've never understood how an eye evolves."

What he thinks of intelligent design: "Put me down for the intelligent design people."

How evolution should be taught in public schools: "The real problem here is that you shouldn't have government-run schools. ... Given that we have to spend all our time crushing the capital gains tax I don't have much time for this issue."

I'd say the top two tiers represent reasonable positions, while the bottom three are of varying degrees of yuckiness. Final tally for the conservative pundit gallery on this one issue: 7 reasonable, 8 yucky. Not very good, but given their repulsive stances on other issues, it's a miracle that science holds up this well in the gang.

Kevin Drum does the tally, too, and comes up with a somewhat different arrangement. I think the difference is that I downgraded Kristol for having so little concern about his kids' books, and that I considered the silly godly witterings of people like Frum, for instance, to negate the fact that they might have said they believed in evolution. Saying "Yes, I believe in evolution" and then declaring that they also think pink fairies from outer space (or whatever) might have done it kinda diminishes their opinion, I think.