But...which is the way back to Kansas?

One of cultural critic Raymond Williams's great contributions to the field of Cultural Studies and literary criticism was his fleshing out of the ideas of dominant, residual, and emergent strains of ideology -- all of which function in society and overlap at any given time. In Kansas, you can see this principle play out in the school board decision to shelve broadly accepted scientific standards in favor of a mysticism that is antagonistic to scientific inquiry. Williams reminds us that while the dominant may be most widely disseminated and guiding most sectors of society, the residual still exercises power:

A residual cultural element is usually at some distance from the effective dominant culture, but some part of it, some version of it -and especially if the residue is from some major area of the past-will in most cases have had to be incorporated if the effective dominant culture is to make sense in these areas. Moreover, at certain points the dominant culture cannot allow too much residual experience and practice outside itself, at least without risk. It is in the incorporation of the actively residual -by reinterpretation, dilution, projection, discriminating in­clusion and exclusion-that the work of the selective tradition is especially evident.

In other words, the dominant must assimilate some aspects of the residual in order both to gain what remains from the residual's cultural power and more importantly to ensure the residual, through exclusion, doesn't develop a powerful bloc of adherents who reject the dominant and therefore undermine its power.

Clearly, residual forms -- remember when the church was so dominant that people left England for the colonies to escape its collusion with state power -- include religion, even though the dominant in our culture is a secular democracy. Religion remains a guiding force in many people's lives, although for quite some time culturally we've been able to differentiate between religious belief, the exercise of the rule of law, and scientific inquiry. In Kansas, that compartmentalization has disappeared and we are back to religious doctrine setting the limits of scientific research. Next up: Galileo admits Sun revolves around the Earth.

Much of this mess could be avoided if we had an opposition party in the U.S. Perhaps the tide is turning, with Virginians rejecting Kilgore, but I'm not so optimistic; Kaine ran as Republican-lite, and very few Democrats are willing to take strong stands for principle. They've basically surrendered the ideological field to the Republicans and now content themselves to argue over which piece of the field they're allowed to play on. We seem to be in a moment when, as Yeats would say, "the best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Music to accompany: Billy Bragg's "Ideology"

UPDATE: At least voters in Pennsylvania, in a local school board election, dumped the yoyos who were trying to foist gussied up creationism on schools there, CNN reports:

DOVER, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Voters came down hard Tuesday on school board members who backed a statement on intelligent design being read in biology class, ousting eight Republicans and replacing them with Democrats who want the concept stripped from the science curriculum.

That's right. Eight out of nine school board members were up for election. All eight incumbents went the way of the dodo, so to speak. Looks like more evidence for natural selection to me.