Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 May 15

= May 15 =

White House photographers
Do the White House photographers typically go to all the president's public appearances, or just some of them? I'd like to find some images of Donald Trump's speech yesterday at Liberty University, but aside from a really zoomed-in video (I'd like more than just Trump and the background image), all I can find is my own distant image and plenty of all-rights-reserved photos. Nyttend (talk) 00:39, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

"Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"
"Kids" - did that refer to [young?] American soldiers or Vietnamese children, or both? Any sources? --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:59, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Plopping that phrase into Google led me here, which implies it was both. This historical document (not sure of the provenience; the card says it was from South Vietnam) suggests it was focused on the children (with a nod to the soldiers), which jibes with common signs and slogans about stopping the bombing. Matt Deres (talk) 11:22, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The second source isn't definitive for me. It could easily be the case that the phrase meant only soldiers but this piece of [blatant] propaganda was turning the phrase round to mean Vietnamese. The first source would suffice for a Wikipedia article, but doesn't satisfy the historian in me, which would like something a bit more scholarly or showing primary sources... or a primary source. Especially re 209's comment, below, which is a legitimate historiographical concern when looking at secondary sources. Any help? Sorry, I'm a bit tenacious on this kind of thing! --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 13:34, 15 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Nice word, 'provenience'. Thanks.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  11:34, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Until I clicked that link, I had no idea it was mostly restricted to archaeology; I just thought of it as a synonym of provenance. Glad to see my degree in archaeology wasn't in vain... Matt Deres (talk) 14:37, 15 May 2017 (UTC)


 * My experience makes me feel that has a lot of historical whitewashing. In the late 60s, general culture was not concerned with the deaths of Americans in Vietnam. Instead, American soldiers were portrayed as bombing, shooting, and burning Vietnamese babies. That is where the disgust with Vietnam veterans came from. Now, nobody wants to admit that they spit on soldiers when they saw them or cheered when they saw the body bags coming home. So, they twist the past to make claims such as concern that LBJ was killing American soldiers. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 12:06, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hence my question, asking for sources. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 13:30, 15 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I challenge the often repeated meme of war protesters spitting on returning veterans, or cheering body bags. It smacks of something made up years later, as if returning veterans were poor timid victims of long-haired bearded bullies. Are there actual contemporary accounts of the spitting happening, or of some group of protesters cheering body bags? I would discount somewhat claims from many years later that it happened.As for feeling that the soldiers were baby-killing monsters, the guys of the 1960's knew they were one draft notice away from being over there alongside them, unless they were a fortunate son like many of today's war hawks were then, and could get easy deferments for incredible long periods for imaginary disabilities which disappeared when the war was over. Otherwise I would chalk it up to propaganda. Edison (talk) 19:38, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * My statement "my experience" means my personal experience, returning in 1969 and stepping into the airport in New York. I was personally met with cussing, spitting, throwing trash, and in the end, I was hospitalized when one of the protesters threw a brick and hit me in the back of the head. They were not concerned with Americans being killed. They hated the American military and wanted them dead. Those protesters are my personal experience. I never experienced the ones who cared about the Americans and wanted to help them. Instead, I spent time in the hospital, got a medical discharge, and moved south until I found a place where I could get a job as a military veteran. The racism I expected in the south was nothing compared to what I was experiencing as a veteran in New York. The hatred for veterans made no sense. I was drafted - just another black boy from Hells Kitchen. They were happy to get us off the Island. So, it wasn't my choice to be a veteran any more than it was a choice to be born black. When I moved to South Carolina, I found people that would pay me if I worked, and I was willing to work. Nobody ever talked down to me for being a veteran (or thanked me - they don't thank Vietnam vets). So, I've never gone back to New York with the except of my parents' funeral. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 11:31, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night has a chapter devoted to the slogan. It's a bit of New Journalism in the classic sense, a bit less drug-fueled than Fear and Loathing, but still based on real events.  The chapter titled "A Busload of Slogans" seems to deal with it extensively.  -- Jayron 32 13:47, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * This Oxford Dictionary of Quotations cites the 1966 book The Draft and the Vietnam War by Jacquin Sanders. That might give you an early source. -- Jayron 32 13:51, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The Columbia History of the Vietnam War edited by David Anderson (pp. 337-338) seems to directly link the chant to the Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign against North Vietnam, but annoyingly, Google Books is only showing me part of the text. I found a search result for the pages above which says: "To many in the United States and around the world, there was little justification for the bombing of a poor [?] and “Hey, Hey, LBJ!..." Alansplodge (talk) 17:56, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Sometimes if you get a full-page search result but it starts out by saying you aren't allowed to see it, if you change the type size with the + or &minus; button it will allow you to see it after all.  This trick worked for me this time.  In fact “Hey, Hey, LBJ!" is a chapter title in the book and appears on all the odd-numbered pages of the chapter.  I didn't get to read the whole chapter myself, but it appears that the only mention of the actual chant in the book is on page 344, where it says that by March 31, 1968, when Johnson announced "a major cutback in the bombing", he was finding that he "could not appear in public without beeing harrassed by antiwar opponents chanting, 'One Two Three Four, We Don't Want Your Fuckin' War!' and 'Hey, Hey LBJ, How Many Kids Did you Kill Today?'"  So there's no mention of when exactly the chant was first used or which "kids" is referred to. --76.71.6.254 (talk) 08:31, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
 * As I noted earlier, that chant was already fully formed by the fall of 1965. However, it kind of all came to a head during the Dem convention in Chicago in summer 1968. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:41, 18 May 2017 (UTC)


 * In my experience it was both, but was more about the soldiers. Remember that a large percentage of those dead soldiers were drafted, and many of the protesters (or their boyfriends) were liable to be drafted. Some of us felt defensive about protesting when we might get drafted and then get dead, so we talked about the Vietnamese instead. During the massive demonstrations in DC, a lot of the protestors were off-duty soldiers like myself (a great many military are stationed in the DC area). -Arch dude (talk) 04:36, 16 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Look up Jingle and Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many soldiers and civilians have died under your watch so far?. μηδείς (talk) 20:18, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Medeis, that's not helpful - the page you link, Hook (music), doesn't mention the LBJ chant.24.244.32.232 (talk) 03:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I hardly think the article is unhelpful unless it lists every single possible example of a principle. The reader's comprehension and reasoning ability are assumed. μηδείς (talk) 02:33, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I always understood it to mean the Vietnamese children, as with comments by anti-war figures about "bombing children". However, looking at newspapers.com (a pay site, and doesn't have all possible newspapers), the earliest reference to that slogan is in October of 1965, and also the variations "how many kids have you killed" and also sometimes "how many people have you killed today?" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:08, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I'll still point out that the word kids works poetically, regardless of its reference
 * Hey, Hey, Ell Bee Jay
 * How Man-y Kids Did
 * You Kill To-Day
 * gives you two initial kays (alliteration), four dees, and the rhyme of three short eyes: kids did kill (assonance). Poetically it is perfectly formed, even if it is ambiguous in meaning.  It's like "Bush lied, People Died".  The meaning is almost superfluous/  Look, it just has a good hook. μηδείς (talk) 01:02, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
 * That explains why it's the most memorable variation on the theme. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:14, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Job designations named after people
Very many surnames are derived from job descriptions (Smith, Miller, Hunter etc.). But also the other way round occurs, as in the case of Foley artists named after Jack Foley (sound effects artist). Are there other examples, in English and other languages? --KnightMove (talk) 12:31, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Caesar (title) after Julius Caesar, after which titles like Tsar and Kaiser. -- Jayron 32 12:35, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * In some Slavic languages the word for king derives from Charles: i.e. Charles the Great = Charlemagne. Herbivore (talk) 12:41, 15 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Maybe a stretch, but saxophonist and sousaphonist after Adolphe Sax and John Philip Sousa respectively. -- Jayron 32 12:38, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Papparazzi derives from a character of that name in a Federico Fellini film, whose job was exactly that. --Xuxl (talk) 13:26, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * What about Zamboni driver? Again, the word is more named for the object than the job, but it's sorta on the level.  -- Jayron 32 13:39, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Anyone who makes any of the inventions listed at List of inventions named after people is a .... maker.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:58, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * You mean like Mini-Driver? μηδείς (talk) 20:21, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Onanist? Alansplodge (talk) 17:33, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * A friend of mine had a pet bird named Onan... because the bird "spilled his seed upon the ground" (look up "Onan" in the Bible to get the joke) Blueboar (talk) 21:29, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * That friend might have been Dorothy Parker. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:25, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * As far as I can determine, it's not a paying position. - Nunh-huh 02:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * In porn, maybe? At least this is certain for females, whose respective activities were also called "onanism", at least in former times. --KnightMove (talk) 05:53, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Probably as a joke, W.C. Fields in a 1930s movie, holding an umbrella and saying "It's a genuine Chamberlain." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:27, 15 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Many of the herald positions are named after families or houses, does that count? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:49, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
 * As a heraldry buff, I'd say it counts better than the jobs named for tools named for people. —Tamfang (talk) 17:10, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
 * In the UK, police officers are often known as "bobbies" (or archaically "peelers") after Robert Peel. --Fuaran buidhe (talk) 18:18, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

India–Bangladesh enclaves map.
I'm looking for a shapefile or other vector digital map file of the former India–Bangladesh enclaves. This debate discusses the post-resolution situation, but not the previous geography. This frequently cited document has detailed descriptions but still, no mapping. Are there any digital maps? Hayttom (talk) 19:42, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

President firing FBI agents
The President of the United States has the power to fire the Director of the FBI.

But what about FBI agents lower level than the Director? Does POTUS have the power to fire the Deputy Director? What about rank and file FBI agents? ECS LIVA Z (talk) 19:58, 15 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Basically, lower level US bureaucrats cannot be terminated without cause, depending on the current federal law governing the civil service, but our Spoils_system is entirely useless, and has no references. μηδείς (talk) 20:27, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Where does the "lower level" line begin in this case? Is the Deputy Director of FBI low enough to quality as "lower level"? Or is he fireable?ECS LIVA Z (talk) 20:32, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * A Google search for "political appointees FBI" turns up Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the first link... AnonMoos (talk) 21:13, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * What does that have to do with my question? Yes, I know POTUS appoints the Director of the FBI with the advise and consent of the Senate. Yes, I know POTUS has the power to fire the Director of the FBI because I said it in my opening post. I asking whether POTUS has the power to fire the Deputy Director of FBI or not. I'm asking whether POTUS has the power to fire rank and file FBI agents or not. If you like to help, then help; if you don't, then don't waste my time. ECS LIVA Z (talk) 21:37, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The president definitely can not fire rank and file agents. They are not presidential appointees.  Not sure if the Deputy Director is an appointee... but if he/she is, then the president can fire him/her. Blueboar (talk) 22:08, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The president can't automatically fire all the roles that the president appoints. The obvious counterexamples are judges and Federal Reserve members.  Judges of course are in a different branch of government, and exactly what the Federal Reserve is I've never quite gotten straight.  It might be true that any executive-branch official appointed by the president can be fired by the president.  I would be interested to know whether that's true. --Trovatore (talk) 22:14, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the correction, Trovatore. I see many people making the assumption of "if POTUS can appoint that position he can fire that position as well" without fact-checking or backing it up with RS. I posted this question precisely because I want some clarification on exactly who can POTUS fire. ECS LIVA Z (talk) 22:24, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Over history, it has been determined that the President can hire and fire, at will, any member of the executive branch which he has the power to appoint (i.e. not those hired without his approval, but those that require his nomination to fill). There have been attempts to curtail this power, for example the Tenure of Office Act (1867), the violation of which led to the first impeachment of a sitting president, see Impeachment of Andrew Johnson.  Though Congress later repealed the law without judicial challenge, a similar law was struck down as unconstitutional in Myers v. United States, which holds, and I quote, "the President has the exclusive power to remove executive branch officials, and does not need the approval of the Senate or any other legislative body."  In the infamous Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon kept firing officials until he found one that would himself fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who not being a Nixon appointee he could not fire, but since he could fire the people who themselves could fire Cox, he did so, twice, until he got to someone who WOULD follow his orders and fire Cox.  The constitutionality of Nixon's firings were never challenged, because of Myers v. United States, but the political fallout was dire; it gave away Nixon's hand and revealed how much he really was involved in Watergate, and turned opinion against him.  It also torpedoed the career of Robert Bork who was Nixon's trigger man during the events and who's own Supreme Court nomination was held up in large part due to his role in the event.  So yes, the President can fire executive-branch appointees at will.  Whether it is politically wise to do so is not as clear.  He cannot, however, fire people he didn't appoint, such as rank-and-file agents, but he CAN influence the people who could fire such people, up to and including firing them. -- Jayron 32 01:38, 16 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Jayron. Both you and Medeis are saying he cannot fire file-and-file agents, but I found 3 quotes that seem to suggest otherwise:


 * Quote 1 (from your source): "the President has the exclusive power to remove executive branch officials, and does not need the approval of the Senate or any other legislative body"


 * Quote 2 (from Myers v. United States): "Chief Justice William Howard Taft, writing for the Court, noted that the Constitution does mention the appointment of officials, but is silent on their dismissal. An examination of the notes of the Constitutional Convention, however, showed that this silence was intentional: the Convention did discuss the dismissal of executive-branch staff, and believed it was implicit in the Constitution that the President did hold the exclusive power to remove his staff, whose existence was an extension of the President's own authority."


 * Quote 3 from: "Along with the power to appoint comes the power to remove. Except where statutorily limited, the President may remove any executive branch officer."


 * I'm not saying you guys are wrong, since I'm not qualified to properly interpret the above quotes. But I'd still like to see some RS backing up the claim that file-and-file agents cannot be fired by POTUS. ECS LIVA Z (talk) 02:49, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * By the way, the key wording in quote 3 is "executive branch officer". Words have meanings, and executive branch is not legislative or judicial branch, and an officer is not an employee. In Humphrey's Executor v. United States, the Supreme Court expressly drew a bold line between executive officers, who serve at the pleasure of the President and who can be fired without cause, and and others, who cannot.  The president's power is limited to specifically executive branch officers, and not officers of other branches NOR employees.  Also, by the way, the term is rank and file and not "file and file".  -- Jayron 32 13:18, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * In Archibald Cox's case:
 * "The appointment was created as a career reserved position in the Justice department, meaning it came under the authority of the attorney general who could only remove the special prosecutor "for cause", e.g., gross improprieties or malfeasance in office. Richardson had, in his confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate, promised not to use his authority to dismiss the Watergate special prosecutor, unless for cause." from Saturday Night Massacre
 * In Archibald Cox's case he had special protections that ensured that he cannot be fired unless "for cause". Do file-and-file FBI agents have similar protections in place? ECS LIVA Z (talk) 02:58, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * As a minor nitpick, as I understand it and per our articles, Nixon didn't actually fire anyone during the Saturday Night Massacare. He gave an order to the AG and the Deputy who replaced him which both considered improper or even illegal. They refused to follow it and resigned in protest. It's possible maybe even probable that Nixon would have fired them if they have refused but not resigned, and in any case I don't think there's any question that Nixon could have fired them. But the only person actually fired was the one Nixon wanted fired, but this wasn't by Nixon himself and it was later found to have been illegal. You could call the other cases resignation under duress or jumped rather than be pushed. While I'm not that familiar with the structure of the US federal government, it seems likely that in at least some cases you'd need a chain where the president has to get A to get B to fire C (or even further). Nil Einne (talk) 16:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually I missed something, the SNM article actually does say the White House initially said the Deputy had been fired, but this is not what they wrote to Bork, and the fact that all article articles report it as a resignation means I presume that Ruckelshaus and perhaps others later confirmed he had resigned. (This does likely illustrate the willingness of Nixon to fire people, even if he didn't have to.) Nil Einne (talk) 03:47, 20 May 2017 (UTC)


 * ECS_LIVA_Z --- You seem to be rather unobservant/lazy, or you would have seen the sentence "The appointment of the Deputy Director is not a presidential appointment and does not require Senate confirmation". Sorry I didn't do a more thorough hand-holding job. AnonMoos (talk) 03:59, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Again, what does that have to do with my question? "not a presidential appointment" does not mean "not fireable". I'm asking whether he's fireable or not, not whether he's a presidential appointee or not. The president can fire any presidential appointees, but that does not imply that non-appointees are not-fireable. ECS LIVA Z (talk) 04:20, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * After making an honest effort to look for it, I'm not sure there is any statute explicitly saying the president cannot do these things. Rather, statutes give agency heads the affirmative power to fire their subordinates, with restrictions, and exempts political appointees from these regulations. See for instance laws like  and . The Nixon situation I think is a very good reason to invoke the oft-misused phrase, the exception proves the rule: The fact that Nixon didn't fire Cox strongly implies that he could not. I'm sorry I couldn't give you an explicit statute or court ruling. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:30, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, it was only many years later that his power to not fire a special prosecutor came before the court, in an entirely unrelated case, known as Morrison v. Olson, which dealt with the prosecutor in the Iran-Contra affair. -- Jayron 32 13:20, 16 May 2017 (UTC)


 * As is the case with most processes in the federal government, firing a career employee is not simple. There is a good reason why it isn’t so easy, or as commonplace, as it is in the private sector: There are laws protecting career civil servants from being dismissed without cause or for politically-motivated reasons. In Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935), the Court unanimously voted in favor of Humphrey and limited the president's removal power to only those officials who immediately served him, such as White House aides. Congress, the Court ruled, could legally restrict the president's ability to remove anyone except "purely executive officers...In Wiener v. United States (1958) the Court once again ruled against a president who tried to exercise his removal powers for expressly political purposes." -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 12:02, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Young earth creationism in other Christian countries
I'm aware I asked a question similar to this two months ago, but that was a more broad question. Anyway, how come young earth creationism is most powerful in the United States, but is less so in other Christian countries? For example, it seems at present that the creationism-evolution controversy is not much of a big deal in countries that are predominantly Catholic, Anglican, or mainline Protestant. Even in Christian countries where there have been pushes for the teaching of creationism (such as Australia, Brazil, or South Korea), such efforts seem to have been started by groups with links to Christian groups in America, rather than Christian denominations of local origin. Why is that so? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 23:29, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * It's because Christian fundamentalism is a rather American phenomena. There were related movements occuring in Britain, but those are more aptly referred to as evangelicals.  The Fundamentals was published in the US, and more seminaries in America exposed before any sort of institutional inoculation could occur. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:44, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Consider that religion is more important in the US than in most other developed countries; the first paragraph in the intro to Religion in the United States says A majority of Americans report that religion plays a very important role in their lives, a proportion unique among developed countries. You mention Brazil, which is generally not considered a developed country; I can't comment there, as I'm not knowledgeable enough.  Nyttend (talk) 03:23, 16 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Narutolovehinata5 -- not all anti-evolutionists or quasi-fundamentalists in the U.S. are young-earth creationists. Pat Robertson is notoriously opposed to making adherence to young-earth creationism be any kind of test of being a true Christian.  When young-earth creationists attract general public scrutiny, then they can be considered quite eccentric, as with the Ark Encounter... AnonMoos (talk) 04:10, 16 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Christian creationism is almost exclusively a fundamentalist Protestant belief, and fundamentalist Protestantism is centered in the U.S. The Catholic Church, Church of England/Anglicanism, and I think all mainline Protestant or, outside the U.S., "traditional" Protestant churches endorse evolution as part of their official doctrine (see Acceptance of evolution by religious groups), so unsurprisingly countries where most Christians belong to those churches don't see widespread belief in creationism. Note that there are non-Christian creationists, though I'm not sure they would count as "young-Earth creationists" since that term generally refers to a specific flavor of Christian creationism. --47.138.161.183 (talk) 06:16, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * There is a more interesting question in that good answer: Why is young-earth creationism so strongly rooted in many US Christian churches, when very many other religious groups manage to handle the topic with more flexibility? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:58, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The strong "tradition" of anti-intellectualism in the US is probably a significant factor. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:09, 16 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Noah's Ark Zoo Farm‎ - this sort of view is still rare in the UK, but here's an example. It's definitely increasing too. Anti-intellectualism is a new thing for the UK (CP Snow notwithstanding), but that's a US import too. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:19, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * To give an example of how different things are in the US, consider how reluctant candidates from the Republican Party often are to come out in support of evolution  . By comparison, I couldn't even find any comments from Theresa May, Malcolm Turnbull, Bill English or John Key on evolution. No one talks about it, simply because it's no big deal and the assumption is they probably do acccept evolution to some extent. Nil Einne (talk) 17:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I strongly doubt that the majority of evolution opponents in the U.S. are young-earth creationists. As I said last time around, a large number of anti-evolutionists are not really motivated by Biblical literalism or religious fundamentalism, but instead mainly by a perhaps vague but firmly-held view that human evolution undermines the foundations of morality and plunges human societies into a nihilistic moral void.  In the United States, young-earth creationists are a colorful and vocal part of the Christian Right coalition, but standing on their own (outside the coalition) they have semi-negligible political or cultural influence, and some of the more visible manifestations of their enthusiasm (such as the Ark Encounter or the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye debate) have been widely mocked... AnonMoos (talk) 13:18, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Small maybe. Negligible is questionable. After all the President of the USA just gave a commencement speech to a university which teaches YEC and required staff in its biology department had "compatibility with a young-earth creationist philosophy". The chancellor of that university, Jerry Falwell Jr., is chairing the taskforce to reform high education. Meanwhile one former presidential candidate and current Senator, a Catholic incidentally, initially expressed uncertainty about the age of the earth, yes he later clarified his views to confirm support for the scientific age but the fact that he felt it necessary to fudge on it initially would seem to suggest either he personally didn't truly believe in and old age or he felt it wasn't a negligible voting base . Another candidate similarly fudged on the question at a homeschooling conference, I don't know if this one has every "clarified" his views. Another one came out in support of the possibility of an old earth (and explicitly rejected the idea it was impossible) , probably because of confusion due to some of his earlier expressed views . Clearly not a YEC, but only apparently willing to reject that YEC was definite rather than reject the idea of a young earth outright. And getting back to my earlier point, this is simply not something which comes up in a lot of other places, and if it ever did, it's hard to imagine many major players fudging the answer on the age of the earth or universe. According to this , which has analysed the various polls wordings, etc it may be up to 10% of Americans who are true YEC. How many of these vote and in what states they are, who knows, but it may be enough to swing the popular vote in many presidential elections List of United States presidential elections by popular vote margin. Nil Einne (talk) 16:08, 18 May 2017 (UTC)


 * To get a sense of British views on this, you need look no further than the ten pound note. I've encountered young earth creationists here - a friend of mine was brought up to believe in it, though she rejected it herself in adulthood - and I think these views are more common than most Europeans realise (I've lived in other European countries too, and it's easy to forget Northern Ireland in relation to this question, but there's certainly plenty of lively protestant fundamentalism there). These views are obviously more common in the US, but I think their greater power is basically because over there you have a much stronger tradition of religion playing an active role in public life. We happen never to have had an openly atheist Prime Minister, but we've had a Deputy Prime Minister and two openly atheist Leaders of the Opposition, and this played absolutely zero role in why they are/were unpopular. Individual politicians in America have a much greater individual profile and party affiliation (at least historically, and even now) has always been a weaker tie in the USA than it has been in the UK. We judge politicians in terms of their relationship with an ideological tradition embodied in the party to which they belong, in the US politicians are judged in terms of their individual values, so the personal roots of those values are much more openly displayed and much more interesting to the voter. So religion becomes an important part of how you think about a given candidate for public office. Tim Farron is a good contrasting example, he's an evangelical Christian, but we think of him as being from the Social Democratic wing of the party, as opposed to the Orange Book school, and relate him to that tradition rather than relating him to his own values. Similarly we talk about Conservatives as One Nation or Thatcherite and Labour people as traditionalists or Blairites, and never talk about them in terms of a personal issue profile. So that's my theory, it's down to a greater tradition of individuality among US politicians, which makes religion much more visible and a much more important way to relate a candidate to a voter's values. Dan Hartas (talk) 21:28, 17 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I am reminded of a student I met at Model United Nations in the United States who said that although he was an atheist and had no interest in seamanship he was converting to Episcopalianism and Joining the Navy to further a planned political career. I wonder how that went.  I'll also point out that evolution is not part of Catholic doctrine.  Science questions are matters of science, not faith, so the Church has no problem with evolution, but it does not endorse or teach it as such.  Thee same with the question of Jesus being married.  At the time of the Da Vinci code that if it were true he was married it would pose no doctrinal problems, but that the Church had no evidence that he was married. μηδείς (talk) 01:07, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
 * So far as I know the Da Vinci code relates to a number of weird theories.  The idea of Christ being married would overturn the whole basis of the Christian faith. 92.19.171.173 (talk) 12:18, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
 * There's no reason why it would. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:10, 20 May 2017 (UTC)