#2180: Brian Rohrbough

This is really a tragic case, but we need to cover it. Brian Rohrbough is the former (2008) vice presidential candidate of America’s Independent Party, running on the ticket with Alan Keyes, and president of the splinter anti-abortion group American Right to Life. 

Rohrbough’s career as a fanatic wingnut started for real when his son was killed during the Columbine High School Massacre; Rohrbough – understandably enough – sought explanations, and settled, completely without foundation in reality, on the conclusion that America was plagued by a “culture of death”, specifically manifested through (or caused by) legalized abortion and the removal of religion from public school classrooms; specifically, Rohrbough blames school violence on the theory evolution: “This country is in a moral free-fall [it really isn’t, by any coherent standard]. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value,” because as Rohrbough understands it (which is not) the theory of evolution is a value system. He did, of course, offer no evidence for a causal link or even a correlation between teaching evolution and moral deterioration, for rather obvious reasons.

Diagnosis: Yes, it is mostly a tragic case, and perhaps we should really call out the spineless journalists who give him opportunities to spread this nonsense on e.g. primetime national TV instead. But there is no way around the fact that Rohrbough is a deeply delusional loon either.