2025 RationalWiki 'Oregon Plan' Fundraiser

There is no RationalWiki without you. We are a small non-profit with no staff—we are hundreds of volunteers who document pseudoscience and crankery around the world every day. We will never allow ads because we must remain independent. We cannot rely on big donors with corresponding big agendas. We are not the largest website around, but we believe we play an important role in defending truth and objectivity.

Fighting pseudoscience isn't free.
We are 100% user-supported! Help and donate $5, $10, $20 or whatever you can today with PayPal Logo.png!
Donations so far: $2973.89Goal: $10000
Information icon.svg At the chicken coop, we are currently voting on a change to the blocking policy to clarify when offsite behavior such as harassment and brigading can get someone banned from RW. A reminder that you need at least 75 edits and to have had an account for at least 3 months to vote.

Axis of Evil

From RationalWiki
(Redirected from Axis of evil)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
God, guns, and freedom
U.S. Politics
Icon politics USA.svg
Starting arguments over Thanksgiving dinner
Persons of interest

Were you looking for the Axis Powers?

The "Axis of Evil" was a list of countries that George W. Bush had philosophical[note 1] and ideological differences with, but had a problem coming up with legitimate reasons to resolve the differences by force.[note 2] It was a short list of the usual suspects (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea), who had pretty much nothing to do with each other until they all ended up on the list. Later on, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Cuba declared themselves to be an "Axis of Good", although this was probably tongue-in-cheek. The phrase was coined for Bush's 2002 State of the Union address by White House speechwriter David Frum, who left to spend time with his family after his wife stole Bush's thunder and e-mailed the Internet that David had written this glorious God-delivered phrase.

The "Axis of Evil" speech was a particularly effective bit of speechifying: it caused Iran to release "brutal" insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and send him back into Afghanistan to make trouble.[1] It also provided a convenient excuse for Kim Jong-il to restart his nuclear program.[2] Mission accomplished!

In cosmology[edit]

The "Axis of Evil" is also the nickname received by an asymmetry of the cosmic microwave background as studied by the WMAP and Planck missions. It's not clear what it is: if it's mere data processing errors, proof of the universe having a doughnut-shaped form,[note 3] or simply a pattern that is [apparently] there because of our tendency to see those things everywhere.[3] Very recent (2016) studies of the expansion of the Universe, that show it to be uniform to the limit of measurements, show that the first and/or the last possibilities could be the most likely ones.[4]

Of course, this "Axis of Evil" has been the victim of cranks, who have used it to prove (for example) that Earth is the center of the Universe. Yeah, right.[5]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. What his advisors told him, really, as he can't seem to think coherently.
  2. Well, he still has trouble with coming up with reasons for what he wants to do, but he's no longer President (thank God)!
  3. Mmmmmm… doughnuts.

References[edit]