Jonathan Adler links to David Brooks' op ed arguing that conservative politics has gotten too anti-intellectual. Some of Brooks' points, are I think, well-taken. It is true that Republican politicians often engage in crude intellectual-bashing and that some conservatives embrace ridiculous unscientific ideas, such as denial of evolution in favor of more extreme forms of creationism. Jonathan, in turn, rightly points out that aspects of conservatism - including free market economics - will always have limited appeal to intellectuals.
At the same time, it is far from clear that conservatives are suffering politically because they have lost the support of the more educated classes, as Brooks contends. To the contrary, survey data continue to show that Republican voters, on average, have higher education levels than Democrats do. For example, the 2004 National Election Study (data summarized in Table 7.4 here), show that 45% of college graduates self-identify as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, as do 44% of those with "some" college education. By contrast, only 38% of high school graduates and 20% of those with only a grade school education identify as Republicans. Self-identified "strong Republicans" also have, on average, higher levels of political knowledge than self-identified "strong Democrats." I hasten to add that I do not believe that Republicans tend to be more educated and knowledgeable because education and knowledge necessarily lead people to embrace conservative ideas. The most likely explanation for the correlation between education, political knowledge, and Republican identification is simply that education and knowledge are also highly correlated with income. And we know from many studies, such as Andrew Gelman's excellent recent book, that income is a strong predictor of Republican identification and voting.
Nonetheless, it's hard to argue, as Brooks does, that the Republican Party is slipping because it appeals mostly to the ignorant and uneducated. The real reason for the party's recent electoral setbacks is that voters from a wide range of income classes blame it (with some justice) for the mishandling of the Iraq War, the poor condition of the economy, and other policy failures. Republican politicians who think that political impact of these failures can be offset by ramping up their attacks on intellectuals and "coastal elites" are probably mistaken. But so too are those who think that the party's problems can be solved by increasing its appeal to what Brooks calls "the educated class."
Related Posts (on one page):
- Conservatism, Anti-Intellectualism, and the Political Failures of the Republican Party:
- Brooks on Conservative Anti-Intellectualism:
is a poor use of statistics. Averages are extraordinarily coarse measures. I seem to remember that the education level of democratic voters is a bimodal distribution with peaks on the high end and the low end. Taking the average of such a distribution isn't particularly useful.
(See here for one example that seems to support such a distribution.)
(See here for one example that seems to support such a distribution.)
The link you point too still has Republicans getting much stronger support among people with "postgraduate" education (41%) (the highest level tested) than among most other groups, except for those with college degrees, but not postgraduate degrees. In any event, a party that appeals most to college graduates with no graduate degrees while having less appeal to HS drop outs and Grad degree holders is hardly one that can be characterized as generally anti-intellectual.
This is the person who is defined as an " intellectual" i don't care one bit what they have to say.
Any work done on the correlation between wealth and identification/voting, rather than change in wealth? Historically, the liberality of economic policies has correlated with social mobility, so it would be natural for those enjoying high (upward) mobility to favor such policies. Likewise those at risk from such policies favoring their opposite, hence New Deal corporatism.
As the Progressive Party rose from the GOP, it's also not so clear-cut historically which party can lay claim to those policies, but surely the post-Goldwater GOP thought they did. Post-Rove, things are not so clear.
Obviously, "intellectual" here is a modifier chosen by someone in the chain of decision, probably as a way to attract positions of power. I don't much care for academics as a group either, and I'm moderately well formally educated, so I've seen a few. Therefore, I give the modifier little stock in these situations.
If you see the "common man" as an idiot, you certainly see an appeal in a strong centralized and collectivist form of government run by intellectuals. After all, you can't trust morons with self-governance (or guns - they might put an eye out!). Better to leave the ruling to the best and brightest, the thinking goes. This assumption runs behind both 'compassionate conservatism' and progressivism.
I reject collectivism because I think the "highly educated" people I went to school with are also flawed. But they are the worst kind of leaders: the kind that are completely self-assured of their own intellectual superiority, and put so much stake in their degree as a sign of 'inherent superiority' that they are extremely susceptible to group think when surrounded by similarly educated people. They are just smart enough to cause maximum harm.
This is what drives the "anti-intellectual" mindset among conservatives, and this is what we mean by "elitism." It has nothing to do with money, power, or education. It has to do with smugness. And there are a disproportionately number of smug people among the highly educated.
(note: part of the reason I argue with everyone is I derive great pleasure from being proven wrong. That is the only way I know I am learning something, and the only way to maintain any sense of intellectual humility. The only cure to elitism is to admit that people who disagree with you are not necessarily stupid and/or evil.)
The other problem is, of course, Brooks contention that only the east coast elites are intelligent, that somehow anyone West of Richmond, if he's being generous in drawing the line, is by definition an idiot. His real objection is that conservatism appeals to people whose priorities are in the right place: living their own lives and letting others live theirs. The issue may be intellectual vs. non-intellectual, but the intellectuals aren't quite as intelligent as they're cracked up to be.
Many "miracles" are by definition "unscientific," but many believers in them are hardly "unintellectual."
Many accomplished scientists of various faiths make the calculated choice to elevate certain other epistolomogical sources above even science -- and there are indeed many intelligent "intellectual" discussions taking place on these matters in such communities. There's also a whole branch of philosophy devoted to how science should be approached!
I guess if "intellectual" excludes any competing worldview or philosophical system of thought -- however intelligent its proponents -- then yes, conservatives are anti-intellectual...
Not surprisingly, such extreme specialization comes at a cost. You can't spend much time bumping around from career to career, or working with a lot of different types of people, or becoming rich and then poor -- in short, gaining a broad experience of the real world and its real human occupants, and building up a broad "horse sense" wisdom about the nature of people and things.
Hence my experience, which is that the most amazingly brilliant intellectuals, Nobel prizewinners even, often have almost childishly naive and narcissistic ideas in the political and social realm.
Intellectuals are kind of like IBM's Deep Blue chess-playing miracle computer. Absolutely brilliant if you ask it to solve a complicated chess problem, but a dumb useless lump if you ask it does Frank seem a little sad to you today?
In that sense, then, the bimodal distribution of Democratic Party appeal is no surprise. One the one hand, we have those who are broadly dumb. On the other, we have those who are functionally broadly dumb, because all their mother wit and good sense is focussed on a tiny area of specialization.
I've found that the real difference between liberals and conservatives is that the former tend to think in terms of hypotheticals and theories, while the latter have gotten their hands dirty and have a real sense of how the world works. Get a group of cops, soldiers, or intelligence professionals together and I guarantee you that nearly all will consider themselves conservatives. Of course, many who pursue these careers tend to forgo prestigious education for various social and financial reasons.
Conservatives have all kinds of education levels, and most, given the stated and enacted policies of the two parties, support the Republicans and identify as Republicans. But the Republican Party is increasingly anti-knowledge, anti-science, and anti-intellectual.
That it is not so to the degree that intellectuals who agree with its policy goals desert it is a function of those intellectuals' preferences. But one cannot look at the McCain platform, base, or campaign and call it pro-intellectual. It is appealing to the uneducated and hoping that the educated support it despite, not because of, its attitude toward knowledge.
More insidious examples pop up in things like climate change. Large numbers of "dolts" (from above) reject volumes of academic/scientific literature in favor of their own "belief."
But, neither of those examples compare to the type of anti-intellectualism that this recent campaign has brought out: the racist, hate-filled, unhinged, mob mentality. By in large, I can ignore those other types of anti-intellectualism, but the last few weeks have been the most disheartening for me as a socially liberal republican. Seriously, Obama and Ayers? "Obama is a terrorist?" "Kill him?" "Obama is a muslim?"
Those "dolts" have rejected reason/intellectual honesty for hate, bile, violence, and fear-mongering.
Even that is positing something on faith. Plenty of grad degrees issue every year to complete incompetents.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It's what I call the technocratic fallacy. Each expert compares the knowledge of the average person/candidate to their own within their area of expertise and concludes that that person/candidate is stupid, leaving out all the other areas and/or general principle/competence.
The belief that the average person is stupid undermines the trust that is the lifeblood of a liberal polity.
• Climate change
• Epidemiology (favoring abstinence-only as the best way to control the spread of HIV/AIDS)
• Non-existent link between abortion and breast cancer
• Energy policy (believing that even though the U.S. has 3% of the world's petroleum and consumes 25% of the world's petroleum, we can solve our energy problem (in the short term, even!) by drilling
These are just a few of the many ways that Republican politicians often subordinate scientific fact to crude anti-intellectual political objectives. More
That's rather silly, since I don't see East Coast technocrats at Obama rallies shouting that they need to lop the heads off of some rednecks.
I chalk that up to the decline and deferrence to the left that the GOP increasingly engages in. McCain is a good example, and so is Bush. That party doesn't elect many conservatives to office any more.
(Similarly, the Democrats are trying to embrace the far and "fractured" left, which should scare most people.)
Nah. That couldn't be any intellectuals I know of.
If that's true, then certainly there are two forms of anti-intellectualism in the Republican Party, the other one being premised on resentment of intellectuals. And what you describe sounds more like simple pragmatism to me, as opposed to anything conservative or liberal.
Huh? The link I pointed to has the performance of Republicans among postgraduates as worse than any other education group besides those without a high school diploma.
Regardless, I don't have a positive point to make. I just want to emphasize is that your use of averages as a statistic to describe what is clearly a bimodal distribution is misleading.
"resentment of intellectuals"
Is there an approved way to respond to bigotry that you would not label "resentment"? Others prefer "whining". Same question.
"It's not easliy defined, but you know the "anti-intellectual" elements of the republican party when you see them."
You're currently in the lead for most anti-intellectual statement of the thread right there. Care to top yourself? Perhaps a gut feeling you'd like to unburden yourself of or a juicy piece of gossip to pass along. An appeal to authority might also not be out of line.
Ilya, now you've got me curious with this statement, in light of your position (a few weeks ago) that believing in Moses parting the Red Sea, or Jesus rising from the dead, is as empirically unsound as believing in 6-day, 6,000-years-ago creation. What do you class as a less extreme form of creationism? Intelligent Design, maybe, or the belief that the world is billions of years old and that species evolved through natural selection *but* a deity nudged the dice so that (eg) light-sensitive cells evolved into eyes?
Not trying to trap you with a "gotcha". Genuinely very curious.
Re the central question: I have a PhD and teach at a university. I have also lived many years in rural areas. In my experience, the herd instinct is very strong whether one works with "hand or brain" (to borrow from the UK Labour Party's former Clause Four). Intellectuals can be tricked into switching off their critical faculties too, if you phrase it the right way and play on the right prejudices. [*] Many "manual" workers (defined broadly) believe automatically that the Emperor can't be wearing any clothes because you can't see them. Certain members of the "herd of independent minds", OTOH, pretty much believe that the Emperor MUST be wearing clothes, because you can't see them. In both cases, many are not interested in empirically testing their view. Some take comfort in going with the crowd. Others take comfort in telling themselves they're "dissenting".
[*] Recent example: a co-worker (generally, a decent person) sneering about Palin and Todd hunting moose. "They actually enjoy killing animals! How barbaric! What century are we in here?!"
Me: "You know Todd is of Eskimo/ Yupik ancestry?"
[embarrassed pause]
Co-worker: "oh, well, you know, hunting is a very important part of Yupik and Inuit culture..."
No, they're too busy calling for "a million Mogadishus" instead, or replacing the faded "So Many Christians, So Few Lions" bumper stickers on their Volvos.
They both seem pretty bright and educated (yeah, I know McCain finished 5th from the bottom in his NA class but his IQ is 133 and he's pretty well-read and traveled.
But in the next debate could either of them, off the top of their heads:
Recite the 3 laws of thermodynamics?
Recite at least 10 lines from Paradise Lost?
Recite the quadratic equation?
If they can't, does that mean they're anti-intellecutal?
Good try at being snarky though.
None of us should ever be allowed to run anything.
Then you're not really listening.
I meant believing that evolution is basically true, while also believing that God "created" us by kicking off the process. Your last example is similar.
Well, if it's difficult to define anti-intellectualism, how about just definining an intellectual?"
"More insidious examples pop up in things like climate change. Large numbers of "dolts" (from above) reject volumes of academic/scientific literature in favor of their own "belief."
Does one have to be a dolt to recognize the climate change models failed at predicting the last ten years of actual air and ocean temperatures? Does it take a dolt to question the value of accepting models that failed when tested? Does the intellectual accept these models as if they were products of the scientific method?
I wonder also about statements about getting one's hands dirty. Do we mean on Wall Street? Really, there is nothing dirtier, except for Washington, maybe.
The anti-intellectual movement in America is quite easy to spot and identify. You see it on news programs every night. "Is he too smart?" "Is he to professorial?" And so on. This largely comes from conservatives. Has anyone watched FOX News? Has anyone read Paul Johnson's Intellectuals? Or that recent book by that ex-crazed-left-winger-now-demented-wingnut about dangerous academic intellectuals?
People who call themselves "intellectual," yes, which is why the term has lost the genuineness of its original meaning; and why posting with the assumption that we're talking about people who aren't self-identified "intellectuals" is sort of flamebait.
Throughout, Brooks' line of argument is fanciful and tendentious. I'm sure he could similarly note certain groups of academics tend to give and be aligned with Democrats more often as well, in terms of voting patterns and in terms of financial donations, but is it conceivable to Brooks that factors other than intelletual integrity and interests - and instead ideologicaly interests - govern that fact. And lawyers? Such as lawyers with obvious interests in tort legislation? Investment bankers? As in investment bankers who make tens and hundreds of millions of dollars and who's interest does not at all inherently rest in any type of intellectual or moral integrity?
There are so many other factors to consider - beyond intellectual integrity - that it boggles the mind. Yet David Brooks doesn't so much as allude to those other factors. And if Brooks is not considering intellectual fidelity or integrity but is instead merely considering elitist opinion, then he should more transparently acknowledge that fact.
Or perhaps David Brooks is unfamiliar with the idea that elitist opinion can be divorced from intellectual integrity and can instead be oriented toward power dynamics first and foremost. Hmmmmmm.
"No, they're too busy calling for "a million Mogadishus" instead, or replacing the faded "So Many Christians, So Few Lions" bumper stickers on their Volvos."
I can get links and youtube video for the lynch rallies. Can you link to the "million Mogadishus" or "So many Christians" bumper stickers being embraced by anyone connected to the Obama campaign?
The extremists on the Left are insane and marginal. The extremists on the Right are at the center of the McCain campaign.
Yep, Random Guy Who Yells Something At A Rally vs... hmmm... Kos.
Hay, maybe McCain should start calling the police to remove or arrest people who turn up at his rallies and say non-approved things. Problem then solved.
Interesting question, but I don't have the figures. However, have you considered what percentage of post-grad liberals have a law degree? Is law school education or job-training?
Thanks for clarifying. This position offers hope of a consensus because (a) not only is it held by pretty much all the actual Christians I know (a caveat, though - I don't reside in Elvis Country) but (b) it seems, taking you as an example, that atheists can live with it even while disagreeing with it.
However, my understanding is that - eg - Richard Dawkins has gone out of his way to refute this view by arguing that randomness is not just the most, but the only, scientifically plausible explanation. Causa finita?
And yes, JB, you're right, it certainly would never do to elect a President who had any association whatsoever with people who think it's okay to kill one's domestic political opponents, could we?
If that were true, McCain would look more like Fred than Clinton.
The only question is why do people who claim to be so damned smart never learn from history?
Public Intellectuals, a Study of Decline
Does it really make sense to juxtapose a stock to a flow that way? Why does no one compare annual usage to the size of the reserve? Probably because (a) the size of the reserve isn't well-established and/or (b) it would show that we're not about to "run out of oil" any time soon. My guess is that after Oldsmobile and Ford really got their production lines going, the US proportion of the world's annual oil consumption has been disproportionately high the whole time ... yet domestic drilling (Texas, Oklahoma, etc.) kept us pretty oil-cheap for decades. But what I'm sure of, is that the rest of the world increasing its energy consumption isn't going to help us a bit (though that is exactly what the stock:flow juxtaposition implies).
Ways in which the Democrats are anti-intellectual:
Constantly saying that solar, wind, and/or thermal production has a chance of generating a significant amount of power, and leading us out of our dependence on foreign oil
Believing that IQ tests and possibly psychometrics in general are bigoted and/or "hateful" until everyone scores equally
Blank-slaterism in general (see Pinker's book on the subject for some pro-science liberalism.)
The 3% figure is composed of reserves that 1)Are available using existing technlogy, 2)Can be produced at a profit, 3) Are available under current law and regulation.
Since ANWR, offshore, and western oil shale are not available under current law, they are not part of the 3% figure.
Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field has well defined 250 billion recoverable barrels. The oil shale in the Western US is estimated at between 500 billion and two trillion barrels. We have yet to see how much of that can be profitably produced using current technology.
However, such resources can never be utilized if we have laws saying they can't.
Also, it's terrible how people don't want to buy the bagels I make. Some of them say the bagels are stale and too expensive, while other people claim they're laced with cyanide by space aliens. Obviously everyone who hates my bagels is a kook!
Perhaps it would be better to be selectively disheartened. Being worried about Obama and Ayers is simply not in the same category as calling him a Muslim.
Bull.
They are young and can be led by the likes of Obama.
Do we have 25% of the world's economic output. If not now we used to.
maybe just maybe, these people don't know as much as they think. see ortega y gasset, the revolt of the masses.
Huge intellectuals, one and all.
Do I get to be President if I can do those things?
If I do, I guess I better crack open the books.
We do, however, object to a particular sort of student who sneeringly blames every low grade on the fact that the teacher "is obviously a libtard." An example of what I mean (alas, not unusual): a student complained that his failing freshman comp grade was due to his teacher being biased against Republicans. The student's angry father called us and bragged of his wealth (that he would forever withhold from our univ now), insulted those who "teach because they couldn't make it in the real world," and threatened us with lawsuits, complaints to the trustees, etc.
Turns out that the student had completed only 20% of the work. The teacher (who was, incidentally, a conservative Catholic) had kept careful records. Then the student told us that he had been ill and he demanded an incomplete. We requested documentation of the illness. Then the student said that *he* wasn't ill, actually, his father was the one who was ill. "The father who called us?" we asked. Mysteriously, neither the student nor the father contacted us again.
Jerks come in all political persuasions. But anti-intellectual rhetoric tends to bring students like this to mind. Maybe more "elites" would be persuaded if people would dial down the contempt a tad . . . and not encourage young conservatives to think they've been victimized whenever they don't get A's.
Republicans don't like "intellectuals", but they define them more narrowly than others. A Ph.D. engineer working for a corporation would not be considered an intellectual, but a Ph.D. philosopher on staff at a university would. The difference is the type of degree (liberal arts, history, philosophy, ethics, sociology, etc. are suspect) and the place of employment (universities, government, think tanks, PACs, etc. are suspect).
Republican Party bias against intellectuals is not a problem: an intellectual is not banned from joining and voting. The Volokh Conspiracy, not too long ago, had a series of posts about liberal intellectuals being biased against conservatives. That real problem is more important than arguing about which political party likes or dislikes "intellectials" the most.
Except that instead of talking about how the party of yuppies doesn't pay enough attention to the real salt-of-the-earth Joe Sixpacks and hockey moms out there, now he's realized that the party of Joe Sixpacks and hockey moms doesn't pay enough attention to the yuppies.
When the political winds change, pundits need to make some adjustments.
McCain could fight back over the next few weeks and stress the importance of deregulated markets, cutting the links between government and the economy. but he won't; he would be a hypocrite. too many people have invested thier conservative credentials in supporting mccain, and I've already seen several instances of them pulling back, if only slightly. Most notably was this past week when the NRO started questioning the McCain stance of having the government buy mortgages.
This is your 'conservative'. The argument that the Republicans want limited government is dead. That they want fiscal responsibility is dead. There are exceptions of course, but they have all been met with hostility, contempt, and rejection. I get the feeling Groupthink is the MO of the GOP right now.
As a life-long conservative, Republican, who voted for Bush twice, who has started his own business, pursued higher education on his own dime, I must quote Obama at this point. "ENOUGHT!" I'll never vote for the Republican party as long as I live. Not if they keep having hot-head jocks like McCain prancing about. This isn't an endorsment for Obama. This is a rejection of the philosophical cancer that has spread in the GOP.
But you knew that.
-------------------
On the broader point: I will repeat the name until it is burned into every VCer's memory cells: Michael Oakeshott.
If you want to see why intelligent conservatives--brilliant conservatives in Oakeshott's case, and mine--do not want to be governed by a tenurocracy, read "Rationalism in Politcs and other Essays." Conservatism in this sense is not an intellectual position, but rather a disposition.
Burke thought so. And Collingwood. Roger Scruton thinks so as well. And then, again, there's me.
Not a crowd of dummies, is it?
"Speaking as a humanities professor on a coast (albeit at a state school), I can tell you that most of my colleagues have no problem with conservatives."
Illinois-Chicago? Cleveland State? UW-Milwaukee?
Come on, tell us: Middle Coast or North Coast?
(Or are there other coasts that I am forgetting?)
And few administrations have displayed a smugness of all-knowingness than the Bush Adminstration. We are supposed to 'trust' them that they will never spy on Americans (proved again this week that they actually do), that we must trust them that they are right about the wars we are in and they way that they are prosecuted, that we must trust them that no one is tortured even though we know that they are, that we must trust them that everyone in Gitmo is an enemy combatant,, even though we know that many are not, that we must trust them that tax cuts are always the solution to any economic situation, and on and on.
We are told that even questioning the policies of this administration is an unpatriotic act. That is by far the worst sort of anti-intellectualism I can think of.
Oh, and by the way, Spain gets 10% of its total energy needs from wind power alone. On strong gusty days, it can rise to a full quarter of their needs. That's quite significant, and I'm the US could do just as well, if not better.
(unless, of course, you're one of those defeatest American haters who things we can't do anything right at all).
Cute. But I teach in Florida. We do have a few nutty liberal stereotype professors, but they aren't nearly as numerous as the Horowitz crowd seems to imagine. Anyway, walk over to engineering or finance and you'll meet their conservative counterparts. Most of us are just regular people, doing our jobs. (except when we read VC when we should be grading papers)
The US could certainly use more wind power. Same with nukes, solar, coal, gas, and oil. Nukes, gas, and oil are proven and available. Wind and solar are available, but cannot yet shoulder the burden that the others can carry. That's why drilling can make a contribution. (Contribution means it adds an incremental benefit; it does not mean it is the full solution.)
I drove through a very large windmill development in central Kansas a few weeks ago. One could see the wind generally blew from the south because all the trees were permanantly bent to the north. Not a single blade was turning, the grass wasn't even swaying in a breeze. There was absolutely no wind. Hundreds of windmills just sat in the dead air waiting for a puff of wind.
Spain probably does get 25% of its power from wind on some days, and it probably gets about 2% on others.
incorrect. Spain counts upon 10% of its energy needs from wind. It just that when the winds are particularly strong it climbs above that number. Don't forget, thery are peninsula surrounded by water, and so that might not translate to the US.
Or maybe it could. We have two large coasts, and a large body of inland water (the Great Lakes), and the wind potential there hasn't even begun to be tapped.
And for good reason!
sure it's fun to be a 'libertarian contarian' as i like to say. but we all know that that kind of rhetoric is under the true guise of "no government = awesome goverment." that's why i think it's HILARIOUS when the purported libertarians think they are no less doctrinaire than liberals, as they're clinging to the higher principle chasing ghosts.
welcome to reality. have fun with that.
And yes, JB, you're right, it certainly would never do to elect a President who had any association whatsoever with people who think it's okay to kill one's domestic political opponents, could we?"
There you go with the Gordon Liddy comments again. Noun-verb-Bill Ayers day 7
Are you an agent provocateur for the anti-intellectual forces or are you just a perfect example of what they're saying?
Many (most?) people cannot think beyond years-long indoctrination. There's no surprise in that.
All the tax incentives for wind energy are for building the windmills. It doesn't matter where.
"Spain counts upon 10% of its energy needs from wind. It just that when the winds are particularly strong it climbs above that number."
This highlights a problem with windpower - How do you switch off the other power source when you get you get a good supply of wind. This article Candour from the BBC , from Euroreferendum, explains the problem:
"But, while Cox establishes that wind power produces 20 percent of Danish electricity, he also finds out that this is not actually consumed in Denmark. The figure is a statistical illusion. Only nine percent of the wind energy generated is actually used in Denmark.
At times of peak capacity, the power cannot be absorbed into the grid so it is exported. Much of the power goes a system of inter-connectors, mainly to Norway which has a high proportion of hydro-power and therefore is able to shut down its own capacity very rapidly in order to take the Danish feed.
This, Cox does not actually tell us. Nor does he reveal that the power is sold very cheaply to Norway – which is thus the main beneficiary of the Danish system – or that the Danes have the highest electricity bills in Europe."
In the middle of the 20th century, the rural fundamentalists simply did not vote much. They kept to themselves, socialized with themselves, asked for little from the government and wished to be left alone. Increasingly government began to come in and tell them what to do, developing political sensitivity only as they were repeatedly poked.
Federal funding of abortions, in the wake of Roe –v-Wade was a real galvanizer. Where before many had disapproved of abortion, and perhaps shunned those within their community who got abortions, now, they say *there* money being taken from them to fund murder. It does not matter how you saw it, that is how they saw it. It was the final straw in what they would tolerate from the realm of Caesar. Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner had no place for a third phrase, Fund the Sin.
As Democrats were pushing the funding of sin, these new voters became Republicans. The tension between the Western or Goldwater Conservative and the Religious Right has been the fundamental strain in the Republican Party for decades. This makes the strange bedfellows of the well educated free-market libertarian and the anti-intellectual fundamentalist. Reaching for the fundamentalist votes has one many short term victories for the Republicans while driving many social libertarians and free marketers into the statist Democratic party.
On the other side, the fundamentalist new ager and the fundamentalist Christian have many things in common, including belief systems inexplicable to others outside their group, a desire to live outside of a society that they consider anathema, and a strong wish to be left alone. With these two groups in different parties, and able to deliver elections if properly mobilized, all political speech is turned into polarization.
Love it or Hate it, the effect of Roe-v-Wade extend far beyond the woman, the child and the clinic. And this Anti-intellectualism is a shadow play around it.
No one ever told you that. You are wildly over-interpreting.
Democrats have a slight advantage in post-graduate voters. This advantage vanishes instantly if you take out the post-grads in Education, which is nearly a third of the graduate degrees. I think taking them out of the mix is sensible because A) they have the lowest objective qualifications for grad school, B) their field of study is much less rigorous, and C) an enormous percentage of the group is government-hired.
I find conservatives to be more anti-academy or anti-intelligentsia than anti-intellectual. As to intellectualism, it depends on what you are measuring. My subjective opinion from personal and online discussions is that conservatives know more history, liberals more literature; conservatives more science, liberals more art. The variation within each group is far greater than between groups, however. Full disclosure: I was a theater and medieval lit major who now works in the social sciences - all liberals, all the time. I became conservative over time partly because of how often they weren't the philistines I was taught to expect them to be.
I'd argue that "anti-intellectualism" in the sense of anti-scholasticism is a virture of the Republican Party as a whole, and isn't somethingto be ashamed of.
Well, that intrigues me. I can see how they may count on wind to deliver 10%, but I would have to ask if it really lives up to those expectations. Does it ever fall below 10%? If they expect 10%, does a distribution of hourly contributions of wind ever fall below 10%?
I suppose a graph of the distribution showing frequency by percentage delivered would answer the question. Unfortunately, I don't have one.
Wind is a great resource and it' stupid not to use it. The same applies to nukes, coal, gas, oil, solar, and geothermal. Not one of them will solve the problem, but together the aggregate of their contributions will.
Can somone name an intellectual who holds elected office today? In the last century? How did they do?
"I became conservative over time partly because of how often they weren't the philistines I was taught to expect them to be."
Interesting word choice. Are you familiar with Matthew Arnold's original take? Or, entirely beside the point, this sublime poem? Still brings a tear...
"I'd argue that "anti-intellectualism" in the sense of anti-scholasticism is a virture of the Republican Party as a whole, and isn't somethingto be ashamed of."
This is exactly correct, but I fear insufficient. Lacking a positive alternative vision, it is slowly curdling.
Mr. Brock's paradigm is encapsulated in the frou frou of John Kerry's refusal to release his records during his campaign. During the entire campaign the Democrat meme was that Kerry was an accomplished intellectual while Bush was a bumbling provincial ape as demonstrated by his lackluster academic achievement as an undergrad. For months, John Kerry avoided releasing his records, in spite of accusations that he lied about his military service. In the end, it turned out that apparently the only thing he was really trying to hide was the fact that he had been an even worse student than Bush. John Kerry was willing to take the hit on his military reputation in order to protect his intellectual pretensions.
The argument against right-leaning intellectualism is a tautology. The left, particularly the academic left, defines intellectualism as having leftist views, and those who don't hold those views are perforce vulgar. Any imbecile who *does* hold leftist views becomes in turn an intellectual a la Al Gore or Ward Churchill. Any attempt to educate the left otherwise is met with closed-minded and open-mouthed denial. The travails of conservative student groups in academe, the strident leftist anti-intellectual speech codes, the violent attacks on conservatives who attempt to speak at academic venues, the visceral attacks on conservative thought (as evidenced by the rejection of the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government by the University of Illinois) are part and parcel of this denial.
Since intellectual conservatives are essentially frozen out of academe, they go elsewhere. Leftists go to the academy while rightists go to think tanks. This allows people like David Brock to ignore their existence and write silly articles that reinforce the left in its self-congratulatory, closed-minded, self-imposed ignorance.
David Brooks, not "Brock."
But Brooks does in fact reflect a provincialism. Which is why he relies upon a pseudo-argument rather than something more conscientious and rigorous. Brooks unquestionably writes better commentary at times, but the cited piece is cartoonish in terms of the reasoning and the argument it forwards. It's little or nothing more than dressed-up name calling. It's as if it's geared to assurring he continues to recieve cocktail party invitations from certain quarters.
From the sophisticates he mentions?
I stand corrected. When he writes something more memorable, I'll work harder to remember his name.
Is there are a state that doesn't have residency requirement? I had to show proof of address when I registered to vote here in Maryland.
As for property requirements though, that was already going the way of powdered wigs when the Constitution was new. Vermont porclaimed universal (white male) suffrage in 1794, and most other states followed that lead over the next generation.
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