when i read this line in "book club" (their idea of whats wrong with conservative, my head spun around 360 degrees.

this is the entire problem with "outsider" analysis of whats wrong with EITHER political party

• liberals would be fine with conservatism if conservatives went for expanding the authority and concentration of goverment power
• conservatives would be fine with liberalism if liberals endorsed smaller, less intrusive government

thats all you need to know about why this "book club" review is hilariously dumb.

no wait - there's one more thing: about 10 years ago an author named francis fukayama published a book called "the end of history" - his thesis being that increasing levels of education and rationality would mean that unsettling political figures like hitler and mao were in decline. then 9/11 happened

i predict "the death of conservatism" will suffer a similar fate - immediate real world rebuttal of its central theses.

Considering that the perpetrators of 9/11 came from a society that is almost Medieval in its repressiveness, and were protected by a country (Afghanistan) that has, as I've heard, an illiteracy rate of almost 80%, I don't see how Fukuyama's thesis has really been undermined. Education and prosperity do make totalitarianism less palatable.

Which is why the rank disgust for intellectualism that has gripped today's GOP is a troublesome development.

Which is why the rank disgust for intellectualism that has gripped today's GOP is a troublesome development.

There is no disgust for intellectualism in the GOP or by republican voters. This is a myth. Republicans are disgusted with so called (and often self proclaimed) intellectuals that believe they are superior to others that went to public colleges of no college. It is a disgust with arrogance an pseudointellectuals not with intellectuals as a whole.

Ohka:

Which is why the rank disgust for intellectualism that has gripped today's GOP is a troublesome development.

There is no disgust for intellectualism in the GOP or by republican voters. This is a myth. Republicans are disgusted with so called (and often self proclaimed) intellectuals that believe they are superior to others that went to public colleges of no college. It is a disgust with arrogance an pseudointellectuals not with intellectuals as a whole.

I went to a public college. The whole thing about arrogance is dumb. The only thing that really matters is who is right; if you are right, it doesn't matter if you are arrogant.

Actually you are wrong. Why should anyone tolerate being treated like less of a human? Besides, most of those arrogant pricks are wrong. Just because they went to Harvard or Yale or have a PhD doesn't mean they are immune from being wrong. I have a PhD and I am wrong most the time. Linus Pauling was brilliant, but was wrong about the structure of DNA.

In my immunology career I have met a lot of very smart people, the ones that are really smart, realize how much they don't know, and they are actually not arrogant because they don't need to be. Arrogance is the refuge for those that secretly doubt themselves and their worth.

was grievously flawed, because there are vast areas of the world (islamic middle east, most of africa, much of latin america, rural china, burma, north korea, etc) where education is either non-existent or theological if it happens at all; where women have minimal rights compared to men, and where hunger and poverty occupy mens minds, not debates about healthcare reform or global warming

Ohka,

if it wasn't anti-intellectualism, then conservatives wouldn't support "intelligent design" education. They wouldn't say that "the science is still undecided" on global warming. You would never have heard of "death panels", and Sarah Palin would never have been allowed to write an op-ed that stated she was vindicated for calling them that, just because the lie "rang true for many americans."

I'll grant you that, yes, conservatives INTEND to merely snub people that they think are elitist, but its gotten out of hand to the point that the idea of putting reason before emotion has been thrown out the window.

"Besides, most of those arrogant pricks are wrong."

Wrong about what?

The economy? For the last decade, the "liberal elite" argued against lax regulation and too much faith in the invisible hand of the market. You should have listened to them.

The war? "Effete liberals" and "traitors" at the new york times lead the charge to question the WMD assertion. They were right. Then, after being decried as weak for attempting to psychologize and understand terrorists, we only pulled out of the quagmire in Iraq after instituting a counterinsurgency policy that explicitly required commanders to better understand the Iraqi people.

Social policy? In the last thirty years since the cannonization of reaganomics, the rich have gotten extraordinarily richer, while real wages have not kept pace. Worse still, social mobility has plummeted from the highs of the 50's and 60's. Maybe you should have listened to the "arrogant pricks" who said otherwise.

I actually can't think of anything that has proven conservatism - especially conservatism as espoused by those who divide the country between "Real" and "elitist" america - anything other than wrong. Any suggestions?

Hey JW (you might remember me as Split-S... i lost my name for some reason)

I think we have had this argument before.

I will remind you that disagreeing with so called intellectuals and elites does not mean you are anti-intellectual or anti-elite. As a matter of fact, arguing with intellectuals is what intellectuals do!! Now I do not believe that intelligent design should be in our science classes and so forth, but I do not have a problem with people disagreeing about evolution or global warming.

Indeed propaganda by both parties is aimed at those who aren't critical thinkers. But that isn't anti-intellectualism that is politics!!

I have been around "intellectuals" most of my adult life (and I guess I am one of them) and let me tell you, I am embarrassed for many of them by how they have an inflated sense of their own worth and intelligence and their ignorance and disdain for those that are the "non-elites" and the lesser educated. There is a reason they are disliked and not trusted, even those that didn't graduate high school know when they are being talked down too and disrespected.

Linus Pauling was brilliant, but was wrong about the structure of DNA.

My point was that most of us are wrong more than we are right. Just because someone is a PhD etc. does not mean they are right all the time. As a matter of fact, most people are wrong a majority of the time. Actually Reaganomics worked great for my blue-collar family. But sure, if you want to believe that democrats are always right and republicans are always wrong, go right ahead I won't stop you.

Maybe someday I wake up and join you in intellectual certainty...

Sorry to hear about the screename snafu. I've had this argument a thousand times, and I'm sure we've hashed it out before.

Now, what you just described - disagreeing with intellectuals - is most certainly not anti-intellectualism. But what I took you to be referring to before was. That is, a sociopolitical culture that mistrusts and mocks people who (1) have academic credentials and (2) use them, along with logical research, to advocate policy positions.

The idea that there is some clique or cabal of harvard-educated wine drinkers who set the norms of liberal discourse is a conservative mythology. What there IS, is what I would prefer to call "cosmopolitanism" which is more or less the dominant liberal culture on most metropolitan areas in the U.S. Its a culture that tends to congregate around universities and is generally an upper-middle class thing. From an outsiders perspective who disagrees with their political views, I can understand how it might look like there are a "class" of "elitist" people who look down on others.

Well, its not such a homogenous group, and our disagreeing with others is (in theory) no more "anti-regular folks" as your disagreeing with us is "anti-intellectual". The difference is, our riposte goes something like, "hey, you people don't have your facts straight" whereas yours is "you're an elitist!"

Hmmm... It is an issue of trust. When your people say "you don't have your facts straight", our people question where your people got those so called "facts". Where those facts from a book with a liberal author? What are the politics behind that PhD and his/her study. Where the results in that study guided by objectivity or by the authors politics? The problem is that "regular folks" have no reason to trust so called "intellectuals" because the line between intellectualism and politics blurs. For example, I did my PhD work at the univeristy of iowa. Even there, 90% of the professors were registered democrats, why should I believe anything a history professor has to say where there is no diversity of thought?

And... why should "regular folks" listen to someone who is talking down to them?

One of my favorite movies is "the Aviator". There is a scene in that movie that illustrates perfectly what I am talking about when Howard Hughes visits the Hepburn estate. That dinner scene is perfect when kate's mother (who just tells Howard how "we are all socialists here") asks him if he reads and he says that he reads the trade journals... she responds condescendingly, "we read BOOKS!" This scene is a microcosm of how "regular folks" (rich and poor) are treated by the "elite". It also illustrates their (the elites) ignorance as well as to why "old money" elites are always socialist... to protect their empires from the emergence of new.