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Jonah Goldberg writes in response to Anne Applebaum:
I’m trying not to let my exasperation get the better of me, so let me explain what I think she is missing. Attacking the Ivy League is a very old, very recognizable shorthand in American political discourse. What Applebaum is doing is reading these statements literally, and painfully so.
(She is also asserting that Ivy League simply means the smartest and the best, as if there was no plausible case that the Ivy League’s reputation is any way overblown or underserved. She has to do this to make her case that conservatives don’t believe in educational excellence, because the only “proof” she has are a few statements attacking such schools.)
The problem is that when conservatives zing the Ivy League or the educational elite, they are no more offering an omnibus indictment of educational excellence than liberals are denouncing all Texans when they take potshots at George W. Bush’s Texan roots. Similarly, when Yalie George H. W. Bush stuck it to Michael Dukakis for his views borrowed from “Harvard Yard,” he was not offering a plenary indictment of academic excellence generally. Rather, he was speaking idiomatically about certain types of people who tend to hail from the Ivy Leagues.
As Jonah explains, when conservatives attack “elites,” they do not mean to indict all members of such elites. They only mean to indict such members as disagree with them. Populist resentment in the service of an unstated ideology: What could be more straightforward or honest than that?
Tom Friedman put it well today, “Welcome to Tea Party America. Think small and carry a big ego.”
Good grief, David. So I guess it’s time to repudiate Buckley, whose “faculty of Harvard” quip was clearly a blanket indictment of all intellectual endeavor. On November 2, the Republicans, energized by Tea Partiers, are going to win the House and, not implausibly, the Senate. They will do this despite Christine O’Donnell and having failed to follow your prescriptions, notably the one to employ only rhetoric that would satisfy the demands for precision appropriate to a graduate seminar (on which no election larger than faculty senate has ever been won, and doubtfully any of those). One would think this sufficient to challenge the notion that you have found the key to building “a conservatism that can win again.”
Perhaps she could write another article: “Why Do Leftest Elites Hate the Tea Party?”
What could leftest elites possibly hate about the following?
(Here is material from Wikipedia:)
Tea Party’s Contract from America:
1. Identify constitutionality of every new law: Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the U.S. Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)
2. Reject emissions trading: Stop the “cap and trade” administrative approach used to control carbon dioxide emissions by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of carbon dioxide. (72.20%)
3. Demand a balanced federal budget: Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax modification. (69.69%)
4. Simplify the tax system: Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the Internal Revenue Code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words – the length of the original Constitution. (64.9%)
5. Audit federal government agencies for constitutionality: Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in an audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities. (63.37%)
6. Limit annual growth in federal spending: Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)
7. Repeal the health care legislation passed on March 23, 2010: Defund, repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. (56.39%)
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above’ Energy Policy: Authorize the exploration of additional energy reserves to reduce American dependence on foreign energy sources and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation. (55.5%)
9. Reduce Earmarks: Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)
10. Reduce Taxes: Permanently repeal all recent tax increases, and extend current temporary reductions in income tax, capital gains tax and estate taxes, currently scheduled to end in 2011. (53.38%)
Golly, xyzzy, how could anyone oppose such a brilliant plan? But I have questions too. Why do you suppose it was that the Republicans in Congress voted en masse against extending the Bush-era temporary tax reduction for the middle class? Was it just that it was Democrats who proposed it, or was it that they couldn’t abide the idea of the middle class getting a break if the super-rich didn’t get one too?
Tea Party’s Contract from America:
What are the percentages? Link or explanation would be helpful…
Also:
9. Reduce Earmarks: Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%) This is waaaaaaaay toooo funny.
Didn’t you know Mitch McConnell (who’ll be Senate Majority Leader) is in the top 10 in earmarks year after year?
1. Identify constitutionality of every new law: Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the U.S. Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.
Umm, what was that nasty thing about separation of powers? If this is done, then why would we ever need a Supreme Court? I always thought Congress passes laws, the President signs them, and the judiciary decides Constitutionality. Am I wrong?
xyzzy:
What is the % after each point represent exactly? But here are my critiques:
1. Congress is not the constitutional arbiter on legislation, the Supreme Court is. And it’s silly since 95% of all legislation would just quote the General Welfare clause or Interstate Commerce clause.
2. Cap and Trade IS PROVIDING ECONOMIC INCENTIVES to stop polluting. So basically they’re saying oppose what they support.
3. They want to get rid of reconciliation? AND impose 2/3rd majorities to raise or lower taxes? AND require a balanced budget even in times of Recession or War? All of those ideas are silly and poor policy.
4. Why should the tax code be less words than the Constitution? Does that even make sense considering the legalize required to eliminate loopholes in tax codes? Not to mention we’d still need a centralized authority to enforce the tax code if the IRS was abolished. Not to mention the progressive income tax is the only tax that is progressive in this country.
5. While it makes sense to continuously audit agencies for effectiveness and efficiencies it is stupid to audit for constitutionality. That doesn’t even make sense, since an audit has nothing to do with whether an agency is deemed constitutional or not.
6. Growth in federal spending can’t increase more than population and inflation combined? Another stupid policy. What happens when another Katrina occurs? Can’t help since inflation and population growth don’t give us the ability to spend on disaster relief. Or a 9/11 occurs and we increase defense spending by 20% overnight.
7. Not going to happen.
8. Reducing regulatory barriers will lead to more Deep Water Horizon’s occurring.
9. Define earmarks first.
10. So they want to balance the budget but make permanent the temporary tax cuts set to expire. That makes logical sense……(not really)
I don’t hate the Tea Party, but I sure can easily mock their policy proposals as purely short sighted, using gimmicks, and unintelligent.
“10…and extend current temporary reductions in income tax, capital gains tax and estate taxes, currently scheduled to end in 2011.”
Sure, let’s continue to cut revenue, increase annual debt service payments of billions and borrow a couple of trillion dollars to pay for it all. So much for the Tea Partiers being fiscally responsible.
“After releasing the 21 ideas at CPAC on February 18, 2010, a final online vote was held to narrow the 21 ideas down to the final 10 to be included in the Contract from America. Over two months, 454,331 votes were cast. The resulting document, including the vote percentages for the statements, was posted online on April 12, 2010″
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
I am not sure that this site is the definitive source of information — just where I found the information.
I placed the material in the comments since I found them interesting — in that they expressed what is important to them, realistic or not, and how it reflects their values.
Many people don’t event know about the Contract from America and what it contains (I didn’t).
It would be interesting to have the top 10 items from more groups and movements. Guess that is a research project…
Just as a point of interest, that is slightly different (maybe more accurate, maybe less) than the account given on the Contract From America wiki page:The Contract from America was the idea of Houston-based attorney Ryan Hecker. Hecker states that he developed the concept of creating a grassroots call for reform prior to the April 15, 2009 Tax Day Tea Party rallies. To get his idea off the ground, he launched a website which encouraged people to offer possible planks for the contract. Hecker told the New York Times, “Hundreds of thousands of people voted for their favorite principles online to create the Contract as an open-sourced platform for the Tea Party movement. The agenda had the imprint of everyday citizens every step of the way (in the online voting process).” Hecker said the Republicans’ 1994 Contract with America represented the nation’s last intellectual economic conservative movement, but the new list, he said, was “created from the bottom up. It was not crafted in Washington with the help of pollsters.”[1]
From the original 1,000 ideas which were submitted, Hecker reduced it to about 50 based on popularity, then to 10 items with the help of former House Republican Leader Dick Armey, whose conservative group FreedomWorks has established close ties with many Tea Party activists around the country.[2]
Ideas to be included in the contract were proposed and debated on a website designed for that purpose and the resulting statements were voted on online, with 454,331 votes being cast. The resulting document including the vote percentages for the statements included was posted online on April 12, 2010.[1]
Rabiner: 2. Cap and Trade IS PROVIDING ECONOMIC INCENTIVES to stop polluting. So basically they’re saying oppose what they support.
Yeah… I’m still scratching my head over that one. The only other alternative would seem to be a government funded economic incentive for achieving reductions in the emissions of carbon dioxide … which of course would run seriously afoul of #3 and #6, and since it would probably be achieved via some form of tax credits, make #4 even more impossible than it already is.
What … no ponies?
MSheridan above:
“Why do you suppose it was that the Republicans in Congress voted en masse against extending the Bush-era temporary tax reduction for the middle class? Was it just that it was Democrats who proposed it, or was it that they couldn’t abide the idea of the middle class getting a break if the super-rich didn’t get one too?”
Hard for me to speak for Republicans but my thoughts are that, perhaps, they believe that the rich are taxed enough already. I get a feeling too that they would be perfectly happy with a flat-tax without exception (no itemized deductions) and that everyone should pay taxes. I may be wrong on both accounts however.
Statistics based on IRS on who pays what:
Top 50% pay 97.3% (of 100%) ($33,000 and above) (70,000,000 people)
Top 25% pay 86.3% (of 100%) ($67,000 and above) (35,000,000 people)
Top 10% pay 69.9% (of 100%) ($114,000 and above) (14,000,000 people)
Top 5% pay 58.7% (of 100%) ($160,000 and above) (7,000,000 people)
Top 1% pay 38% (of 100%) ($380,000 and above) (1,399,000 people)
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
Hard for me to speak for Republicans but my thoughts are that, perhaps, they believe that the rich are taxed enough already.
No question that this is correct. The GOP definitely believes that the rich are already taxed enough, if not waaaay too much.
IRS Statistics on who pays what:
Great. Now factor in:
(a) what percent of America’s wealth is held by each percentile?
(b) what do those ratios look like when Social Security/Medicare receipts are factored in?
For (a), the bottom 50% of Americans hold a total of 1.2% of America’s wealth. The top 10% of Americans hold 80% of the wealth (up from 68% in 1989).
And as one famous Republican President once said:
The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and … a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.
As for (b) … when you factor in payroll taxes, you find the following (2001 data):
Top 20% pay 65%
Top 10% pay 50%
Top 5% pay 38.5% (of 100%)
Top 1% pay 22.7%
Those numbers likely decreased with the Bush Tax Cuts, since payroll taxes immediately made up a larger percentage of total federal revenues.
So let’s see – the top 10% of Americans hold 80% of the wealth … and pay 50% of the taxes. Sounds like a good deal, since they get this really big Government that’s basically dedicated to protecting their wealth domestically and abroad.
xyzzy, so people who have no money should pay all the taxes? How will that work out exactly? Anywhat, that is incredibly biased since this is only Income taxes and does not count state, sales, local, property, etc. taxes. All told it is pretty close to being balanced with the rich paying a slightly larger amount. I posted this info. the other day rebutting Ryan.
Oh, I’m well aware of those facts. The people up at the top pay a bigger percentage of the nation’s revenue than the rest of us in taxes (in total) because they’ve got the money to tax. If I were taxed at 100% and Bill Gates were taxed at 1% of yearly income, I’m fairly sure he’d still contribute far more. The wealthy would not favor a flat tax if they thought they’d have to pay more in taxes under it, so if it were imposed they’d pay less than they do now and everyone else would have to automatically pay more to make up the shortfall.
When people like Bush Jr, graduate of Andover, Harvard and Yale, say they are against elites conservative talk about elites becomes hopelessly muddled.
If you did nothing else, xyzzy, you sure took everybody’s mind off of Jonah Goldberg.
Mercer
I think there should be a distinction between ordinary elites like Clinton and Obama and a subclass of elites we can call legacies. We’ll start out at the top with Bill Buckley and work our way down through the Bushes all the way to Republicans like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, with their antebellum names.
Mr. Goldberg may be referring to just a handful of intellectual elites, but the conservative rank and file are thinking about all of them. It why scott Brown needed a pick up truck and why Mitt Romney better get a pick-up truck, a horse, a working farm , and a southern accent all before the 2012 Republican Primaries.
I’m glad he’s willing to admit that Conservatives talk in coded shorthand. They say one phrase, but with a wink and a smile. Ivy League Elites? Wink wink, nudge nudge. Know what I mean?
It is refreshing to hear him essentially say of course he doesn’t mean the words coming out of his mouth. None of his compatriots do. They don’t say what they actually mean, because I guess they are ashamed or embarassed to voice it out loud (is there any other explanation?). So they lie.
Good for you, Jonah!
“As Jonah explains, when conservatives attack ‘elites,’ they do not mean to indict all members of such elites. They only mean to indict such members as disagree with them…”
lol
I wish I had that wit
why Mitt Romney better get a pick-up truck, a horse, a working farm , and a southern accent all before the 2012 Republican Primaries.
which brings to mind how fast George Bush bought a Dallas mansion after his Presidency was over, rather than returning to “Prairie Chapel Ranch” to clear more brush …
Welcome to Progressive Liberal Socialists America. Carry a big ‘elite’ ego, tax big, spend big, make every crisis big, make global warming a big issue, make pollution a big issue, make poverty a big issue, screw big business in a big way, screw America big, install big government …. all done for the BIG LOVE of the people, a collective.”
All because they went to Ivy League schools which somehow enables them (the Fascist Liberals) to know BETTER what’s BETTER for all Americans.
Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to mention that The Evolution also made Liberals smarter than the Tea Party folks. How is that? Just because they believe it, and the Tea Partiers don’t.
Ahahahahahhahahaha.
Goldberg can never be elite. He’s too dumb. Seriously.
Any Jew can be elite, the average IQ is always higher.
I’m not talking average. I’m talking left-tail of the distribution.
Let me just say, communists-basher, that your views are loathsome and despicable. Shame on you.
Now, to the main issue.
Nobody opposes higher education in itself. What we oppose is the takeover of higher education by lefties, and the establishment of speech codes, diversity training, ethnic literature studies, etc., that rapidly followed. We oppose the obnoxious left-wing indoctrination that takes place on most campuses. As Dennis Prager says, there are only two ways to avoid taking in all the lefty propoganda in college: come in with strong values already, or get wasted for four years. As Prager dryly notes, it is a strong case for getting wasted for four years.
If we opposed all people with a higher education, then we wouldn’t like the much-loathed-by-Frum candidate Rand Paul, who has a doctoral degree in ophthalmology from Duke. We wouldn’t have liked Newt, for his doctorate in history. Jonah Goldberg is right: it is not about “elites” as such, but about current “elites”- people who loathe the traditions and culture of ordinary Americans.
David, surely you understand this, living in D.C. To say that D.C. has a distorting effect on people is an understatement. How many people in the political class part of D.C. (that refers to folks in Tenleytown, Friendship Heights, Georgetown, Cleveland Park, Capitol Hill, etc.) go to church? How many have more than 2 children? How many own businesses? How many of them ever venture into “flyover country”? Around 70% of the U.S. population lives in states not in the Northeast or West Coast (New England, NY, NJ, PA, MD, DE, CA, WA, and OR). They live in a world utterly apart from the world of average Americans (that means Democrats and Republicans). It is a liberal world, and it effects everyone who lives there, including GOP “elites,” who propose ditching parts of the GOP platform that are supported by the vast majority of rank-and-file party members. You’ll notice that actual GOP members of Congress do not do this as much, because they have to represent and understand their district and its people.
Does this mean that any of these “elites” are evil or something? Certainly not. Just that they should understand where they come from, and how different it is from the world of ordinary Americans. If you want to comment on politics, this seems like an obvious point.
Incidentally, I know D.C. fairly well because I go to college there (I’m abroad right now) and all of my claims about the politics, religion and culture of D.C. have an abundance of statistical evidence behind them. Putting all of that in this post would be gratuitous, but if anyone wants it I will be happy to post it in the future.
mpolito
What we oppose is the takeover of higher education by lefties
When exactly do you think this happened? That is when do you think that higher education was conservative? Can you give me a year.
Your next line, “and the establishment of speech codes, diversity training, ethnic literature studies, etc” gives a hint to when you mean. But that’s really two different periods of time.
The establishment of speech codes was the early 1990s, and frankly little more than rules of basic politeness. I lived in PC central, a very liberal college in the North East 88-92; and I was a Republican. While there was some sillyness the idea that I suffered tremendously under the strain of PC is pure nonsense. Speech codes where one of the first issues where I saw propaganda in action, though I didn’t really understand that at the time.
On the other hand the establishment of ethnic departments was the 1970s in response to feminism and black power movement and their critique.
So when did this takeover happen in your view? When would I have gone to college and had a bunch conservative professors? I would argue that if you were to look at a college in the 1940s they were probably more to the left of the general society on social issues or economic issues than a school in 2010 is.
The reason people think that colleges breed liberalism is something slightly different than a new found liberal group of professors. What college does undermine, very effectively is Right Wing Authoritarianism. This has been the case for centuries. Its not that college has changed but..
a) The number of people going to college has grown tremendously. So the effect of undermining Right Wing Authoritarianism is having a broad political in a Democracy.
b) The Republican party has become heavily reliant on the votes of RWAs. The effect of moving people off of RWA thought patterns is to make them more liberal.
Incidentally you focused on children, which is the #1 thing that causes people to become more authoritarian in their views.
How many own businesses?
Actually small business ownership is pretty common in the North East. I don’t see any evidence for less entrepreneurship in liberal parts of the country or even among liberals. Everything else you mentioned is essentially social conservatism. For example Minnesota is off the charts economically liberal, while
The other place I would disagree with you is cities vs. rural. Cities tend to be more liberal even in conservative areas.
All that being said given all the places I disagree on particulars on your broader theme that social conservatism is extremely popular the data is absolutely unequivocal. The Republican party is popular despite its economic policies because of its social policies. The 1963 Democratic party coalition of economically liberal / socially conservative would be an incredibly powerful party. I think you would have a base that is 49% of the population.
mpolito: “…..obnoxious left-wing indoctrination that takes place on most campuses….”
What in heaven’s name are you talking about? No one is being ‘indoctrinated” or ‘brainwashed’ on American campuses.
I spent 12 years going to Catholic schools in NY. Then, I went to CUNY, Hunter College back in the late 60s and early 70s – a hotbed of the anti-war hippy crowd where there were demonstrations on campus against LBJ and Nixon and Vietnam… flower child, pot smoking, ‘free love’ the whole shebang.
I didn’t get warped or brainwashed. If a person changes their worldview, it is because they want to. It’s called freedom, remember? You sound as if college students are held down and made to do goose steps to force them to change their worldviews and opinions. Ridiculous.
Btw…many of the courses you think are bad for students are not only good for students because it helps them *think.* That means that they are given ideas that are contrary to what they previously learned and then decide for themselves. This is bad? It is bad to learn about ‘diversity” or ‘ethnic literature?’
For your information, these courses are almost always elective. No is forced to take courses in college, unless it is required to graduate.
And if a person doesn’t want their child to be exposed to different ideas then for heaven’s sake, send them to a private parochial Christian college!
This is still America…. land of the free…… I had the greatest education at CUNY… I learned to understand and deal with all kinds of people, not sheltered in a cocoon. It made me wiser and more understanding of the world around me.
The more I listen to so-called ‘conservatives’ the more I realize I could never again join their bandwagon. Full of insecurity and fear-laden. A small world view. Prejudice and bias. Static thinking. Anti-intellectual, anti-progress, anti-science.
You can keep it.
anniemargaret –
And if a person doesn’t want their child to be exposed to different ideas then for heaven’s sake, send them to a private parochial Christian college!
Actually doesn’t make too much difference if the college is liberal to moderate. Exposure even to a variety of conservative ideas tends to undermine right wing authoritarianism. Divinity schools are notorious for churning out liberals because by examining the bible critically people arrive at liberal theological positions.
CD-Host said, ” I would argue that if you were to look at a college in the 1940s they were probably more to the left of the general society on social issues or economic issues than a school in 2010 is.”
Maybe on economics. Maybe.
But on social issues? Homosexuality? Abortion? Race? I don’t think so.
anniemargret, let’s take a look at your insufferably smug remark.
“Full of insecurity and fear-laden. A small world view. Prejudice and bias. ”
There was a lot of fear of Bush and Cheney. A lot of breathless talk of the end of the Constitution and our basic rights. A lot of fear of Christian conservatives. Obama, thinking he was not being recorded, and among friends in San Francisco, abandoned his pretense of respect for the other side and dismissed conservative values as mere misplaced economic anxiety from losers that has been diverted into becoming “bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
“Static thinking.”
In what way has the thinking of, say, the House Progressive Caucus advanced at all since the days of George McGovern in 1972?
“Anti-intellectual, anti-progress, anti-science.”
Which side, left or right, hysterically denounces IQ tests and educational rigor because they violate egalitarian dogma?
Which side denounces medical science as “patriarchal, Western, exclusionary”, etc., and embraces quackery such as “traditional Chinese medicine” and New Age woo-woo?
Which side opposes genetically modified organisms, and the “Green Revolution”, that have saved billions from starvation? Which side banned DDT and has halted nuclear power? Which side hates the space program and especially human exploration of space, favoring the welfare state instead?
I think this is another case of Frumplestiltskin taking straw and trying to spin it into gold. Goldberg’s comment doesn’t strike me as particularly remarkable, any more than observing that making fun of hicks is usually limited to making fun of regressive, parochial hicks and not liberal progressive hicks.
good grief, Carney….where to begin…
My comment to “mpolito” was not ‘smug or insufferable’ because he was the one that denigrated American higher educational institutions as bastions of liberal “indoctrination” and “propaganda.”
That’s ‘smug and insufferable.’
You bet there was a lot of fear during the Bush/Cheney years. Invading a country based on deliberate fabrications and a pre-9/11 protocol that was already in place (PNAC). They used the fear generated from 9/11 to conflate Iraq/Saddam Hussein/911 so that years after the invasion, the majority of Fox news watchers still thought Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Talk about propaganda. They put two wars on a credit card, and diverted funding for Afghanistan to Iraq. No capture of Bin Laden. Bush said of him, “…I really don’t care.”
They allowed torture – antithetical to our ideals as a nation and in violation of international law- a war crime. Spying without warrants, arresting without warrants, in clear violation of American law. Attempts at a unitary executive. You bet there was fear.
I agree that Obama’s statement was poorly articulated. Clinging to guns and religion….people always cling to religion during times of stress, and that is not something I find unusual or abhorrent.
But if they try to foist their personal view of God and religion on the entire country, which is exactly what is now passing off as ‘conservatism’ then I question what ‘conservatism’ really means. Obviously they support a breakdown in separation of church and state which is dangerous to our freedom of religion and thought.
Obama was correct in conservatives’ antipathy towards immigrants. We see it everyday. Not just illegals. They have a earnest fear of anyone that is not white, Christian, middle class American. Otherwise, why is it that the Tea Party or Republicans are so poorly represented with minorities? There is a reason for that.
Is this your ‘conservatism?’ What’s really hilarious is that the entire thrust of the ‘conservative’ movement, now dominated by the Tea Party and the Right, is that it based on Fear… and why they have made a crusade to made Obama seem like the ‘Other.”
Static thinking? Sure…. conservatives are the ones who are denying climate change is real…. Rushbo insists it’s all a ‘liberal hoax.”
They are denying that stem cell research would solve and mitigate the suffering of millions with terrible diseases, adamant that the embyros used should not be touched. But you don’t see them running off to adopt one, do you?
They are the ones that went into a tizzy about HCR. For eight years they had the Congress and the White House and did nothing to stem the bleeding from a dysfunctional healthcare system and insurance corruption, leading to bankruptcy, foreclosures, and heartsick Americans worrying about their families and how they can afford to keep insurance.
Western medical science is now beginning to see the Eastern therapies as viable and important. Many medical centers in cities now incorporate holistic medicine, acupuncture and yoga to enchance health. Where have you been?
Space exploration? I’m all for it. But we are going through a devastating economy.. not too many people are going to be excited about putting billions into space exploration when our foreclosures rate is going up by day.
Nuclear power? Perhaps. But that is still not the definitive answer to our energy problems. Nuclear power is dependent on water and the costs of building them are extremely expensive. They are open to terrorist attacks and meltdowns, not to mention the waste, which remains toxic for hundreds of years. Which state should we dump the wastes in?
It is your party that is reluctant to get off Big Oil and seek new avenues into green and renewable energy sources. After all, didn’t you catch Michelle Bachmann when she took BP’s side against the Gulf Coast residents?
Maybe on economics. Maybe.
But on social issues? Homosexuality? Abortion? Race? I don’t think so.
In the 1940s Homosexuality would get you automatically terminated from most jobs, would frequently get you beat or raped, and was criminal. You don’t think academics were well to the left on that? The Well of Loneliness was frequently assigned in colleges in literary classes. All through the 1940s academics were arguing that publicly advocating for homosexual inclusion was not obscene or immoral and winning.
Abortion: 1940s colleges illegal abortions were standard fare. Colleges didn’t want girls ruining their chances of marriage. They most certainly were not unhappy when the doctor who lost his license set up shop 2 miles from the college. Again well to the left of the society.
Race. This one there are surveys. Racial attitudes were much more liberal among the college educated. For example the campaign against anti-miscegenation laws were very active on colleges.
I see no evidence that colleges were not well to the left of 1940s society. Now both colleges and society have moved very far to the left of where they were 60-70 years ago, so colleges of the 1940s would be to the right of many Christian colleges today on social issues. Education is fundamentally liberal, it considers the correctness of ideas not a hierarchy of authority. As a result reading even openly conservative thinkers like Martin Heidegger or Burke comes off as liberal outside the specific context they wrote in.
mpolito — how would you have voted at Socrates’ Trial? Seneca also forgot that gentlemen don’t ask questions. Nietzsche would have convicted both. Rational thought must be obliterated.
larry I’m not so sure I would give Socrates trial as a good example of an attack on rationality. See The Trial of Socrates, there is a pretty good case to be made it was the opposite.
Anniemargret, you nailed it. Carney’s strawman arguments don’t diminish your points at all. To the contrary, it’s the modern GOP that’s become (to use his words) “insufferably smug.” Palin, Beck, Bachmann, Cantor, Limbaugh, Ailes, Angle, Boehner. Which one of these clowns does that not describe?
CD-Host, I’ve read that book. It made a good case for what the case actually was against Socrates, and showed him as an unsympathetic, undemocratic crank. But I would say that the trial was shown not as an attack on unreason, but instead as a trial for sedition. And to my recollection Stone explicitly affirmed that regardless of the motives of his accusers the trial of Socrates contravened Athens’ principle of freedom of expression.
Yes, there are different views of Socrates’ Trial. But in Plato’s Apology, Socrates is made to speak for himself. Meletus accused him of corrupting the youth of Athens by not believing in the Gods. That was the formal situation. But Socrates says the real reason for his bad reputation is that he possesses a certain kind of wisdom. “What kind of wisdom? Human wisdom, perhaps.” He had disturbed the conventional myths of society by engaging in rational inquiry. The populist Right is outraged at such “elites.” No wonder Plato was skeptical of democracy. That’s all we need for the philosophical point. The historical realist could make another point. Socrates was a close friend of Alcibiades, promoter of the disaster at Syracuse. He also had a shirt-tailed relative among the Thirty Tyrants, who had murdered some 1,800 Athenian citizens. There was plenty of hate in 399 BC Athens. But that’s another story.
“Socrates was a close friend of Alcibiades, promoter of the disaster at Syracuse.”
Oh please. Alcibiades was the prototype for Alexander the Great, a genius who was as brave in battle as he was smart. He laid out a solid plan to end the insufferable war against Athens (begun by Sparta) and establish Athenian dominion throughout the Mediterranean by defeating Syracuse, which supplied Sparta with its raw materials for its war efforts.
That plan was working quite well. Syracuse was on its knees when Alcibiades’ political opponents in Athens tried and convicted him in absentia of ridiculing their gods and sent the Salamis to bring him back for execution. Not a smart move in retrospect.
“No wonder Plato was skeptical of democracy”
Plato was a nasty snake in the grass who championed a brutal and communistic Sparta and falsely portrayed Socrates in Plato’s Republic — Socrates in the Republic cannot be the same Socrates in the Euthyphro, Apology and Crito
Being anti-elite (populist) is not an indelible quality of conservatism. Quite the contrary, right-wingers are supposed to be the ones crusading to champion unimpeded excellence in all human endeavors.
The forces that fight against scientific inquiry within the Republican party strike me as a mix of two groups. Some have a vested interest in the absolute truth of scripture. Others have a vested interest in the profits associated with unimpeded pollution (of the kinds related and unrelated to climate change) as well as business practices that are dangerous to public health. I have some sympathy for the former, none for the latter.
Anti-science stances definitely exist on the left as well. Many are associated with snake-oil salesmen of some kind (homeopathic medicine, for instance). Holistic medicine is blown thoroughly out of the water by the fantastic, incredible, runaway success of disease-vector theory. Hippies and peaceniks were happy to ignore the good sense of political elites with even the most basic understanding of geopolitics.
Most recently, the idea that sexuality is set in stone before birth and cannot ever by any means be influenced flies in the face of every text on psychological development taught in a classroom for the last half century (maybe more).
Then there are the 9/11 Truthers. Their quackery transcends party lines.
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According to a Gallup poll in March, the Tea Party is roughly representative of the racial breakdown of the United States. The Tea Party is about 79% white, as opposed to 75% of the general population. The number of African-Americans in the movement is about half that of the general population. The “Hispanic” and “Other” categories are roughly the same.
The Tea Party is many things but it is not overwhelmingly white, despite the Truthiness of the claim.
Fine, stuffy oppressive types need to be ridiculed and fought in academia & everywhere else. But the Right is guilty of mass irony once again since they usually champion such totally undemocratic and un-free institutions like the Church, military, business etc where being oppressive and submissive is the norm
CD-Host: Actually doesn’t make too much difference if the college is liberal to moderate. Exposure even to a variety of conservative ideas tends to undermine right wing authoritarianism. Divinity schools are notorious for churning out liberals because by examining the bible critically people arrive at liberal theological positions.”
I can’t think of anything more against freedom of thought than to restrict one’s opportunity to expand their mind and hearts to opinions different from their own. It’s why the overwhelming resistance to ‘liberal’ schools so offends those on the right. They would much prefer static, myopic thinking, nothing to shake up their rigid beliefs.
Again, this points to fear. Most of us writing on this blog are open to listen to others’ opinions even if they fly in the face of what we believe is holy and true. That’s OK. It’s good to listen and hear divergent pov’s. It’s OK to debate and argue. Some truths slip in from time to time.
No one is ‘indoctrinated’ in this country unless one wants to be. Colleges have ‘liberal arts’ – meant to expand your views and stretch out biases. Some people, however, never want to get out of their comfort zones.
anniemargeret –
You might really enjoy this book: http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
anniemargret, you went into a long justification for why left-wing fear of Bush, and of Christian conservatives, is OK, but conservative fear of Obama and the left is not. So your constant taunting, and dismissal, of the right as being all about “fear”, as if fear itself is objectionable, stands exposed as irrelevant.
What matters is the issues at hand, since each side fears the results of the other’s ideas if implemented.
You’ve never explained why Middle America should welcome being overwhelmed and reduced to a minority in its own communities and the country at large. What people anywhere has voluntarily handed control of its destiny over to another people? What is so evil and immoral about a majority calmly deciding that it wishes to remain a majority, while still tolerating the minorities among it? Why do you not object to the groups that various immigrants hail from exerting their utmost political effort to maximize their numbers, influence, and proportion of the population, but then turn around and see the majority doing the same as somehow horrendously evil?
You then rattle off a grab-bag of liberal arguments, but did not refute the reality that the left is just as, if not more, guilty of the very things you accused the Right of.
As for Eastern quackery, please look up http://www.quackwatch.org/ for actual SCIENCE, you know, that thing you claim the Left has an exclusive monopoly on support for?