Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives have to appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters. They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.
The WSJ published a really insightful piece along the same lines:
I mentioned the other day a study that contradicted one of the favorite myths of the GOP and the Religious Right: that going to college will lead you to either Socialism or hell. My question is -- do you go to college to get told what to think, or shown how to think by asking questions and looking at all the angles? It's church where you're told what you must believe and are started from a very early age with songs and verse-memorization to try to mold you in the direction of religion. The Red Scare converges well with the Religious Right, in my humble opinion, because they are reminded of what the Soviets and Chinese did to churches: they shut them down.
The fact is, conservatives have been dissing intellectuals for decades, and I don't know if it's because academia is thoroughly leftist or because the true power base of conservatism is the Religious Right. I'm convinced that there is a link between religiosity and conservatism that extends beyond the trite, "if you love Jesus, vote Republican." I think it is part of the nature of religiosity to tend towards anti-intellectualism: why study philosophy if the Bible has all the answers?
Religious conservatives are, in my humble opinion, to blame for the death of the conservative intellectual force. These people are devoted to a farcical worldview that does not reconcile easily with assault weapons or laissez-faire capitalism to begin with, so they twist and contort social issues in order to ascend within the GOP and use demagoguery in place of reason. Some people may think that this period will result in a "purging" of these godbots from the Republican Party, but I am willing to put down money that they will only make the GOP even further right, at least in the near term. And then, hopefully, a true multi-party system may emerge in the US, which I think will bring more health to our political system.
It seems that it's an intrinsic part of conservatism (by definition) to preserve the social order and resist progress. It seems that it's an intrinsic part of liberalism (by definition) to question and challenge the status quo and the institutions of power and push for social reforms. If your philosophy is innately resistant to change, then as the world slowly changes around you, your philosophy becomes irrelevant. This is what's happened with religion to a large degree: the thriving churches are thoroughly modern and provide huge social outlets and social supports for members. The danger of liberalism is change for change's sake, if the net result does not better prosper or secure our nation. Liberals can believe too much in government spending to solve all ills and not enough in the power of free markets.
I would love to see a smart, lean and mean progressive coalition that enacted real reforms, cut the budget in all the right places, and increased it where it counts. And I think the only way to get there is to depend upon evidence and study in knowing what to do and how to do it, rather than relying upon party dogma.
Kristof talks about intellectualism in his column Sunday:
It's a sad tale that began in the '80s, when leading conservatives frustrated with the left-leaning press and university establishment began to speak of an "adversary culture of intellectuals." ... The die was cast. Over the next 25 years there grew up a new generation of conservative writers who cultivated none of their elders' intellectual virtues -- indeed, who saw themselves as counter-intellectuals. Most are well-educated and many have attended Ivy League universities; in fact, one of the masterminds of the Palin nomination was once a Harvard professor. But their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them. [...]And the WaPo says:
Writing recently in the New York Times, David Brooks noted correctly (if belatedly) that conservatives' "disdain for liberal intellectuals" had slipped into "disdain for the educated class as a whole," and worried that the Republican Party was alienating educated voters. I couldn't care less about the future of the Republican Party, but I do care about the quality of political thinking and judgment in the country as a whole. There was a time when conservative intellectuals raised the level of American public debate and helped to keep it sober. Those days are gone. As for political judgment, the promotion of Sarah Palin as a possible world leader speaks for itself. The Republican Party and the political right will survive, but the conservative intellectual tradition is already dead.
Tuesday's Republican debacle was, as the social scientists say, "over-determined." It had many causes. Was it brought on by congressional corruption, Bush administration incompetence, intellectual exhaustion or John McCain's failings as a candidate? All of the above -- and then some.They go on to dissect three of those four causes, but not intellectual exhaustion.
I mentioned the other day a study that contradicted one of the favorite myths of the GOP and the Religious Right: that going to college will lead you to either Socialism or hell. My question is -- do you go to college to get told what to think, or shown how to think by asking questions and looking at all the angles? It's church where you're told what you must believe and are started from a very early age with songs and verse-memorization to try to mold you in the direction of religion. The Red Scare converges well with the Religious Right, in my humble opinion, because they are reminded of what the Soviets and Chinese did to churches: they shut them down.
The fact is, conservatives have been dissing intellectuals for decades, and I don't know if it's because academia is thoroughly leftist or because the true power base of conservatism is the Religious Right. I'm convinced that there is a link between religiosity and conservatism that extends beyond the trite, "if you love Jesus, vote Republican." I think it is part of the nature of religiosity to tend towards anti-intellectualism: why study philosophy if the Bible has all the answers?
Religious conservatives are, in my humble opinion, to blame for the death of the conservative intellectual force. These people are devoted to a farcical worldview that does not reconcile easily with assault weapons or laissez-faire capitalism to begin with, so they twist and contort social issues in order to ascend within the GOP and use demagoguery in place of reason. Some people may think that this period will result in a "purging" of these godbots from the Republican Party, but I am willing to put down money that they will only make the GOP even further right, at least in the near term. And then, hopefully, a true multi-party system may emerge in the US, which I think will bring more health to our political system.
It seems that it's an intrinsic part of conservatism (by definition) to preserve the social order and resist progress. It seems that it's an intrinsic part of liberalism (by definition) to question and challenge the status quo and the institutions of power and push for social reforms. If your philosophy is innately resistant to change, then as the world slowly changes around you, your philosophy becomes irrelevant. This is what's happened with religion to a large degree: the thriving churches are thoroughly modern and provide huge social outlets and social supports for members. The danger of liberalism is change for change's sake, if the net result does not better prosper or secure our nation. Liberals can believe too much in government spending to solve all ills and not enough in the power of free markets.
I would love to see a smart, lean and mean progressive coalition that enacted real reforms, cut the budget in all the right places, and increased it where it counts. And I think the only way to get there is to depend upon evidence and study in knowing what to do and how to do it, rather than relying upon party dogma.
Kristof talks about intellectualism in his column Sunday:
An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals read the classics, even when no one is looking, because they appreciate the lessons of Sophocles and Shakespeare that the world abounds in uncertainties and contradictions, and — President Bush, lend me your ears — that leaders self-destruct when they become too rigid and too intoxicated with the fumes of moral clarity.I really think that Americans were so sick of our Idiot-in-Chief that listening to Barack refuse to oversimplify answers and pontificate was actually refreshing. We understood that it was time for a leader who was goddamned razor-sharp and willing to consider arguments from all perspectives. Republicans had some ideas for this election, but their ideas lacked the force of power that Democrats' did, precisely because Republicans have a sort of dogma that resists challenge.
