[WSJ] The Perils of Populist Chic

cur.ve · Nov 8, 2008

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122610558004810243.html

A couple of passages:

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.
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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. And all of us, even liberals like myself, are poorer for it.
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DaDakota · Nov 8, 2008

Why do Republicans hate the smart people?

DD

rockbox · Nov 8, 2008

DaDakota said:

Why do Republicans hate the smart people?

DD
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I never understood why people want to elect people just like them. Although I'm smarter than the average person, I would run away from anyone like me running for president.

Bush is someone I could have a beer with that I could never vote for. I want someone president that can kick my butt in the smarts department.

Invisible Fan · Nov 8, 2008

Why is rockbox an elitist?

conquistador#11 · Nov 8, 2008

I thought that in order to be a populist, you had to have support of the people.

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[WSJ] The Perils of Populist Chic

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