Are Conservatives Anti-intellectual?

Conservative Hideout 2.0 ^ | 2-7-10 | Matt

[ConservativeHideout]

I will say that we are against is elitism. The founders created the nation, and while many went into (at times) government service at various levels, many others went back to work, or back to the farm. They left us to manage our own lives, without the tyrannical interference of government. On the other hand, our current elites crave power, and seek to wield that power in order to dictate most aspects of our lives. The elites sneer at the common man, or others that offer a dissenting opinion. They believe that they have a right to govern based on their education and so-called enlightenment. They believe that they alone are endowed with the knowledge with which to manage our education, careers, salaries and wages, diets, housing, transportation, energy consumption, childrearing, media consumption, medical care, retirements, and so on. They believe that our Constitution, based on a small government and individual freedoms, is outmoded and in need of re-interpretation. They believe that we are far too foolish and short sited to deal with our problem. In fact, how many times have we read that we are acting against our own self-interests? When we choose freedom, and the responsibility that comes with it, the elites view us as foolish and petulant children that are in need of ridicule and the “loving” guidance of the all powerful nanny state.

[Pontiac]

Anti-intellectual? No.
Anti-intellectuals? Yes.

I don’t really agree with that.

True intellectuals believe in the testing of ideas. If a tested idea fails that idea is discarded and a new idea is developed to solve the problem or explain the failure or resolve the issue.

Liberal intellectuals do not discard failed ideas or develop new ones.

Liberal intellectuals simply keep reinventing the same failed ideas with new titles or simply explaining the idea needs more funding regardless of how much has already been wasted on their failed idea.

Liberal intellectuals are in reality simply ideologs with sheepskin camouflage.

[Ted Grant]

It's a long article, but I hope it nails the differences between elitism and education.

If you want a college degree, go to college.

If you want to learn something, read a book.

I have no grudge against formal education, as I have a JD myself and overstayed my welcome in school. But it's not evidence of intelligence or common sense. It's just a certification, that's all.

[The Great RJ]

The liberals have always portrayed conservatives as knuckle dragging red necks who cling to guns and religious fundamentalism. This is not case and conservatives as a whole probably have more down to earth knowledge than liberals with their degrees in feminism or peace studies.

[Cacique]

We first need to define intellectual. An *sshole with a PhD is still an *sshole. What these people lack is a capacity to be open minded, to engage in practicality and critical thinking and to use common sense. The modern “intellectual” class lives in their own fantasy world incapable of ascertaining reality.

[eyedigress]

People figure out pretty fast who is fact and who is idealogue. Democrats have been overrun by the moonbats and are stuck with it. They are thieves and go where-ever the bats are at the time.

[MNJohnnie]

If you define “intellectual” as the ability to endlessly regurgitate pat political dogmas and slogans on any issue (ala Barack Obama) in the face of overwhelming evidence for the contrary political position (ala Leftist defense of the myth of global warming and Keynesian economic theory) then yes, Conservative are anti faux Intellectuals.

[ConservativeHideout]

That’s a good point. They do function in a massive “unreality bubble.”

[Kinzua]

Great topic! Clear Case Guy said it best.

I’ll just add that those who presume to dictate had better be clever. The presumed dictatees will certainly be pooling our limited mental resources to the demise of the clever ones.

[fr_freak]

We first need to define intellectual. An *sshole with a PhD is still an *sshole.

Absolutely. And, furthermore, an idiot with a PhD is still an idiot. Anyone who doesn't think an idiot can get a PhD has not been paying attention to what has been spewing out of the indoctrination centers we call universities these days.

[paulycy]

Are Conservatives Anti-intellectual?

Oh, sure. Setting up volunteer forums which daily discuss the Federalist Papers, Ayn Rand and the Constitutional implications of current US policy is about as anti-intellectual as it gets.

Yep. That must be it.

[Kinzua]

OK. Not demise... but us simple ones will certainly try to thwart their grand plans for us.

[ConservativeHideout]

The left conveniently ignores this.

[Cacique]

I spent 8 years in graduate school working on a PhD that I eventually didn’t get (I’m a PhD candidate) for various reasons including a family situation. I also realized that getting it would be good only for teaching at a university and I would have to sell my integrity if I wanted tenure. In political science there is a great deal of lack of the “science” part. Most books and papers have become nothing more than validation pieces that are heavily subjective rather than objective. When ideology infects the social and hard sciences you end up getting garbage. Lysenko is alive and well in the 21st century.

[rmlew]

As a fan of the Federalists and not the Jacobin fans, the Republican-Democrats, I am appaled at the anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism that has hijaaked conservatism. This is not the Conservatism of Wm F Buckley. The left hijaaked higher educations (and public schools) and our elite are now trans-national corporatists or progressives.

However, conservatism cannot survive as populist. There is no sense of history or tradition. Look how the Tea Party folk flock to Sarah Heath Palin, where she should be an anathema to cultural conservatives she is loved because she takes on the left. (Well, if you ignore Title IX and government aid to the developmentally disabled.) If you hear her talk about immigration, she says that "we are a country of immigrants". No, we are not. We had a founding population from a settler nation, to which immigrants were allowed to join on the assumption that they would assimilate.

[Clemenza]

What you said.

Remember, populism brought us the income tax. There is NOTHING conservative about rule by the popular will, as the masses are often fickle, emotional, and prone to manipulation in aggregate.

[Cacique]

Yes, we were colonists from Europe, joined by other Europeans in our colonization. The assimilation was not so much to a culture as it was to a linguistic group within the larger Judeo Christian European ethos. Inviting Muslims, Budhists, Hindus, Amerindians is simply inviting our own colonization by others.

[R. Scott]

Yep. Libs don’t know the difference.

[uncommonsense]

"However, conservatism cannot survive as populist. There is no sense of history or tradition. Look how the Tea Party folk flock to Sarah Heath Palin, where she should be an anathema to cultural conservatives she is loved because she takes on the left. [snip] If you hear her talk about immigration, she says that "we are a country of immigrants". No, we are not. We had a founding population from a settler nation, to which immigrants were allowed to join on the assumption that they would assimilate."

What do you define as a "cultural conservative" in the context of our constitutional republic? Judeo-Christian, Anglo-Protestant, or some other Americanized ethnic, linguistic, philosophical construct? Then, why should those in said camp find Sarah Palin to be an anathema?

Next, your statement that "We had a founding population from a settler nation" sounds like the notion postulated in Samuel Huntington's "Who Are We? - The Challenges to America's National Identity". If we ignore the perspective of the people who inhabited this nation for several millennium, the history of America (USA) is one of people from multiple European nations emigrating here for different reasons. Some sought religious freedom, others a new land to exploit as new barons extending their old kingdom, and still others sought riches in gold and exotic spices. Our beginnings were by no means homogeneous and strictly puritanical. To assert that America was founded by settlers ignores a great deal of our history.

By the time of our revolution, the "settlers" had achieved cultural and political dominance, therefore one could argue that our governance was founded by the descendants of settlers, but even then, not all of the revolutionaries / founders were born in America. They were "immigrants".

My tag line sums up liberals. Elitism is the issue, not "anti-intellectualism".

[mad_as_he$$]

Winner!