Before I deal with the article, I'd like to digress slightly. I hear a lot of people saying they listen to the “other side” in order to know how to argue against it, to know the enemy, etc. I think that is a bit childish and intellectually dishonest. Why bother listening to the other side if you've already decided they're wrong?
That aside, I do try to pay attention to several sides of any given argument. So I do occasionally watch Fox News, though I really don't find it pleasant. I can't listen to right-wing radio—it drives me nuts. Both Fox and talk radio are so propagandistic that I find little intellectual value in its consumption. I find it more pleasant to read some slightly less hysterical conservative publications and web sites. Sometimes they even persuade me on a point or two, or at least remind me not to be too sure in my own take on things.
Which is what led me to American Enterprise Institute's web site. I haven't perused it extensively yet. But the article linked above caught my attention.
The article purports to proclaim the upturning of an old stereotype—that the rich are Republicans and the rest are Democrats. I'll agree that that has been a common perception. But I'm very suspicious of the opening paragraph:
The traditional paradigm of Republicans as the party of the wealthy and Democrats as the party of the common man has shifted, with conservative ideology now appealing to greater numbers of the middle class and liberalism dominating among the educational and cultural elite.I want to draw a possible distinction between the “wealthy” and the “elite”. “Elite” does not necessarily refer to economic status, though it often does. It can, however, also refer to intellectual and/or social status. This is one point where I think the article is on unstable ground.
Anyway, the author claims that the situation has reversed:
Once upon a time, America's distaste for elitism translated easily into a distrust for conservatism. But today, with country-club Republicans having been swept aside by NASCAR Republicans, there is nothing undemocratic about American conservatism. Among elites, it is now liberalism that is the dominant creed.This passage struck me as particularly bizarre. I'll let the first sentence slide—it's probably not inaccurate. The second sentence, “… with country-club Republicans having been swept aside by NASCAR Republicans, there is nothing undemocratic about American conservatism”, seems very odd to me, particularly the second half. Was conservatism ever “undemocratic”? Both American conservatism and liberalism have their roots in classical liberalism, which was what really kicked this whole democracy thing into gear. I've thought a lot of things about conservatism, but I've never considered it inherently undemocratic. The sneaky implication being made here by the author is that liberalism has now become undemocratic. That is patently absurd.
I will agree, however, that liberalism has become the politics of intellectuals and academics. I don't think this is anything inherent in liberalism—I think that we've just done a poor job of putting things in real–world terms for the vast majority of voters. We often argue that conservatives have demonized words and concepts like liberalism and feminism. And they have—but only because we have let them do it. Perhaps we got smug in our intellectualism, and they went and stole Joe Public from our cause.|||109477931507537150|||Yet Another Class Argument
Scooter|||Very interesting post. I always wonder, however, why liberalism and education supposedly go together - it sometimes smacks of the same paranoia that says the media is controlled by liberals. Based on my own experience in college, I'd have to agree - but I was an English/History major and their funding depends upon the largesse of the public, and the general CLA courses I had were generally forced minority literature course, always, of course, run by a minority, which doesn't exactly make you anti-Republican (Alan Keyes - coughChristWouldn'tcoughVoteforyouEitheryoucoughBastardcough), but I'd say the odds are pretty good. That said, the stereotype doesn't hold true if you poke around enough - there are PLENTY of conservative profs out there - in my U of MN alumni magazine from a few months ago, there was actually a note about a medical prof's work to correct people in their belief that stem cell research was a positive development - that also doesn't make you conservative, but it's a good guess. And there are so many many many religious colleges that attract at the very least non-liberal profs - my first job (10 years!) was with several secretaries who came from the local religious college downtown, and I did my masters at Hamline, which even though it's more liberal than most, isn't free of conservatives. State colleges? I might believe it. All colleges? eh.... Joe|||Good point—I did generalize. I think it can be generally said that profs and students of things like philosophy, english, sociology, etc. do lean towards liberalism. I was briefly a business major down at NMSU, however, and I remember how the business profs would speak about Reagan as if he were the messiah.It's strange, though. While the philosophy department there was politically liberal, they were in many ways very conservative. They thought Quine and analytic philosophy was the way to go and that Derrida and continental philosophy should take a hike.
I think I'll stick to my argument that there is a tie between academia and liberalism, even if that does support all those paranoid conservative conspiracy arguments. I think the pursuit of knowledge is inherently a liberal pursuit. The article I quoted speaks as though conservatism being at odds with academics is somehow a recent phenomenon.
But there certainly are plenty of exceptions. I'm certainly not arguing that conservatism is somehow less intellectual per se.
On the other hand, I've always been boggled by the whole “liberal media” thing—at least nowadays, a lot of media is motivated more by profit. I think there may have been a good argument for a liberal slant before cable news, but I think it's different now. I don't really know, though. I've only really started paying attention in the last 5 years or so.