Only in a world where anti-intellectualism, idiocy, and proud ignorance are ideals to strive for is “What do you read” a gotcha question.
The “anti-intellectual” strain of conservative thought is an obvious reaction to careless liberal messaging and alienation from power. It is also, in part, an outgrowth of the constant (and partially fallacious) juxtaposition between a religious (especially Christian) worldview and scientific fact.
It’s not that conservatives hate higher education; it’s that they dislike and mistrust self-conscious “intellectuals,” who, especially since the 1960s, are largely left-wing. Because it is so expensive, higher education has always been associated with elites, and particularly those elites in the (liberal) Northeast, where many (although not all) of the top universities in the United States are clustered. Conservatives tend to be fewer on the ground, and those that do appear in this population are as likely as not to be Rockefeller Republicans interested in conservative economics, not conservative social agendas. Combined with the fact that many top positions in government and corporate America are dominated by the graduates of these elite schools, and have been for so long, many Americans believe that there is an essentially incestuous relationship at work whereby students who have not had the “hard-scrabble” existence that is the storied stuff of national mythology all go to the same place, learn the same things, and end up in the same place. Inevitably, they then apply the same “broken” theories to the nation’s problems, achieving nothing, before stepping aside so that the next generation of these students, who are utterly identical, can do the same thing.
Because the doors of higher education are essentially closed to them by default, and because most of the teaching profession is dominated by liberals, it is only natural for conservatives to be suspicious of arguments and evidence that they find inaccessible. This aversion to evidence is strengthened by: (A) the sometimes-mocking tone of those who use or deliver that information, which unintentionally feeds ad hominem attacks; (B) the popular practice of revisionist history, which promises to employ tools that are equally legitimate while achieving much more palatable results, and leads to dueling “experts;” and © the sense that, as the Christian Science Monitor put it, “peer” review is actually “pal” review, a perception based on the sameness of the intellectual traditions from which all of this unwelcome data has come. In other words, conservatives see “science” and “intellectual” endeavor as having been largely hijacked by liberals, and made into a weapon.
Revisionist history is especially dangerous when practiced by people who have inadequate training. While I think it’s safe to say that every researcher has biases, it’s inexcusable for people like Glenn Beck to root through the history books in search of information that, at nothing more than first glance, appears to validate their political perspectives. The inevitable results are things like the “discovery” that, before there was black slavery in America, there was “white slavery” in the form of indentured servitude – a new set of incomplete facts that is clearly intended to discount the argument that America “owes” something to its minorities, which is a horrible misunderstanding of the fundamental problem of social inequality in a multicultural society.
As for idiocy, or “proud ignorance,” I think the bold anti-intellectualism of certain conservatives is just an attempt to respond to actual or perceive rejection by opponents with a kind of self-empowering identity that stresses “experience” over “theory” and reinforces the existing notion that intellectuals, rather than the objective heralds of truths to which everyone must bow, are merely agents of a different, equally self-interested political party, and therefore fallible.
As I’ve said before, this is exactly how you get politicians like Palin and Bachmann, individuals chosen because they “look and sound like us,” rather than because they have a certain set of educational or experiential credentials. In the eyes of many conservatives, that approach has failed. They identify with George W. Bush, but struggle to make common cause with the fundamentally different strain of conservatives emerging from The Academy, and are skeptical of perceived Washington insiders. It’s an old democratic tradition: the most reliable way to get an advocate who will deliver “your” message is to find the person who looks most like you, and therefore has the same things to say about the world.
