3801

The Bachmanns and Wests and their legions of followers have simpler and more violent conceptions of and feelings toward their enemies. If the Weekly Standard/National Review anti-intellectuals were the Rubashovs, the Tea Partiers are the Gletkins.

No one will accuse you of anti-intellectualism! My hat is off to you sir.

3802

That was a bit self-parodic there, yeah.

3803

Higher education in public colleges and universities is not expensive, particularly if you make good choices in what major you choose (‘good’ in this use is defined by choosing a major which has a high likelihood of you being able to pay off needed student loans). You don’t have to go to a top university in the Northeast to be able to discern the bullshit Palin/Bachmann are offering, a Community College associate degree should be sufficient and those are still inexpensive.

And this frankly is why they won’t get elected to the Presidency. These anti-intellectual conservatives are not mainstream. The news on the internet, TV and other media constantly remind people about the value of science and rational thought through presenting news stories that are stories because of the rational thought that they portray. Even a story about the debt ceiling is basically about numbers and while most news journalists won’t get into credit/debit details of what the default can mean, most people accept that the numbers are there and can be analyzed rationally.

Palin/Bachmann trade on the emotions of people. And yes people tend to get more emo when they get frustrated. But what I love about being a progressive who values rational thinking is that while my emotions may change regarding what’s happening, rational thought tells me that what’s happening is what it is. It’s not some huge conspiracy to take all my money, it’s not whatever emo thing they are going on about, it just is. And then I can make rational decision on what to do instead of screaming at ‘liberal idiots’.

3804

Higher education in public colleges and universities is not expensive, particularly if you make good choices in what major you choose (‘good’ in this use is defined by choosing a major which has a high likelihood of you being able to pay off needed student loans).

I disagree. Higher education is expensive. I will admit that it is obtainable, however, especially with the help of scholarships and loans. Graduates overwhelmingly agree that their education was a good investment.

While it’s true that a four-year billet in a public university is much more affordable than for a private school ($7,605 for in-state students, before expenses, compared to $27,293, according to CollegeBoard), many of the elite private schools charge $35,000 or more each year. Even at the lowest average price, that’s $30,420 over four years – a princely sum for a family that may already be taking on debt each year. An out-of-state school will run about $47,960. In conclusion, then, I’d say that even a local education at a public university is expensive, while education at a top-tier school could be prohibitive. This doesn’t take into account the fact the Master’s degree is increasingly becoming the new minimum standard – a basic sorting device in the same way that the college education was a game-changer after the Second World War.

Then there is the popular perception of higher education. A recent article by the Pew Social Trends Staff indicated that more than half of Americans believe the higher education system no longer provides good value. Three-quarters of Americans feel that college is unaffordable.

And it’s significant that students looking for affordable education will be dissuaded from turning to the top schools. The graduates of those private schools often dominate many of the top-tier law firms, consultancies, and financial institutions in this country, particularly in the Northeast, to say nothing of open placements on Congressional staffs and committees. While it’s true that others can get in on merit, the name brand value of an elite university can be enormously valuable. That’s perception, as well as reality: popular culture is rife with stories on this theme, which helps to cement the idea that members of the Good Old Boy’s club get ahead in life.

The downturn in the economy means that fewer students are able to afford top-tier schools without financial assistance of some kind. It also means that their parents are less likely to be in a position to offer that assistance themselves. According to the Pew Social Trends Staff, “A record share of students are leaving college with a substantial debt burden.”

In conclusion, a lot of these elite schools are inaccessible to most people. They tend to attract and process the same kinds of people, who continue to obtain the same professional placements, including government office. in order words, “East Coast-establishment.”

You don’t have to go to a top university in the Northeast to be able to discern the bullshit Palin/Bachmann are offering, a Community College associate degree should be sufficient and those are still inexpensive.

No, you don’t, but that isn’t what I’m talking about.

And this frankly is why they won’t get elected to the Presidency. These anti-intellectual conservatives are not mainstream. The news on the internet, TV and other media constantly remind people about the value of science and rational thought through presenting news stories that are stories because of the rational thought that they portray. Even a story about the debt ceiling is basically about numbers and while most news journalists won’t get into credit/debit details of what the default can mean, most people accept that the numbers are there and can be analyzed rationally.

Most people find the details of the debt crisis incomprehensible – including many of our elected officials, apparently. They are better primed to be able to digest simple statements of principle about what it means to be in debt – precisely the kinds of statements that don’t help point the way to a useful solution. I have a Master’s degree, but aside from an instinctive sense that defaulting on the national debt would do unacceptable things to our bond ratings, I can’t claim to have a meaningful perspective on the issue. I am helpless to whoever can package what appears to be a hugely complex issue into a handful of easily-digestible talking points, completely divorced from theories of economics. I couldn’t begin to evaluate the detailed proposals coming from people trained in economics – on either side.

In short, that is not the kind of thing that gets conservatives all worked up. The kind of thing that gets them worked up is the sense that universities are actually liberal hot-houses where people trained in one style of thinking produce work that is one-sided in an environment is largely free of criticism. They get even more worked up when they hear from charlatans that there is a “new angle” on old news – a new historical perspective that seemingly validates their thinking, but was “suppressed” by the “mainstream” intellectuals.

3805

You don’t need an elite education to make a good living though, so the price of it is not important. And I strongly disagree that the liberal agenda is being led by graduates of elite universities. So I don’t understand why you are going on about the cost of elite universities. I don’t see any evidence that people who follow Bachman/Palin care whether or not the intellectuals are from Havard or UC Berkeley. Do you have any?

3806

You don’t need an elite education to make a good living though, so the price of it is not important.

The point was that elite education is available to only a relatively small proportion of the overall population, which reinforces both the actual and perceived clannishness of that proportion.

And I strongly disagree that the liberal agenda is being led by graduates of elite universities.

So do I. The point of drawing the linkages was to make clear the logic of people who dismiss science and higher learning as somehow perverted by a liberal agenda.

“The Tea Party Jacobins,” a NYRB article of May 2010, has some very provocative (and convincing) arguments to make about conservative perceptions of educated elites (typified by those educated in the elite universities): “Many Americans, a vocal and varied segment of the public at large, have now convinced themselves that educated elites—politicians, bureaucrats, reporters, but also doctors, scientists, even schoolteachers—are controlling our lives. And they want them to stop. They say they are tired of being told what counts as news or what they should think about global warming; tired of being told what their children should be taught, how much of their paychecks they get to keep, whether to insure themselves, which medicines they can have, where they can build their homes, which guns they can buy, when they have to wear seatbelts and helmets, whether they can talk on the phone while driving, which foods they can eat, how much soda they can drink…the list is long. But it is not a list of political grievances in the conventional sense.”

It’s a fantastic article that explains very well why people feel disenchanted. They have good reasons – it just doesn’t always manifest in useful solutions. Consider:

"The new American populism is not, by and large, directed against immigrants. Its political target is an abstract noun, “the government,” which has been a source of disenchantment since the late Sixties. In Why Trust Matters, Marc Hetherington uncovers the astonishing fact that in 1965 nearly half of Americans believed that the War on Poverty would “help wipe out poverty”—a vote of confidence in our political institutions unimaginable today. The failure of the Great Society programs to meet the high expectations invested in them was a major source of disappointment and loss of confidence.

The disappointment only grew in subsequent decades, as Congress seemed less and less able to act decisively and legislate coherently. There are many reasons for this, some of them perverse consequences of reforms meant to make government more open and responsive to the public. New committees and subcommittees were established to focus on narrower issues, but this had the unintended effect of making them more susceptible to lobbyists and the whims of powerful chairmen. Congressional hearings began to be televised and campaign finances were made public, but as a result individual congressmen and senators became more self-sufficient and could ignore party dictates. Coalitions broke apart, large initiatives stalled, special interest legislation and court orders piled up, government grew more complex and less effective. And Americans noticed. Not recognizing themselves in the garbled noises coming out of Washington, unsure what the major parties stood for, they drew the conclusion that their voices were being ignored. Which was not exactly true. It’s just that, paradoxically, more voice has meant less echo."

I don’t see any evidence that people who follow Bachman/Palin care whether or not the intellectuals are from Havard or UC Berkeley. Do you have any

Anecdotal evidence derived from personal experience.

3807

Given what actual happened in that time period this is a completely ludicrous interpretation of American history. What do you mean, “new American populism?” They were mostly fine with the elites before the Civil Rights act, because before that they were “their” elites.

The populist strain that’s evolved into what we see today appeared almost entirely in response to the end of white supremacy, in the North and the South both. Since then it’s meandered around a bit, the overt racism has died down, and it’s acquired side projects like abortion, but “damn shiftless black people taking my money” in various forms is still the core complaint. George Wallace created his rhetoric for a specific reason, and it wasn’t that he was fed up with “government.”

3808

Given what actual happened in that time period this is a completely ludicrous interpretation of American history. What do you mean, “new American populism?” They were mostly fine with the elites before the Civil Rights act, because before that they were “their” elites.

Lilla’s article credits Marc Heatherington’s Why Trust Matters on the shift in popular perceptions of government. Lilla is also self-evidently correct about the increasing role of media during the last half of the twentieth-century in particular, as well as the changes in Congressional structure.

The Civil Rights Act didn’t magically attract liberals to academia. The influx of politically liberal thinkers can be tied more convincingly to the Vietnam War, when universities began to induct and retain larger student bodies, partly in response to the draft.

The populist strain that’s evolved into what we see today appeared almost entirely in response to the end of white supremacy, in the North and the South both. Since then it’s meandered around a bit, the overt racism has died down, and it’s acquired side projects like abortion, but “damn shiftless black people taking my money” in various forms is still the core complaint. George Wallace created his rhetoric for a specific reason, and it wasn’t that he was fed up with “government.”

Have you any proof of this?

Populism was alive and well long before civil rights, and, as Levin points out, the populism of this era is substantially different than that which came before.

Lilla also makes strong arguments regarding our national identity as “credulous skeptics.” Americans are clearly frustrated with government, in part because they have difficulty relating to the “establishment” candidates. While some of Obama’s detractors are clearly racist, the overall credibility problem was just as bad for John Kerry.

3809

What? You’re way, way off. The influx of liberals into academia began well before either the Civil Rights Act or the Vietnam War. All those pointy-headed intellectuals the Silent Majority was yammering about had to get degrees and tenure first.

Try the 1930s.

3810

It’s an interesting comparison, but I would say that even if one could somehow remove the race dimension, my gut tells me that the the level of generic delegitimization and personal antipathy towards Obama “feels” subjectively, even greater than for Kerry or Bill Clinton.

3811

Erm, do I really need to cough up proof that George Wallace developed his pointy-headed intellectual shtick as a polite way to sell racism? White people weren’t lynching professors in the 1960s. If you’re interested in the founding history of the modern right-populist whites movement, I’d recommend Before The Storm and Nixonland.

While some of Obama’s detractors are clearly racist, the overall credibility problem was just as bad for John Kerry.

I don’t think Obama’s opponents oppose him because they’re racist, I just think that’s the origination story of all this stuff you’re sourcing to some long-term disgust with elites. There is a long-running strain of anti-intellectualism going back to the founding, rising and falling at times, but after prairie populism died about in the late 19th century it was either absorbed into mainstream Democratic politics in the 1930s, or limited to a few cranks on the far right. When the civil rights movement blew up the white supremacist apple cart that resurrected the “distrust the elites” thing from the dead. At that point the huge pile of white people upset about it went thrashing around for a new rationalization and landed on the small number of existing anti-elite types.

Mind you, pollsters who know better get this wrong too; they talk about “the decline in trust in government in the Vietnam era” as if Vietnam was the driving factor. It doesn’t help that they accept “upset about programs for poor people” as if that’s people’s actual motivations.

3812

This is a bit of an aside, but I’m not sure if that chronology is necessarily wrong, just incomplete. Intellectual history is tricky stuff, and these things are multi-factorial. What about, for example, left wing decline in trust in government? “Anti-establishment” left thought as opposed to the “institutional liberal” left? 1968 is certainly a tempting “watershed” for that sort of thing. And Vietnam and Watergate surely mattered, even if they aren’t some tidy explanatory panacea.

3813

Oh sure, all of that stuff mattered, as did Nixon’s impeachment. Trust polling started falling in 1964, though, and that certainly wasn’t due to Vietnam; deaths were low, 400 for the entire period to 1964 and 1863 in 1965. I can’t find actual source-driven breakouts for the 1960s, sadly.

By the way, check out this mirror-image murder rate vs. trust graph:

3814

John Tierney’s February 2011 article, “Social Scientist Sees Bias Within,” suggests that academia is, in fact, dominated by liberal thinkers, with deleterious effects on critical inquiry. A January 2010 article by Patricia Cohen, “Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left,” suggests that the source of this imbalance could be a popular perception that professorship is a “politically typed” career – one among many. This would naturally reduce the number of conservatives in The Academy, and reduce the likelihood that conservatives who do enter The Academy feel comfortable identifying as such.

Cohen’s article suggests that the first push against The Academy originated with conservatives opposed to New Deal politics after the Second World War. Tierney’s article adds that the liberal identity of academia became more pronounced during the Civil Rights Era, as Jason McCullough has said. However, I don’t know that popular attitudes toward intellectuals really took a negative turn for that reason specifically. George Wallace tapped into popular racism, but he was a third-party candidate who didn’t have a genuine shot at the presidency.

It’s an interesting comparison, but I would say that even if one could somehow remove the race dimension, my gut tells me that the the level of generic delegitimization and personal antipathy towards Obama “feels” subjectively, even greater than for Kerry or Bill Clinton.

Kerry had a credibility problem even with voters in his own party. Obama at least motivates people on his side of the political aisle, or did.

Obama has a whole range of problems. First, conservatives are out for blood after what they (wrongly) perceive as the especially savage liberal attacks on the Bush Administration. It is common to hear Republican political operatives talk about giving liberals their just desserts by piling on Obama with all the heavy rhetorical firepower and crude political mud-slinging they can muster. Second, Obama is arguably the most liberal president since Richard Nixon. Universal healthcare, if a laudable goal, is a huge bugbear for most conservatives, who see it as the quintessential step toward becoming noticeably more European – and most Americans have only scorn for Europeans, whom they believe are degenerate, effeminate, and self-righteous. Third, white guilt – the lingering fear that minorities in this country are just waiting to “turn the tables” – has led a great many people to project fears of a “secret” agenda on Obama. Call it unconscious racism. They want Obama to turn out to be from Kenya so that they won’t have to grapple with the real reasons for their “suspicion” – reasons that have to do with skin color and political fantasy, not meaningful indications that he was not a natural-born citizen. I think that black media has not done itself any favors by referring to Obama as “their” president, although it’s perfectly understandable.

3815

Second, Obama is arguably the most liberal president since Richard Nixon.

Certainly not in terms of policies he’s actually tried to enact; he’s to the right of Clinton in that respect.

3816

I think I see where you made an error there.

Kerry had a credibility problem even with voters in his own party

Citation needed. To my knowledge differential turnout between Kerry and Obama was fairly even across all demographic groups (with the noteworthy exception of Obama pushing black turnout and voting margins even higher than the usual 90%), and roughly what you’d expect given the states of the economy and incumbency.

Cohen’s article suggests that the first push against The Academy originated with conservatives opposed to New Deal politics after the Second World War.

With conservatives, yes. Conservatives today are virtually unrecognizable compared to 1945, however; the same mass group that started winning elections for the right (the shift in the white vote, especially in the South) was the same mass group that resurrected popularized anti-intellectual sentiment. They did it for entirely different reasons; the final end state is a mishmash of old-style conservative arguments about the New Deal combined with racism and a new religious radicalism.

most Americans have only scorn for Europeans

This is a popular opinion on the right, but largely only on the right. For example, look at the history of American views of France.

It’s now back up to 63% and will probably end up back at the pre-Iraq trend of 75% as the effects of that wear off. And France is the european country we like the least. Hell, if you look the breakdown France is 52% with Republicans.

From a 10,000 foot level I mostly agree with you, but I think it’s important to dig into the real reasons, not the self-serving narrative that’s built up.

3817

Citation needed. To my knowledge differential turnout between Kerry and Obama was fairly even across all demographic groups (with the noteworthy exception of Obama pushing black turnout and voting margins even higher than the usual 90%), and roughly what you’d expect given the states of the economy and incumbency.

John Kerry lost against an unpopular incumbent with many strong negatives despite starting from what should have been a position of strength. The country was highly polarized, and Democrats weren’t divided the way they would be four years later when Obama and Hillary had an especially bitter time of it before Obama pulled ahead.

With conservatives, yes. Conservatives today are virtually unrecognizable compared to 1945, however; the same mass group that started winning elections for the right (the shift in the white vote, especially in the South) was the same mass group that resurrected popularized anti-intellectual sentiment. They did it for entirely different reasons; the final end state is a mishmash of old-style conservative arguments about the New Deal combined with racism and a new religious radicalism.

And yet the anti-intellectualism of today has nothing to do with racism. It is instead related in large part to issues of earth science. And note that the articles I cited credit race as an issue that tended to promote solidarity among liberals – not the issue that tended to promote criticism from conservatives. A lot of conservatives became upset with academia for its association with anti-war protests as much as with arguments on behalf of racial equality.

This is a popular opinion on the right, but largely only on the right.
True enough. I should have confined me observation to the political right.

3818

This thread almost died due to the lack of any noteworthy Sarah-centered antics. Not surprising, since she hasn’t done much all summer except Not Run For President, Not Continue Her Sarahpalooza Tour, Not Have A Hit Movie, and so on.

With Bachmann and Perrry stealing all her lunatic thunder and Palin polling at 2% amongst GOPers, it looks as if the golden age of Sarah has come to its end.

Fortunately she has blessed us all with one last spasm in the national spotlight: she’s having a hissy fit and putting her appearance before the Iowa Tea Party “on hold.” Allegedly Sarah was not pleased that fellow never-was Christine O’Donnell was also scheduled to speak at the same event Saturday at the Machine Shed restaurant in Des Moines.

Borges said it best - “It’s like two bald men fighting over a comb.”

3819

And it’s back on! Oh Sarah, you kidder.

3820

Doonesbury as been on a “Rogue” kick this week.