This week political science professor Gerard Alexander hit a chord (or was it a nerve?) with his Washington Post essay on "why liberals are so condescending." Despite the recent successes of the Tea Party movement, Scott Brown, and a filibuster-happy Senate, Alexander repeats the old refrain: We conservatives get no respect. Rather than enjoy the intellectual disarray of the Left, Alexander seems to long for recognition from his liberal colleagues: You liberals think you have all the answers, and you never listen to us conservative voices, no matter how much education we have! Although many have recognized that the conservative movement did become "the party of ideas," Alexander complains, liberals still see the Right as mired in false consciousness, hypocrisy, or both. What's a faculty member got to do to earn some credibility? Publishing a provocative lecture for the American Enterprise Institute in the Washington Post isn't a bad start.
But is the Left really more condescending than the Right? When Sarah Palin mocks Obama's supporters with "How's that hope, change thing working out for yaw?" is that not a form of condescension? Palin's populist condescension toward those who don't live in "the real America" pales before the patrician variety famously mastered by William F. Buckley. Woe to the liberals who carelessly strayed into his firing line. Two examples can stand for dozens of great zingers: "I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said," Buckley sneered. "Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views," he observed, "but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views." Alexander cites Paul Krugman as a prime offender of looking down his nose at conservatives, but why is this any different than Chicago-school economist Eugene Fama saying "My attitude is this, if you are getting attacked by Paul Krugman, you must be doing something right"?
No, liberals have no monopoly on condescension or intellectual and social smugness. Mocking people who drive Priuses (it used to be Volvos) is just as common as sneering at people in supersized pickups. But there does seem to be an easy association between elitism and progressivism that conservatives are able to reactivate at the drop of a hat. Why do we jump at the accusation? Is it because condescension is indeed a temptation for a politics that depends so much on education and on faith in the powers of knowledge?
Liberals prize education - valuing it as a vehicle toward a more just and hospitable world. Education means enlightenment, which Kant famously defined as "freedom from self-imposed immaturity." Confidence in the power of education can lead to arrogance because people in the know feel that they ought to be able to fix things. As people pursue education, they often feel that they are leaving false beliefs behind, that they are becoming freer as their illusions and dependence are dissolved. As this happens, many look around and see others who haven't yet shed their old ways of thinking and are still mired in falsehood or reliance on authority. "I used to think like that, too," says the advanced student to the frosh, "but now I know better." This is what Eric Voegeli was getting at when he wrote last year's version of the condescension essay, "The Roots of Liberal Condescension," published in the Claremont Review of Books (and found on the Wall Street Journal online. "Thus, if patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," he wrote, "snobbery is the last refuge of the liberal-arts major."
Does education necessarily breed elitism and condescension, and does it necessarily give rise to political liberalism? A little education very well might promote the intellectual arrogance many conservatives see in their caricature of a professor on the Left, but liberal learning is, after all, supposed to make us aware of how little we know. That's what Socratic insight is all about: we need to learn because we understand so little. Education should lead to intellectual humility as we become more aware of our own ignorance. Conservatives also prize education, after all, but they do so because it should deliver the lesson of intellectual humility. Education should prevent us from thinking we can solve our deepest problems with science, technology or political structures.
There is a parallel here with faith. Some believers, infused with confidence in their own righteousness, display a spiritual arrogance that is offensive to those who don't share their beliefs. But many people of faith discover a deep humility through their spiritual life -- a humility that leads to openness to others rather than a proud sectarianism.
So maybe condescension depends less on questions of ideology, learning and faith than it does on differences in character. Some people just find it easier to sneer at others rather than to try to understand people with different points of view. The satisfactions of condescension are a temptation for people who feel they already know so much, just as the pleasures of elitism are seductive for people who are certain that God is on their side.
It's always easier to be condescending when you don't spend time with people who think or live differently than you do. That's why it's so important to find possibilities for dialogue that cut across ways of thinking or modes of belief. Political diversity is crucial for universities, for example, because if we live in an echo chamber of the Left, then we will forget how much we can learn from conservative thinkers who have rightly questioned our ability to master public and private life through systems of knowledge or government. Diversity of belief is good for all of us because if we think that we live in a community of the righteous, we might forget our responsibilities to those whose different beliefs and practices give meaning and value to their lives.
As a teacher and president of a university, I remain committed to education as an antidote to elitism rather than as a progressive cultivation of snobbery. As we learn, as we become more aware of our own ignorance, we should also become more open toward others, toward what they have to teach us. Looking down on others is surely a sign of intellectual fear rather than of a willingness to learn. An education in the liberal arts, which can lead to a political position on the Left or the Right, should result not in condescension but in its opposite: respect.
Individuals know where their life, liberty, and property stops and another individual’s begins.
Conservatives love liberty.
You can scan threw all of these posts and you WILL NOT find the word liberty anywhere.
Yet it is the word that was cried out over and over, again and again when this country was born.
And then you wonder why we claim that you are not Americans or condescending of your intellect.
Liberals and criminals do not respect liberties.
Liberals take from conservatives by legal plunder in the name of fairness and fear.
Fairness and fear is the foundation of all liberal discussions, it is in every post on this blog.
Criminals take by illegal plunder. The justice system was designed to protect the individual from legal and illegal plunder.
So when conservatives/republican’s say NO. It’s not a sound bite. It means NO… you can not take anymore of MY life, liberty, or property. You can talk till your blue in the face. There is no common ground when it comes to discussing more government and more taxes.
And also "sound bites," speak volumes of these very principles.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that the are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pusuit of Happiness." Why the alteration from Locke's life, liberty, and property? America was founded in contrast to countries where inequalites-- privilege and property-- were what defined nobility.
Property. Protected by taxes on ordinary people, the same employed in government services such as police, med techs, firefighters, the military. Do you provide these for yourself? Or should my relatives and other conscripts of the economic draft, clearly not of the wealthy elite, consider it an honor to die for those who think fairness an evil?
Ordinary people, whose taxes pay for scientific and medical research at public universities. Or do you have your own private lab?
Why are corporations "persons" protected of the Bill of Rights? Yet I, and every other blue collar worker, lose ours at the front door of the factory? Where our labor helps to enrich others. Don't need us? Build your own bridges, clean your own toilets.
And do feel free to read the whole Bible. Acts 4:34-5 "There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned houses or lands sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apolstles' feet and it was distributed to each as any had need."
Charity is the vehical used in the Bible to distribute to the needy not force of government law. You do not please God because you voted for good... it's because you are good.
Jesus was hung on the cross by Pilot taking a VOTE.
Fairness in government is done by force of law.
Corporations are something you have the "liberty" to choose to work for or not.
This isn't the late 1800's or early 1900's where employment was not as divers as it is now. Todays employers are strapped with hugh amounts of regulations, taxations, and
people like you breathing down their necks for them to be more responsable for things in your life that you should be responsible for your self.
GM is now broke and on the government dole because of union labor and the lefts fear of developing our own oil and gas resorses,,, causing speculation in oil peeks, giving us $150 a barrel oil and the collaps of car sales and the economy there after.
I have no dought that most of the people on this blog are good and decent human beings. The error here is you people think that government can do just as good as you can do your selves. (Your wrong charity will never bankrupt a country...socialism will and is doing it right now.)
Liberals love liberty no less than Conservatives, Democrats no less than Republicans, and minorities possibly more than those in the majority.
To say liberals "take from conservatives" while pretending that conservatives haven't been taking from working class America of whatever ideology or political persuasion for four decades now is hypocritical or blind.
To spout talking points just to inflame the opposition is intellectually dishonest.
This is not about ideology, no matter what either side thinks. This is about greed. And oppression. By the very rich and their elected officials. This is about Govt and a Judicial System both out of control and out of touch with the Constitution.
My context of Liberals is legal plunder.
These are the only two ways for some one or government to take from another.
Which one are you talking about? I see me as not the problem politically at all.
Politics is the manipulation of emotions of which the liberal is master.
I speak in terms of statesman ship, which yields to common ground.
Emotions are personal attributes, they are your definitions of which we will never find common ground.
You are doing a lot of equating of business with criminal. Are you talking legal or illegal?
Greed is defined: selfish desire beyond reason. It is not a crime.
It does require you to make the reasonable choice as to what greed is in your eyes not mine.
You are at liberty to make that choice.
I’m not at liberty to make that choice if you define it in law.
“This is about Govt and a Judicial System both out of control and out of touch with the Constitution.”
Here I agree.
I have no talking points. That is a cheep deflection of what is the substance of my words.
I agree with the liberals on many issues. At the very least, i think they mean well, which no one with an IQ above 25 would say about the republicans. But well meaning or not, liberals have three very bad habits. One, they they tend to think their doctrine explains everthing, and to overlook any inconvenient facts to the contrary. (Yes, the neocons are even worse)
Two, they don't do their homework and look for the facts. (A good example is candidate Obama telling iowa farmers to "shop at Whole Foods and try the arugula." there is not a Whole Foods in Iowa and farmers could not afford to shop there.)
The third is the holier-than-thou attitude mentioned in the article. Liberals would appeal much more to Joe Lunchbuket if they lost their pretensions and stressed their history of pushing worker's rights , clean air and clean water.
"liberal" or "conservative", your life will be better if you check the facts before charging ahead.
Both sides ignore the collateral damage inflicted on the working class majority. The ones whose once middle class lifestyle is on the brink of extinction. Whose kids are now conscripts of the economic draft. Those without four-year degrees, close to 3/4 of the US population, are invisible to those who frame issues in terms of their own intellectual interests.
Of course I abhor conservative economics, which assumes outcomes are totally a matter of reward for abilities. But liberal Democrats don't fare much better. By the mid-70s, that party had abandoned working people. In favor of a strategy run by professional analysts with little affinity to the party's traditional base. Thus scant attention to the looming economic inequity.
If you want to know what it is to experience elitism directly, read my post below of 2/13 at 01:43. If you want to a taste of the deep anger among left populists, read the commentary to the Huffpo article about an interview with an financier named Schwarzman, who bewailed the growing "bank bashing." Pithy, curt, and hardly polite.
What we see in this blog and most others is a repeating of superficial themes, philosophical approaches quoted from academic legends out of context and the same for political science. What the comments do show is a cursory reading of liberal or conservative sound bite rags - and a regurgitation of those sound bites.
Problem is that when both sides really dig in and attempt to debate - they do bring up good intellectually based arguments, and neither side is willing to admit the others "get it". The debate turns quickly into a sound bite battle of worn out cliché statements and slogans.
Word limits and text limits are imposed on 99% of the population, and those few liberals or conservatives in the positions of power to garner "no limit" discourse in the media - have their way with society. Editorially across America, even in personal blogs, the rule is short and sweet; get to the point or the reader will lose interest or not read it at all.
The we have all this hooey about liberals being voracious readers.
Where is the
1) I can easly find a liberal case to match every conservitive complaint Smarti has.
2) There are at least 150 different kinds of intellegents of which Smarti has about 5.
3) The rest of the country has the other 145 plus Smarti's.
4) Intellectual or 's will never poses the collective intellegents of this country.
5) And that is why the individual and liberty is so important to the advancement of knowledge.
Smarti has a problem with self worth.
The issue I have with holding an intelligent conversation and not being condescending with these people, is they don't actually say anything. They say soundbites. Their idea of a valid argument is drawing a mustache on a picture of the president. It is hard to debate against a sign saying keep government off my social security.
And if you want to say, oh those signs aren't "us" then why did not one republican leader stand up and say, no there are no death panels, and yes the president has a valid birth certificate. But they don't do that. They are more than happy to give speeches to these people and feed the fire. If you want to be taken seriously, then be serious. And when someone on your side is spouting nonsense, call them out on it.
Conservatives have always been the more condescending of the two groups. I remember political conversations 40 years ago. Conservatives were condescending then, too. The difference was, back then, most of them (at least the people I met) had the intellectual chops to back it up and the integrity to disassociate themselves from the yahoos who used the conservative mantle as a cover for racist and otherwise hateful positions. Today, conservatives are either idiots or Machiavellian manipulators who use the idiots for their own ends.
Same for wendy82551 below.
I'm serious. Why do conservatives whine about liberals being condescending and hurting their feelings?
It's just talking.
There's a reason why liberals are fewer in our country than conservatives, because the intellectual development of a person requires deep serious thought that comes w/ reading widely and robustly. Your average person isn't a serious consumer of hard news and scholarship. If they were liberals would easily outnumber conservatives. That's why liberals always explain away on a myriad of topics because they know about all the nuance involved. Alternatively conservatives speak in sound bites not because it makes for easy politics but because the sound bite is all they know about the given topic.
However, underlying everything remains the dominant reason for conservative claims that liberals espouse the MAJORITY of condescension. - the insistence of a more intellectual basis for liberal thought. I suppose Buckley was an intellectual aberration and really nothing more than a double talker?
The writer mixes questions about whether liberals are really "more condescending", then follows that by stating liberals have no monopoly on condescension.
Which is it" If not "more' - that would be equally. If not a monopoly - that could still mean a significant majority of use.
Oh well, perhaps liberals have a small 12% majority lead in the popular feeling. Hey, that seems to be a mandate in current perspectives. No monopoly - but a certainly a majority use of condescension by the writers own account.
Double talk defines America like nothing else...
If either side actually used education to open their minds and have respect for other views, 95% of the articles in this journal or any other would not be so completely slanted, condescending and arrogant about the primacy of "their" particular leanings and intellectual superiority.
Just describing liberals as Prius drivers and conservatives as pick up drivers - is arrogant, elitist and condescending.
He didn't actually do that, (i.e. describe Liberals as Prius drivers and Conservatives as Pick-up drivers) .
He gave that as an example of a frame of reference upon which condescension can be based on either side.
What is somewhat condescending and certainly disingenuous and morally ambiguous is to reduce his more complex overall argument into a simplistic one-line fragment of an example he gave, and make that seem representative of his entire position and disposition as a whole.
Because it renders obscure the factor of class prejudice.
I was born into a working class family, and have a blue-collar job. But also an IQ of 148 and a voracious appetite for books. As a skilled worker for 30 years, I can attest to the fact that many of my co-workers have been highly intelligent people. Something seldom recognized by educated elites.
Such as the conservative manager types, unable to do our jobs. Yet as biz school grads, sure of their superiority. Add to this the Wall Streeters comfortable exacerbating economic inequity. And the economists of finance, for whom labor is a cost to be shed. Or the patrician elite which considers us little more than animals.
And liberal elitism? The fallacious dismissal of unions as clubs for racist white men. The well-meaning condescension; feeling good talking to the help. Seldom as if we were people with minds. Few realize that 24% of baby boomers, 26 % of genY, have four-year degrees. We the majority, in our working lives, are invisible. Creates a grinding resentment in us, believe me. The smug dismissal of religion. Feel free to denigrate what you don't understand. Anti-religious non-sequiturs are not uncommon on Huffpo.
Lest you think I don't understand: I earned a degree in botany at 50, then grad school in theology. Encountered appalling classism. My labor radicalism remains intact.
We should try to clean our "lenses" daily.