Used to be that conservatism was a political philosophy of educated minds. Now it’s the Ivory Tower Liberals (TM) vs. the unwashed masses.
We’ve turned on ourselves, when in the end it was never about class, but about liberty. We were the thinkers vs. they were the feelers, as it were. Until 2008.
Now whom do we turn to for real guidance? Thomas Sowell, George Will, Charles Krauthammer are the last of a dying breed, replaced by Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity.
We’ve become the feelers. Or are becoming the feelers.
There’s hope though — Tom Woods, Thomas Sowell, and others still keep the flame alive to fight and fend off the Chomsky’s and Zinn’s and Sunstein’s of the world. Yet still, the best book the right could come up with in the last decade? A reprint from the 1950s entitled “The 5,000 Year Leap” that was the worst exposition of basement philosophy one could ever hope to read. Even John Birchers had to sit up and say “damn… that’s bullshit.”
Meanwhile, the rest of us are getting high on Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, and Thomas Friedman. Yuck. All they do is come up with one bright insight, stick 144 pages around it, label it “The Insight Your Friends Don’t Have” and sell it for $30. We gobble it up, call it brilliant, and wait five years for them to contradict themselves.
I’m not so sure it’s the dumbing down of culture… but rather, the consequences of a liberal arts education. We’re not taught how to think, we’re taught what to think… a smattering of everything, here’s your diploma and debt, best of luck serving coffee while dreaming of grad school for the next 10 years. It’s a generation of dependents looking for something to depend upon.
Ergo, when a Krauthammer or Will or Sowell or any other prevailing voice (Pope Benedict XVI?) puts out some quality stuff… most folks just get winged by it. It never sinks in. We don’t want to know how to think anymore… just what to think, what insight will help, whatever confirms my worldview, TYVM.
OK… so that’s a bit longer than needed to vent. But there it is — we have the ideas, but intelligentsia is being beaten by infotainment, and it’s contrary to the DNA of the conservative movement, IMHO.
