Posted on 03/08/2012 1:16:40 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
As a card-carrying member of the media elite, it’s hard for me to say something nice about Newt Gingrich. But here it is: He doesn’t wear blue jeans in public.
[SNIP of SNARK due to excerpt limit]
For many Republican primary voters, the only thing worse than a regular elite is an intellectual elite or a media elite or especially a liberal intellectual media elite.
[SNIP]
More to the point, does the fact that a guy reads books and deals in ideas disqualify him?
For many Americans, it does. Anti-intellectualism has been a consistent theme throughout American history. The political scientist Richard Hofstadter won a Pulitzer Prize for “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.”
This was in 1964, and Hofstadter was writing about the 1950s, in the wake of McCarthyism and Adlai Stevenson’s “egghead” campaign. Hofstadter noted “hostility to intellectuals expressed on the far right wing, a categorical and folkish dislike of the educated classes and of anything respectable, established, pedigreed or cultivated.”
Now it’s back. The most prominent American conservative is not the erudite William F. Buckley but the seething Rush Limbaugh.
.....If ideas and knowledge are elitist, if you have to pretend to be ignorant to be elected president, then the country is in more trouble that we thought it was.
(Excerpt) Read more at hanfordsentinel.com ...
True, but there is definitely a strain of Republicans, who are probably all supporting Santorum, who either don't appreciate or value Newt's intellect, but have a hostility to it. These people usually have trouble stringing a complete sentence together on FR. So I think it's the same phenomenon some women have toward Sarah Palin. Some women will hate any women prettier than they are and some people will hate anyone smarter than they are. They'll spin it as saying that person is "arrogant," "talks down" to people and so forth, but it's not really about that.
They are only bad when they belong to those people we don’t like...but since we don’t like those people, they can’t really have those qualities anyway. They are some sort of INO.
You don't need a better proof of anti-intellectualism than the successes of the two mediocrities Saintorum and Mittie. And it's not just anti-intellectualism, it's primarily, me thinks, mediocrity. An educated, articulate dude like Newt makes us dumbies feel oh so inferior, off with his head! (See under: Nixon, Richard.) We love mediocrity in this country: mediocre films, mediocre bestselling books and records, Americans Idle on TV - the very celebration badness. (I'd rather watch Lucha Libre!) Don't we all hatge PBS and it's high polluting programs? Liberals and conservatives are united in this preference.
For someone who classifies themselves as “a card-carrying member of the media elite” I have a hard time believing that they would be either Intellectual or Educated. They obviously think of themselves as “elite” which shows a mental condition.
The only party that has had an attack and hate for Education or Intellect is the Democratic party, especially the liberal part of it. With their infiltration of education at all levels K - College, they have brought the grade points of entire generations down to those of 3rd world countries. Where America once stood for the best and brightest, we now rank low in the world on education.
Now they are doing to our manufacturing what they did to education. They have taken a country that was known for making the best products and quality items and now make us a country that hardly manufactures anything anymore.
The lack of education mixed with the loss of manufacturing equals loss of jobs and outsourcing to countries that are not friends or allies.
This is, IMHO, their plan all along. They hate America for it’s strength and would rather we grovel at the feet of those European nations that the liberals would love to emulate.
Liberalism is a mental disease and it’s one of self destruction.
Interesting snark by a guy who looks remarably like Gingrich!
Intellect and education are “bad” only to urban Amish yutes and when wielded by white, male, conservatives.
You should send him a note.
But for the most part, Republicans love conservatives who are intellectuals. like Paul Ryan, etc.
Seriously, dude, a long, long time ago.
I guess not everybody got the memo.
NASA is now a green agency and we cannot get to the ISS under our own power. Obama's Science and Technology Czar (from day one), John P. Holdren tells U.S. graduate students that America should not expect to be #1 all the time, instead he told them that the world would be a better and safer place if we weren't. Imagine what this administration is doing to all sectors of this once great country.
Great post, thanks - and lots of great comments!
Adlai Stevenson II went to Princeton as an undergraduate. He did drop out of Harvard Law School after failing some classes but later graduated from Northwestern Law School and passed the bar exam.
If his Harvard transcript were kept in a locked drawer in 1956, it would have to have been hidden in 1952 as well.
Reading his Wikipedia page the more surprising thing that might have been used against him today is that he once killed someone.
My only response to this would be to quote Lady Thatcher’s “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t” and note that the same also applies to intellect.
Wizard of Oz: "Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma."
BUMP!
:)
They are still spoiled brats. In most cases.
Take Dr. Thomas Sowell's description of how intelligence is often recognized early, the child is treated special, given breaks, great education, inside track to great opportunities -- the works. Spoiled brats. (My words)
Take former Secret Service agent Dan Emmett's book “Within Arms’s Length.” He writes of during the course of his duties to protect the Clintons and staff "patient attempts to reason were met with childlike emotion born of a past where no one in authority--probably beginning with her parents--had ever said no to [the staffer] about anything.”
Pretty intelligent, recognized early, good schools, the left ideology, spoiled brat.
See: Secret Service agent: Clinton’s staff rude, Hillary aloof
And how about the book "Unlimited Access : An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House" by Gary Aldrich. I will always remember how potential Clinton staffers responded to loyalty clearance questions: "I am totally loyal to the Clintons!" The spoiled brats just don't get it.
"... And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn't just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!"
Bump!
And teachers believed it was important to read and encouraged it.
The danger this country is in from enemies who understand this is very real.
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