XPost: soc.retirement, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.global-warming   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: bw@magik.beanz.net   
      
   Mocking conservative and right-wing political figures for their stupidity   
   is all the rage in certain media circles. Yesterday it was the turn of   
   Tony Abbott, leader of the opposition in Australia, after he mixed up the   
   words ‘suppository’ and ‘repository’ in a live TV debate. Last week,   
   Australian election candidate Stephanie Banister was branded ignorant   
   after she made a series of gaffes about Islam during a TV interview. A   
   video of the interview went viral, and as a result of the humiliation   
   Banister has now withdrawn her candidacy.   
   Not surprisingly, commentators compared Banister to Sarah Palin, the   
   former US Republican vice-presidential candidate who was, and continues to   
   be, regularly targeted for her ‘stupidity’. One blogger recently referred   
   to Palin as the ‘Queen of Stupidity’, the ‘very embodiment of all things   
   stupid’.   
   The idea that conservatives are thick and simple is increasingly being   
   backed up by a new brand of advocacy research. In recent years there have   
   been numerous so-called studies purporting to prove the intellectual   
   inferiority of conservative people. Two Canadian academics gave us a good   
   example of this tendentious research last year. Their ‘study’, titled   
   Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater   
   Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact, claimed   
   there is evidence that simpletons go on to become prejudiced right-wingers   
   in later life.   
   It is worth noting that, historically, the manipulation of science to   
   discredit political opponents – from nineteenth-century craniology to   
   twentieth-century Stalinist and Nazi theories – was strongly criticised by   
   the intellectual community. Today, by contrast, it is self-styled   
   intellectuals, especially the ones who refer to themselves as ‘liberal’,   
   who use such pseudo-scientific tactics to pathologise their opponents as a   
   mentally and intellectually inferior political species. And there is   
   barely any dissent from this view.   
   The intellectual devaluation of conservatism originates in the nineteenth   
   century, when the British Tories were described as the ‘stupid party’.   
   That phrase was probably coined by John Stuart Mill, who wrote in 1861   
   that although both the Whigs and the Tories were lacking in principle, it   
   was the Tories who were ‘by the law of their existence the stupidest   
   party’ (1). Back then, associating conservatism with stupidity was   
   justified on the grounds that upholding tradition and the status quo – as   
   conservatives do – does not require much mental agility or imagination. In   
   contrast, it was claimed that taking a more questioning and critical   
   approach to politics required an ability to think abstractly and in a   
   sophisticated way.   
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   But it wasn’t until the post-Second World War era that the pathologisation   
   of conservatism gained real intellectual credibility. Instead of seeing   
   right-wing prejudice as the outcome of various cultural and social   
   influences, left-leaning observers treated it more like a psychological   
   problem. Theodor Adorno’s classic text, The Authoritarian Personality,   
   helped to give credence to the new dogma that the disposition for a   
   certain kind of intolerance was a psychological issue. From this   
   standpoint, right-wing people not only suffer from an intellectual   
   deficit, but also from a psychological one.   
   Since the end of the Second World War, right-wing and conservative ideas   
   have come to be marginalised within the key cultural and intellectual   
   institutions of Western society. In a frequently cited statement, the   
   American literary critic Lionel Trilling declared in his 1949 preface to a   
   collection of essays that right-wing ideas no longer possessed cultural   
   significance:   
   ‘In the United States at this time, liberalism is not only the dominant   
   but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that   
   nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general   
   circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to   
   conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong,   
   perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse   
   and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some   
   ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action   
   or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.’ (2)   
   While Trilling’s statement contained an element of exaggeration, there is   
   little doubt that it also captured something important about political   
   developments in the 1940s. The experience of the inter-war years and of   
   Second World War itself helped to discredit the influence of the right-   
   wing and conservative intellectual traditions in Western culture. The   
   1930s Depression, followed by the rise of fascism, significantly   
   diminished the appeal of right-wing ideas. These events also solidified   
   the association of being an intellectual with adhering to left-wing   
   philosophies, to the extent that universities almost became no-go zones   
   for the right.   
   Things have now moved so far in this direction that today, in the twenty-   
   first century, it is sometimes hard to appreciate the fact that until the   
   second half of the last century, right-wing thinkers constituted a   
   significant section of the Western intelligentsia.   
   Since the 1940s, intelligence has been turned into a cultural weapon that   
   is used by individuals and groups to validate their status and authority.   
   Inevitably, this weapon is most effectively used by those claiming the   
   status of an intellectual. As Mark F Proudman has written: ‘The imputation   
   of intelligence and of its associated characteristics of enlightenment,   
   broad-mindedness, knowledge and sophistication to some ideologies and not   
   to others is itself therefore a powerful tool of ideological advocacy.’   
   (3)   
   Making fun of the parochial and folksy ways of right-wing politicians and   
   exposing their grammatical errors to ridicule is one way that   
   intellectuals assume moral superiority these days. Those who have   
   something of a monopoly over modern-day intellectual capital can thus   
   present themselves as the possessors of moral authority, too.   
   Not surprisingly, many conservatives become defensive when confronted with   
   the put-downs of their intellectual superiors. Consequently, in many   
   societies, particularly the US, they have become self-consciously anti-   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)