Guardian UK: Republicans should stop embracing the anti-intellectualism of George Bush

[marmar]

A liberal's plea to Republicans
In order to return to prominence, Republicans should stop embracing the anti-intellectualism of George Bush

Carlo Strenger
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday December 3 2008 19.30 GMT



Republicans in the US keep wondering what they have to do in order to regain power at some point. They are looking for a suitable candidate and a political message that will do the trick. But I think they're looking in the wrong place.

Conservatism used to be a coherent worldview. I happen to disagree with it on many counts, but that I do respect it. Since Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France there has been a conservative intellectual tradition founded on two powerful ideas.

The first is that human nature is imperfect, and any political view that assumes that it can be perfected is deluded. Therefore political, social and cultural arrangements that have been working reasonably well should be maintained, because radical change is more likely to lead to chaos than to human flourishing.

One reason Republicanism has started to become incoherent, is that it dropped the idea of the imperfectability of human nature in one central domain. If indeed human nature is not likely to evolve in favourable directions without guidance and rules, it is very unclear why this principle should apply to every domain of life except business.

Of course Republicans had a set answer to this question: business, as opposed to sexuality and belief, doesn't need to be regulated, because the market does this job on its own. This dogma has ended up being nothing but a rationalisation of greed, as the stories that now emerge daily show (I particularly recommend Michael Lewis's riveting The End of Wall Street's Boom published in Porfolio). It has sent the whole world into the worst economic crisis since 1929 and can now safely be thrown into the dustbin of history along with discarded notions like central planning by politicians and the superiority of the white race. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/dec/03/republican-party-conservatism

[crim son]

1. Obviously.

But that would leave an awful lot of them without a clue what's going on where, when or why.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. The "base" would disappear if it were not for the anti-intellectualism

If science and education became relevant and important, there would be no way to manipulate the people that the repukes twist and turn.
Their entire base is made up of people who worship at the throne of fundamentalism, deny world-wide climate change, deny women choices over their own bodies, aim to break down the wall between church and state, believe everyone else will be doomed to hell when they themselves are raptured, are willing scapegoat and dehumanize anyone who disagrees with them...and these are their positive qualities.

[depakid]

3. Exactly

I'd only add that abandoning anti-intellectualism would cost them their two "best" political tools: divisiveness between groups of people- and Manichean "thinking."

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Two excellent points.

:thumbsup:

[tom_paine]

13. Exactly. The Bushies have Nazified and now they are stuck with it.

You want them to start acting like the Liberals they despise, thinking about things, looking for facts and asking questions.

The Republic Party would be six Wall Street arch-criminals, along with arch-criminals Bush, Cheney, and Rove meeting in a garage.

It would be suicide for either the Nazis or Republics to begin acting like the Liberals and Jews they despise (well, the Bushies are forced speak in code in public, and thus implicitly include those disgusting liberal Jews they and the Nazis despise, when they slur "Liberal").

Only because they have to. Hitler made anti-Semitism not possible in public for the Bushies, though I have no doubt that, in private, they despise Liberal Jews as much as their Nazi forebears, though they cannot murder us at this time. They got closer tahn they ever dreamed these last eight years, and we would be naive to assume the Bushies have changed their overall goals of the subordination of the USA to their unchecked, unchallenegable auhoritarian whim.

(probably on the backburner until enough Bushie-Nazis are ready and enough Free Americans have grown old and died)

[Crunchy Frog]

4. As if a Republican is going to let a British newspaper tell them what to do.

:rofl:

[LeftishBrit]

11. Especially if it's the Guardian. Eeeeeevil liberal/left paper.

[Doctor_J]

6. Anti-intellectualism is all they have

Their made-up war against "elitism" - aka thinking - is the only reason they still exist.

[Amonester]

8. Yeah. That, and corruption. - nt

[bluestateguy]

7. There was a time, long ago, when conservatives embraced intellectualism

William F. Buckley, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Barry Goldwater are good examples. Their philosophy was wrong, but they respected the scientific method and did not simplify complex issues into bumper sticker, talk radio slogans.

Notice how all of the intellectual conservatives were dismayed by the proudly stupid Sara Palin: George Will, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum.

[Demeter]

9. It Was a Phony Kind of Pick-and-Choose Intellectualism, Though

Wherein they got to choose the relevent facts and discard any data that didn't fit the preconceived notions.

Kind of like Bush, but with occasional contact with Reality.

[sofa king]

10. Think of all the stupid children.

Are you prepared to tell them, "why no, little, Janie, you can't be President some day because you're a friggin' dumb ass, just like George Bush"?

[Soylent Brice]

12. the title alone is an impossiblity