Noah — July 10, 2008 at 11:45 am

I think a lot of this stems from how intellectually insulated modern left has become. If you live in a major city, attend a typical American university and avoid Fox news, you most become an adult and never encounter any view that challenges your world view. Anyone who doesn’t share the typical liberal world view is viewed as dim witted or evil. It never ceases to surprise me when I meet accomplished, well educated people who have lack the most basic understanding of conservatism.
On the flip side a person who lives up in a conservative community and attended on of the handful of conservative universities is still

Noah — July 10, 2008 at 11:46 am

…constantly exposed to modern liberal thought through pop culture.

Noah — July 10, 2008 at 11:49 am

Hit post comment by accident on the last one. Is there an edit function?

Christian Toto — July 10, 2008 at 11:53 am

Great points, Noah. It can be frustrating to see media types deny their bias. But deep down, they can’t see the bias because their ideology is all they’ve ever known. So to them, the left position is neutral and doesn’t need to be balanced.

And every time i fear I consumer too much right-leaning content, I remember how often I read/see/absorb mainstream media outlets. I can’t help but get both sides.

Sonny Bunch — July 10, 2008 at 11:55 am

I don’t think there is. I kind of wish there was. I can make your comments disappear, but I don’t think I can edit them.

To address your main point, however, I think you’re basically right…it goes back to the old, apocryphal Pauline Kael quote: “How could Nixon have won? I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”

Will — July 10, 2008 at 3:55 pm

Coming from movement conservatives, I think this “liberal insularity” trope is a bit rich. In fact, I think the Right has been most notable for its rigid intellectual insularity in recent years. When I read flagship conservative publications - National Review and the Weekly Standard come to mind - I’m struck by how little engagement there is between mainline conservatives and the their paleoconservative and libertarian counterparts on a wide range of issues.

I should note that I say this without passing judgment on the merits of either ideological tradition. To me, however, the Iraq War revealed a) certain fissures within the ideological Right and b) several damning critiques of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy that have yet to be grappled with by mainstream Republicans. Institutions like the Weekly Standard and National Review, however, don’t really air dissenting views about Republican foreign policy. I’d really like to see some real intellectual interaction between writers at say, the American Conservative and National Review on the subject of American foreign policy, but all I find is mutual contempt.

To a lesser extent, I think this insularity extends to domestic matters. I don’t believe it’s an accident that “Grand New Party” - a book you and other conservative pundits have hyped - takes Republican operatives to task for a mono-maniacal focus on issues like earmarks and wasteful spending at the expense of focusing on real economic anxieties or formulating a coherent, conservative response to anthropogenic global warming.

So yeah, maybe douchebags like Tariq Ali won’t consent to have their pieces re-printed in a Hitchens anthology, but I’m not sure if that has any broader implications for the character of the intellectual Left, especially when you consider the frequency of ideological clashes between centrist, hawkish “neo-liberals” and the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

Sonny Bunch — July 11, 2008 at 11:35 am

Will: I think there’s a certain amount of truth in what you say–people on both sides of the aisle tend to ignore opinions they disagree with. (By the way, I take mild offense to being labeled a “movement conservative”–I most certainly am not–but I’ll live.) I would say, however, that the trend appears (to me at least) to be more pronounced on the left (especially in the academy).

Will — July 11, 2008 at 1:43 pm

I didn’t mean to offend. For what it’s worth, I enjoy reading your blog. But so far, I haven’t been able to pinpoint any meaningful distinctions between your own political philosophy and mainstream conservative thought. That doesn’t make you a bad person or anything. It’s just an observation.

A brief addendum to my earlier comments: I think Tariq Ali and Noam Chomsky are poor exemplars of mainstream leftist thought. The National Review’s willingness to run an article entitled “Unpatriotic Conservatives,” on the other hand . . .

Sonny Bunch — July 11, 2008 at 4:14 pm

I kid about being offended. But as a pro-choice, anti-drug war conservative I’d say I probably stray pretty far from the orthodoxy on at least a couple of issues. Plus, “movement conservative” usually means “activist Republican,” another thing I tend not to be…