Liberal condescension
Gerard Alexander, a one-time professor of mine at the University of Virginia, will deliver a Bradley Lecture at AEI this Monday (assuming the oncoming snopocalypse doesn’t get in the way) on the condescension of liberals when it comes to conservative ideas. There’s an excerpt from the speech here, and it’s well worth checking out. It’s tough to choose which form of condescension is more insidious. Is it the constant need by liberals to dismiss their ideological opponents as liars who will say things they don’t believe just to win elections and arguments?
It follows that the thinkers, politicians and citizens who advance conservative ideas must be dupes, quacks or hired guns selling stories they know to be a sham. In this spirit, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman regularly dismisses conservative arguments not simply as incorrect, but as lies. Writing last summer, Krugman pondered the duplicity he found evident in 35 years’ worth of Wall Street Journal editorial writers. “What do these people really believe? I mean, they’re not stupid — life would be a lot easier if they were. So they know they’re not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth. . . . The question is, what is that higher truth? What do these people really believe in?”
Or is it the constant need to dismiss conservative policies as little more than racist fearmongering?
The third version of liberal condescension points to something more sinister. In his 2008 book, “Nixonland,” progressive writer Rick Perlstein argued that Richard Nixon created an enduring Republican strategy of mobilizing the ethnic and other resentments of some Americans against others. Similarly, in their 1992 book, “Chain Reaction,” Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall argued that Nixon and Reagan talked up crime control, low taxes and welfare reform to cloak racial animus and help make it mainstream. It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants.
Why choose just one? They’re both poisonous arguments that corrode the discourse and harden partisan feelings, adding little of benefit to the debate.
Like I said, you should read the whole thing, and you should stop by AEI to check out the lecture. It’s only $5. Plus, AEI is easily reached via Metro (it’s about two blocks from Farragut North), so you won’t even have to brave driving the streets of post-snopocalyptic D.C., where gangs roam the streets searching for rock salt and squirrels are hunted for food.