Why are liberals so condescending?

Originally Posted by BR

I agree completely. Now let's see how quickly you ignore your own advice.

Why are anti-science conservatives so damn condescending?
The center-right Washington Post publishes another inane attack on liberals
February 6, 2010

Im going to invent a new word CONservativeDESCENDING. It carries the traditional meaning displaying a patronizingly superior attitude but it only applies to people displaying such an attitude while adopting an anti-scientific position, while descending into disinformation and obfuscation that threatens all of our children and countless generations beyond them.

After all, everyone with strongly held views appears condescending to those who disagree with them, but only those who are CONservativeDESCENDING can be patronizingly superior while being objectively wrong. Indeed, the fact that just about everyone appears condescending to those who disagree with them makes it utterly inane for the Washington Post to publish an Outlook piece Sunday, Why are liberals so condescending? and have a Q&A, Mon., 11 a.m.: Outlook: Why are liberals so condescending to conservatives?

Before addressing the nonsensical thesis of the piece in as un-condescending a manner as possible, let me first note that the piece is doubly nonsensical being published in the Post, which is the home of the single most condescending person in the country or at least the single most condescending person who has a media megaphone, the person who defines the word CONservativeDESCENDING. Indeed, while I defy you to find any liberal columnist for the Post who routinely displays a patronizingly superior attitude to conservatives, I defy you to find a George Will column that does not display a patronizingly superior attitude to liberals.

For instance, just last year, the Post published one of his anti-scientific pieces with the headline, Climate Changes Dim Bulbs. I kid you not. What was particularly striking about that condescending diatribe was that the Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, let Will publish for the third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages! That is the epitome of CONservativeDESCENDING.

You wont be surprised to learn that the Outlook article is yet another opinion piece by a right winger (see Posts Kurtz calls papers op-ed page left-leaning even as it features mostly right wingers) Gerard Alexander, Visiting Scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute But you might be surprised the Post does not share the AEI affiliation with their readers. Ill be interested to see what the print edition says about Alexander, but online they merely say hes a U. VA. professor giving a talk at AEI Monday.

But, of course, the fact that he is conservative doesnt mean hes wrong it would be condescending to suggest that. No, hes wrong because, well, his argument just makes no sense:

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.

[I suppose it would be simply be too condescending to point out that the second sentence doesn't quite make sense as written.]

Hmm. Lets see. Who wrote this condescending piece on the opinion pages of the Washington Post last year?

The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts.

The e-mails reveal that leading climate experts deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to hide the decline in global temperatures.

Ive always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics.

Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits not pursuing a political agenda.

In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to restore science to its rightful place. But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices.

Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference.

Yes, that is Sarah Palin, who the Post also allowed to publish falsehoods that were debunked on its own pages.

What is remarkable about that piece is not merely its anti-science anti-intellectualism, but that it simultaneously satisfies the very definition Alexander offers for condescension. Palin repeatedly asserted that her views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while [liberal] positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.

Again my point isnt that liberals are never condescending only that it is transparently obvious that conservatives are every bit as condescending and that it is nonsensical to assert otherwise. Just read the message boards at anti-science websites like WattUpWithThat.

Alexander writes:

Some observers have decried an anti-intellectual strain in contemporary conservatism, detected in George W. Bushs aw-shucks style, Sarah Palins college-hopping and the occasional conservative campaigns against egghead intellectuals.

Note the strawman. College-hopping is not a significant basis for observers detection of an anti-intellectual strain in Palin. Its her anti-scientific anti-intellectualism that is the basis for that view.

Alexander cleverly dodges the not-occasional, but now permanent campaign against scientists, especially on the climate issue:

Chris Mooneys book The Republican War on Science argues that policy debates in the scientific arena are distorted by conservatives who disregard evidence and reflect the biases of industry-backed Republican politicians or of evangelicals aimlessly shielding the world from modernity. In this interpretation, conservative arguments are invariably false and deployed only cynically. Evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda.

He turns Mooneys well-argued analysis on conservative disdain for climate science which has been more than vindicated by the ceaseless attacks on climate science and climate scientists from the right-wing into a dispute that is merely about the cost of action, where he thinks conservatives are on strong intellectual grounds:

Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs often fail to yield what their architects intend. Democrats have been busy expanding, enacting or proposing major state interventions in financial markets, energy and health care. Supporters of such efforts want to ensure that key decisions will be made in the public interest and be informed, for example, by sound science, the best new medical research or prudent standards of private-sector competition. But public-choice economists have long warned that when decisions are made in large, centralized government programs, political priorities almost always trump other goals.

Even liberals should think twice about the prospect of decisions on innovative surgeries, light bulbs and carbon quotas being directed by legislators grandstanding for the cameras. Of course, thinking twice would be easier if more of them were listening to conservatives at all.

The Posts editors let Alexander ignore the entire dispute over climate science where conservatives embrace a remarkably consistent anti-scientific strain, led by the uber-condescending Will (and Palin). But at least they (apparently unwittingly) let him hang himself intellectually (again, apparently unwittingly):

Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs often fail to yield what their architects intend

Huh?

If the most important conservative insight is that free marketeers should get complete freedom from government oversight, then the most important conservative intellectual insight has just been smashed to bits on the rocky shoals of the Bush-Cheney depression. Of course, avoiding such catastrophes would be easier if more conservatives were listening to liberals at all. Sorry if that sounded a little condescending, but at least it wasnt CONservativeDESCENDING.

I wont be having a Q&A Monday sponsored by the Post on Why are liberals so condescending to conservatives? so in lieu of that, Id like to here from you on Why are conservatives so condescending to liberals?

Why liberals should be condescending
by: Chris Bowers
Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 13:55

A Sunday Washington Post editorial asks why liberals are so damn condescending. Seriously:

Why are liberals so condescending?

By Gerard Alexander
Sunday, February 7, 2010

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.

Yet more persecuted conservative syndrome, not to mention more misuse of the word "ideological."

But really, why shouldn't liberals should be condescending, and committed to the proposition that their views are based in fact and reason? The people most committed to basing their views on facts and reason, and whose efforts have achieved a standard of living that finally broke humanity out of millennia with an average life expectancy of 30 and the constant threat of starvation, are liberals. In this case, I am referring to scientists:


Less than 10% of scientists consider themselves Republicans or conservatives. Why shouldn't liberals consider their positions to be based on fact and reason, and see conservative views as largely illegitimate?

And the public largely praises the efforts of scientists, too. Only 6% of Americans think science has had a negative effect on society.

Science is both the most popular, and the least conservative, institution in America. What the public doesn't know is that a very small percentage of scientists consider themselves to be conservatives. But, it is something that should be pointed out whenever conservatives whine about how condescending and "fact-based" liberal positions are. Without liberals, and their emphasis on science, reason and facts, conservatives couldn't even use things like the internet, or even television, to continue their whining. They would still be stuck in the frakking middle ages, which is maybe what they wanted all along.

More Condescension Needed

Gerard Alexander whines:

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.

I have a condescending attitude toward this op-ed. Of course I think my views are correct and based on fact and reason. If I thought my views weren’t correct and based on fact and reason, I would adopt different views—correct fact-and-reason based ones. Does Alexander really think that conservatives don’t think their views are correct? Does Alexander not think his own views are correct? Not based on fact? Not based on reason? I’m not sure it’s possible to be condescending enough to this op-ed.

David Biespiel Poet and writer, Attic Writers Workshop :

Yesterday's posts about liberal condescension on the Arena elicited this point from my Arena colleague Pejman Yousefzadeh, "Perhaps if liberals took the time to gaze inwards, they might begin to understand why so many of their values are out of the American mainstream." Thus condescended to yesterday by a passionate conservative like Pejman (his piece mentioned my name and ideas directly), today I shall gaze inward.

What I see are values that are not outside the American mainstream but, instead, define the American mainstream. From Thomas Paine to Barack Obama, from Teddy Roosevelt to Teddy Kennedy, to be liberal in America is to support free public education and full employment, to regulate business practices and standards for labor and environmental protection,to protect consumers, to enact social justice legislation that protects freedom of religious faith, minority rights, and the elderly, and to support the creation of universal health care. These are apple pie values. As President John F. Kennedy once said, a liberal is someone "who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties...if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I’m proud to say I’m a 'Liberal."

And so am I. Beginning with the Abolition Movement and the Suffrage Movement, liberal values have expanded the mainstream consciousness of values in American llife. What were once thought of as radical and anti-American--whether it was the advance of civil rights, worker's rights, women's rights, immigrant rights, veteran's rights, children's rights, and religious rights--are now considered mainstream political ideals in America. From Social Security to Veteran's benefits and all the way now to the general national acceptance currently in place firmly to repeal a hideous program like Don't Ask, Don't Tell, liberal values are not "out of the American mainstream," they represent the lifeblood inherent in the fair and level playing field ideal of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that epitomizes the American experience, American dream, American mainstream.

And that's why I have to write about what I take to be the Republican position on a Jobs Bill in Congress. Other than making the Bush tax cuts permanent, what is the Republican Jobs Bill? Now I hear that Republicans plan to run this fall on calling for the cut-taxes-on-the-wealthy and increase-government-spending economic philosophy coupled with minimal financial oversight and unpaid warfare--that inspired the recent financial collapse, the Republican Recession, the surge in unemployment, and the massive federal deficit. Well, that's what I call Bushanomics. I wish Republicans luck with that.

It'll be interesting to see if the American electorate wants to purchase that old Mission Accomplished brake system or not.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio has called for a no-cost Jobs Plan. His plan will not increase taxes on any American, will include new trade agreements (if Leader Boehner thinks Congress can devise, debate, and pass new trade agreements in enough time to stimulate hiring that would make him the most optimistic minority party member in American history!), and legislate fewer regulations. Meantime, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia defines the Republican Jobs plans as "producing an environment where we can have job creation again..." Produce...a what? An...environment?

Here's the environment Republicans in Congress want to produce in order to create jobs: 1) kill health care reform, 2) cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, 3) prevent a market-based cap-and-trade futures market, 4) end financial reform legislation, and 5) prevent the growth of an American sustainable energy sector so that the U.S can become the Saudi Arabia of wind, solar, biomass, and other renewable energy in the 21st century.

In other words, the Republican Jobs program is to kill, cut, prevent, and end. how many jobs will get created from that "mainstream" program?

Is Liberal, Intellectual Condescension Really the Problem?
February 7th, 2010

gwcubamug.jpgUnder the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

A conservative professor of politics at the University of Virginia has written a column in Sunday’s Washington Post asking the question: Why are liberals so condescending?

In the setup, he writes, “Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.”

Later on, he adds, “This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government — and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.”

Rather than posting a comment on the Post’s Website to point out how the professor has it so wrong, let’s take his argument apart here.

First of all, he starts out with an obvious bit of false spin, just like the conservative commentators on TV he seems to try to defend.

“…even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives.”

On the wane? President Barack Obama’s personal popularity is the same as Ronald Reagan’s after one year in office, and the Democrats still have a majority in both houses of Congress. Just because TV pundits are saying the Democrats may lose a few seats in the mid-term election in 2010 doesn’t mean their fortunes are totally “on the wane.”

In fact, it has been pointed out over and over again that the Republican Party is all but dead, except among white males mostly in the South. Just because one Republican won a Congressional race in Massachusetts doesn’t mean the Republicans are about to take back the country tomorrow. The election is still 10 months away. Anything can happen and probably will.


“Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation — as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a ‘Bolshevik plot,’” according to the professor.

Well, isn’t that true? Conservatives are good at oversimplifying things into wedge issue sound bites. The administration of George W. Bush proved the anti-government party couldn’t govern.

Bashing government is a campaign ploy, not an alternative plan to get rid of the deficit.

While seeming to dismantle liberal thinking, the professor simply bolsters it.

He writes, “Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics … stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival…. Richard Hofstadter referred to ‘the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind.’”

This appears to be way more true today than it was in the 1950s and ’60s. I wonder if the professor bothered to catch any of the coverage of the Tea Party convention in Nashville?

The professor talks of four major narratives about who conservatives are and how they think and function, and rather than offering a real counter to that, the professor proves the case.

The first narrative is the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” a vision that “maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics. A dense network of professional political strategists such as Karl Rove, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and industry groups allegedly manipulate information and mislead the public.”

All true. Where’s the evidence it’s not true? The professor doesn’t offer any. He just calls liberals “condescending.” For what? Being right?

He goes on to prove the case.

“This liberal vision emphasizes the dissemination of ideologically driven views from sympathetic media such as the Fox News Channel. For example, Chris Mooney’s book The Republican War on Science argues that policy debates in the scientific arena are distorted by conservatives who disregard evidence and reflect the biases of industry-backed Republican politicians or of evangelicals aimlessly shielding the world from modernity. In this interpretation, conservative arguments are invariably false and deployed only cynically.”

Yes, and your point? We know that the Bush administration spent eight excruciating years using industry lobbyists to run just about every government agency. That is an indisputable fact. Every news organization in the country, including the conservative Wall Street Journal, documented the war on science at the EPA, the Interior Department, and on and on.

Is it an equal political argument to say it is a “liberal conspiracy of condescension” and use innuendo to imply that there was no war on science?

Perhaps the professor should visit one of the hard science departments at the University of Virginia and ask some of them what they think. Or are all scientists just liberals who scapegoat Christian conservatives for standing in the way of progress on solving real problems, like the energy crisis and climate change due to human induced global warming?

The professor says, “Some observers have decried an anti-intellectual strain in contemporary conservatism, detected in George W. Bush’s aw-shucks style, Sarah Palin’s college-hopping and the occasional conservative campaigns against egghead intellectuals.”

Duh. What is untrue about that? They all learned it from George Wallace in Alabama in the late 1960s and ’70s, which is what allowed Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to be elected president in the first place. There is a host of scholarship on the “Dixie Strategy.” I mean, just Google it.

There is not a serious political scholar anywhere who would really deny this at the end of the day. Politics is a game of words. Half the population has no clue about the facts. Whoever wins the spin war wins the election. That is politics American-style.

Obama has it right. The Democrats should keep hitting the Republicans where they live, in the land of Oz, and they will stay on top.

What the professor could have said, if he wanted us to take his case seriously, is that the Democrats have to prove they can govern by getting some concrete things done. Otherwise, they will lose enough of the independent vote to cost them elections.

Of course it is hard to get things done when “the party of no” filibusters every good idea just to stop progress so they can maybe win an election.

Obama has already said he will listen to their ideas. He has bent over backwards to try to work with the GOP, even to the consternation of many liberal Democrats who have tried to tell the president they won’t listen, they have no ideas, and they won’t help govern because it is not in their political interest to solve problems.

It is in their interest to flash Tina Fey glasses and ignorant, extremist, sound bites at the masses, hoping to fool enough of the people some of the time. That’s Sarah Palin’s job in Nashville. She has no chance of getting elected to anything. She is a spoiler that keeps the anti-Democrat crusade going another day on TV.

Alabama’s very own Ten Commandments Judge called Obama immoral. Does the professor really think that is true and that it will win elections? Where is the alternative governing strategy in that?

Answer: There’s not one. It is nothing but spin. Is it condescension to point that out? I think not…

Originally Posted by BR

Or maybe the original point is full of shit and my outrage is completely justified. Nope, I'm not one of you so that could never be the case, right? And when you post link after link in your global climate change thread, I don't see you calling it a spamfest. Seriously Jazz...can you be any more hypocritical?

Originally Posted by jazzguru

Your outrage, while understandable, is misdirected.

Pot, meet kettle.

Originally Posted by BR

Disagree.

Originally Posted by jimmac

Why are wingnuts so arrogant? It's not like they have a reason to be.

Originally Posted by BR

Or maybe the original point is full of shit and my outrage is completely justified. Nope, I'm not one of you so that could never be the case, right? And when you post link after link in your global climate change thread, I don't see you calling it a spamfest. Seriously Jazz...can you be any more hypocritical?

Originally Posted by jazzguru

Ah, a little introspection, I see.

Originally Posted by franksargent

PO's spamster of the year award goes to ... not you BR.

The really funny thing is that someone spams a certain thread nonstop, and doesn't even know what they are actually posting, can't ever be bothered with even a first principles understanding of the actual science.

Can't even figure out how simple minded people are digging out the non-peer reviewed references to attack AR4 WG2 in a seemingly daily sequence of faux noise.

Can't even figure out why, from all those links almost exclusively from the British press, why the US MSM isn't even covering this as newsworthy, when CRU is across the pond in England to begin with, the scene of the crime of the stolen emails as it were.

D'oh, hit me with a dumb stick.

Signed,
If you're going to continue to act stupid, don't be surprised if you are called stupid.

Originally Posted by trumptman

Why are liberals so condescending?

Originally Posted by trumptman

Yes and aren't we all enjoying the heat of that 8% limited unemployment, roaring economy, fiscal sanity restored due to the deescalated world policing occurring and troops coming home. Isn't it nice that all the world respects us so much more right now as demonstrated via Copenhagen, currency claims by an array of countries, and of course half a dozen other instances where Obama was applauded for nice words, but then shown the door. I hear tell Iran is going to show us how much it respects us again very soon. Their desire to deliver a "punch" sounds so much better than those bad Bush years.

Perhaps the one demonstrating they can make fire should wonder why people call it propaganda when they've rubbed the sticks together, and there is no flame and no heat but then instead of declaring it valid to note no fire, they instead declare noting such things to be racist, and of course the sticks were handed to him by Bush, and there would be a fire, but Republicans are winning the messaging war, and the scientific consensus says there is a fire even though there isn't, and if you don't see the fire it is just because you are part of the problem, etc.

Where's that nice fire to be so condescending about? What are the achievements of Obama and the Democratic Congress we have had since 2006 that are worth crowing over?

Originally Posted by trumptman

Look it is that wonderful intent game.

You said people making fire will sound condescending to those who can't make it.

Stop the intent game. It doesn't matter whether I wanted the fire or not. It was promised and it isn't here. If you promise to end wars and instead double down, that isn't ending wars.



There is indeed and if you look in the archives of these forums you will find some nice posts from me noting that BRIC ROW could not stop the world from suffering that slow down in unison with the United States.



It's very cute (and condescending as well) when you manufacture stupidity and strawmen to argue against. Those mean imaginary Republicans don't know how to spel 2 gud du dey? They are just spitting out lame made up nonsense scrawled on cocktail napkins in crayon and of course the American people are just DUPED by it and buy the lie. Even the might Obama cannot overcome the cocktail napkin crayola lies with their persuasive lack of grammar and spelling errors that manage to turn the independents against the Democrats in the last several elections since Obama assumed office.



Yes because the reasoning is so sound, and of course so condescending as well. People who argue reality are idiots while those who argue that imaginary people who can't spell are wrong because they are idiots are really the ones most correct on this matter.

I'm still waiting on that fire. Even if those noting the lack of fire supposedly can't spell fire, or think fire is racist, or think women can't make fire, or think gays shouldn't be married around a fire, I'm still waiting for the fire.

The reality is there is no fire. Obama has ended no wars. He has not brought about any international cooperation. He has not used a peace dividend to restore fiscal sanity. He has not brought the troops home. He has not even met the lowered expectations of himself while including the blame game and allowing for massive up front failure. His second year budget does not have a lower deficit as was projected in his first year. Instead it has a larger and record breaking deficit. Unemployment did not stay down as his bill declared, rather quite the opposite.

Hell the man hasn't even ended Don't Ask, Don't Tell with a supermajority in Congress and himself there to sign the bill.



I just noticed that when I quoted your post, there wasn't any fire in it but still plenty of condescension. Find the fire for me Seg. You gave the criteria for the condescension you employ so please justify it.

You've got the sticks. So where's the fire? My Ayn Rand quote doesn't explain the lack of fire. My argument being "foolhardy" doesn't explain the lack of fire.

Where's the fire?

intent game.

Originally Posted by jimmac

Your new buzz phrase?

It sounds like to me that you're manufactoring something as well. By the look of things though it looks like no one is buying today.

Originally Posted by jazzguru

He's the only one who uses "buzz phrases", eh?

Sandbox!

Cycles!

You're just bitter because you lost the election!

Originally Posted by trumptman

Please speak to the aide who is helping you with your posting. They wrote the word manufacturing down wrong on your hand and when you looked at it to hit me with your talking points, you totally spelled it wrong as a result.

Don't worry the video of it will be up soon. They were probably just spelling it phonetically so you wouldn't say it wrong.

We wouldn't want a nuc-u-lar moment would we?

Originally Posted by BR


Segovius's comment about rubbing two sticks together to make fire isn't all that far from reality. Discuss.