{"id":9886,"date":"2012-03-05T12:31:43","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T12:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/05\/anti-intellectualism-on-the-right\/"},"modified":"2012-03-05T12:31:43","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T12:31:43","slug":"anti-intellectualism-on-the-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/05\/anti-intellectualism-on-the-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Intellectualism on the Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I write, the 'infanticide is just post-natal abortion' controversy is being discussed by Charlie Sykes who is sitting in for Dennis Prager on the latter's radio show.  Sykes is obviously intelligent, but he just did something that is not uncommon for conservatives to do but is harmful to the conservative cause, namely, display an anti-intellectual attitude.  He used the phrase "academic gobblydegook" to refer to the reasoning in After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?<\/a>  (My discussion of the issues here<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The article's reasoning, however,  is clear and free of unnecessary jargon.  For the anti-intellectual, however, any attempt to make necessary distinctions and couch them in a technical vocabulary is dismissed as 'gobbledegook,' 'hairsplitting,' 'semantics,' etc.  It's unfortunate but  it is the way too many conservatives are.  I am not talking about conservative intellectuals, but conservatives that have influence.  Bill O'Reilly is an example.  He does good work, and his influence is mainly salutary.  But when a guest begins to nuance the discussion with a distinction or two, O'Reilly dismisses it as 'theory' using the word in the way of Joe Sixpack.  (That would make a good separate post, "Joe Sixpack on 'Theory'")<\/span><\/p>\n

Conservatives have the right views but are too often incapable of defending them. This makes them easy targets for leftists.  Liberals and leftists lack common sense including moral sense, but they possess verbal facility in spades.  So if you talk like George W. Bush or dismiss careful, albeit wrongheaded, reasoning as 'gobbledegook' you just make yourself look stupid, not just to liberals but to everyone who values careful thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I write, the 'infanticide is just post-natal abortion' controversy is being discussed by Charlie Sykes who is sitting in for Dennis Prager on the latter's radio show.  Sykes is obviously intelligent, but he just did something that is not uncommon for conservatives to do but is harmful to the conservative cause, namely, display an anti-intellectual attitude.  He used the … Continue reading “Anti-Intellectualism on the Right”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[313,64,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-conservatism","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}