Liberals’ Attitudes Toward Conservatives
Do liberals condescend to conservatives?
No doubt about it. This weekend in the Washington Post, Gerard Alexander, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, meticulously detailed the numerous disparagements the left characteristically foists upon the right—insults such as candidate Obama’s 2008 campaign comment about frustrated Rust Belt voters clinging to guns or religion.
Truthfully, I admit to holding disrespectful views about conservative viewpoints. For example, I habitually think Christian fundamentalists with creationist views suffer from ignorance. But Alexander makes an important point for me and other liberals to note, one that we ought to consider fairly and take to heart.
Yet, there is some truth and justification in liberal attitudes, particularly after a year of Republican and conservative vituperation over efforts by Obama and the Democrats to govern the country and deal with very difficult problems.
A week ago, Scott Brown, the new Massachusetts senator, said Obama’s economic stimulus plan did not create even one new job, a statement which is certainly false, ignores the views of most economists, and fails to acknowledge that the Great Recession ended within a year of the stimulus legislation. Since Brown is an intelligent man who knows better, his comment seems to justify New York Times’ economic columnist, Paul Krugman’s, accusations, cited by Alexander, that conservatives sometimes lie and make things up.
And what about Sarah Palin’s and Republican Sen. Charles Grassley’s fallacious assertions that the Democrats’ health care plan creates “death panels” to decide whether handicapped children and elderly grandmothers should live or die? Or RNC chairman, Michael Steele’s, characterization of the plan as “socialism,” even though it would give millions more customers to private insurance companies. Or the Wall Street Journal news article that calls the Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill, “cap and tax,” and decries the short term economic costs of the legislation, without considering the long term economic costs of climate change or the benefits of incentivizing renewable energy.
If liberals disparage Republicans and conservatives as ignorant Luddites (and we often do), it is partly in reaction to such apparently unthinking, diehard comments. But another big factor in liberal attitudes has to do with advanced education and scientific evidence. Elite universities on the coasts, the oldest and most prestigious in the nation, have notoriously left-wing faculties. And liberals emphasize science and objective evidence, in contrast to conservative trust in traditional sources like religious creeds and loyalty to established principles and values. I suspect that it is in their sense of intellectual superiority, that liberals feel most justified, but it is in just that attitude that they are most mistaken.
Notions of liberal intellectual dominance place uncalled-for emphasis on one type of intelligence—the I.Q. kind, measured by S.A.T.’s and recognized in advanced academic degrees. They ignore emotional and interpersonal intelligence, as explicated by Howard Gardner in his theory of multiple types of intelligence. The latter intelligence is every bit as important to success in life, and if the left excels in the intellectual kind, then it may be that the right excels in the emotional kind. That might explain the Republicans’ evident superiority in explaining themselves and swaying the views of the majority of Americans—even in the absence of factual justification on the issues—a capability which frustrates liberals no end and probably inspires much of their intellectual snobbery.
Moreover, liberal arrogance provokes rejection and even hatred among their political opposition and most Americans, because nothing insults like accusations of stupidity and ignorance. Liberals undercut their own agenda by efforts to undermine conservatives by trying to destroy their intellectual confidence. In reaction, conservatives hold firm and independents turn away. In their derisiveness, liberals display low emotional-interpersonal intelligence and give conservatives good reason to feel superior in return.
Professor Alexander has done us liberals a good deed, holding up a mirror for us to see ourselves, showing us intensely frustrated and nasty tempered. But if we want Obama and the Democrats to succeed and deal successfully with the difficult problems our nation faces, we ought to stop the insults and try to improve our communication.
Tags: cap and trade, condescension, conservative, economy, Gerard Alexander, health care, intellectual, intelligence, liberal, politics
This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Medicine and Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.