OT - How Conservatives Lost the Educated Class
 

This is an interesting article by David Brooks that gets to the heart of one of my significant concerns about the Conservative movement: their loud, public disdain for intellectualism and the educated class in America. Yes, there are outliers, but check out the statistics he provides about campaign donations (which I've bolded). For a country that supposedly prizes education, it's odd how much Conservatives will dismiss the contributions of the so-called 'educated elite' -- perhaps education is only prized through high-school? Sincere question -- it's strange to me. But as this article doesn't address the main Obama/McCain election, I felt it deserved its own thread, and I'm hoping to see a good discussion about this issue.

Link: NYT: The Class War Before Palin

Full Text:

I think the Palin part is a bit tacked on, tho she is the latest salvo in this "class war". But the idea is sound

SI

The Northeast was gone after Abraham Lincoln.

I think this is a straight outgrowth of the Moral Majority and the Religious Right.
The Republicans, by embracing religion so closely, can not also embrace science or education.

lol

Two points from me:

1) I'm not sure the "educated elite" is a single class. If we're talking about the "educated elite" that have infested our educational istitutions and formed the NEA who have decided that teaching "life management skills" and implementing diversity programs are far more important than teaching reading, writing, math and science, then good riddance to them.

2) My first does of class warfare was Clinton's '92 campaign. Before that, I was mostly getting into following politics during the Reagan and elder Bush elections, which were more about government fiscal policy and taxation than about class warfare. Clinton rode a wave of anger against the "rich" and perfected class warfare in politics, and I think a lot of what you see now out of Republicans is from folks backed into a corner who have seen this country turn on those who are successful, punishing them for that success.

1) That's cute, but absolutely irrelevant. People with post-graduate degrees (technical executives, economists to names the one cited by Brooks) support Democrats now. Are you seriously arguing that if we took a polling of the hard technical sciences or Math/Sciences, you'd find a more favorable split for Republican? If anything, I'd venture the split there is even more left-leaning.

And yet the majority of the successful vote Democrat.

You think so? I wouldn't.

I've found engineers to be fairly split. Perhaps as a group slightly right leaning, because they seem slightly more likely to come from conservative families.

The traditional sciences are definitely left leaning. Biological sciences much more so than the others.

I'd bet my savings on PhD's in technical sciences being more left-leaning than right-leaning, although not as left-leaning as academia overall (that's where the "Contemperary African American Gender Studies in Sexuality" types come in :D ).

The GOP has earned a lot of credibility over time (especially with economists) for sticking to facts on things like free trade, even when populist baying was for the opposite. Their idiocy on things like climate change and science overall has lost them a lot of that.

We're going to disagree, but I guess that's anecdotal evidence and there's no support there. :D

Ha, and I will admit that most of my experience comes from being around southern universities, so that may skew things a bit. I would imagine that the student body of MIT and Cal Poly is probably more liberal than a school like GT is conservative. (And just as liberal as Texas A&M is conservative.)

Here's a research on the topic.

www.nd.edu/~cwolbrec/PartyID.pdf

Well, I went to school at CMU which is pretty damn apolitical - but since then I've spent time in Boston and the Bay Area, both of which are pretty liberal. So yeah, I guess we're in agreement. :D

A lot of PhD scientists exist due to funding by the federal govt. When an administration, like the Bush2, cuts or reduces fundings for their project, they support those that will not.

Based purely on observations, most of the "pure engineers" that I work with seem to be left-leaning. Those engineers who are using the engineering as a stepping stone to management of some sort seem to be more right-leaning. And I'll 100% echo Bucc's comments about drastically reduced federal research funding under this administration making a large impact on whom the scientific community supports.

/tk

I find the lack of compassion that most conservatives possess to be frightening, and possibly borderline sociopathic.

I wonder how many conservative psychiatrists there are.

You do realize that in many cities in this country and in many places around the world, it is those same "conservatives" that have started and are running ministries, social services and medical clinics to help those in need. In other words, actually doing something tangible in the community. Or you just looking at a few loudmouths and painting everyone with the same ignorant brush? shurg

A few?

Conservatives tend to be very compassionate towards those looking for a helping hand to get back on their feet. Conservatives tend to have little sympathy for those who get themselves into trouble and expect someone else to fix it for them.

This is purely my opinion, but:

Conservatives are self starters and ambitious. Most feel the need to achieve as high a level as they can and support similar ambitions. They end up as technical leads, analysts, managers and small business owners. Outside of an MBA here or there, most prefer to run their own businesses as opposed to rely on an advanced degree. Those that work their way up the ladder to wealth often end up being conservative.

Liberals want to make a difference, improve the world and often don't like corporate organizations. They tend to gravitate to advanced degrees (masters, Phds, ..), journalism, lawyers, doctors and other professions/roles where they can impact society (social worker, psychologist, teacher, academic research). I also contend that a lot of people with wealth prefer to be liberal (maybe guilt for being as "lucky"?). That's why some CEOs, actors and entertainers lean left.

So, if you read those two groups, is it really a shocker that the second ends up with most of the support from people with advanced degrees?

Conservatives like Barack Obama, for instance. :)

It's easy to paint institutions of higher learning as filled to the brim with liberals who wouldn't survive in the real world, but it's not accurate.

I think you guys are somewhat missing the point of the column. It's not necessarily about the degrees people have, but how each party treats intellectualism.

There's also some wild generalizations being thrown around. Conservatives are the ones who are self-starters? That's a pretty broad claim.

Step back for a moment and try to think about how things and people actually are, people you know, and not how things have been painted by Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove.

My comments are simply based on life experience. I know more liberals (including most of my family) than conservatives and outside of Flasch, my dad and one other guy - none run their own small business (while about 12 people I've worked who do are conservative). None of the managers at my company or the ones we deal with are liberal. Plus, most of my left-leaning friends are in journalism, education, psychology or still going to school for advanced degree. I certainly could be the "odd ball" from this standpoint, but my comments are just based on my own experiences.

True conservatism died several years ago.

The problem with "conservatives", is that you have a "religious" attachment to that. A lot of people are what you describe, but don't support the religious movement (socially liberal). Am I wrong here?

Nope, you are correct there. Very few conservatives I know (maybe 20% max) are what I would consider strong socially conservative. Most are either more libertarian or generally apathetic on social issues (like myself).

I was simply referring to the base conservative belief system vs. the liberal belief system. From that standpoint, you don't have to have a religious component.

Earlier I had a huge response typed up, but opted against posting it.

Being a conservative != being religious.

Being religious != being anti-intellectual

Something that people on the left do not understand, or do not care to understand is that religion and science can coexist. I have posted here on the boards before, science is the study of the universe around us and how it works. Religion is the study of why the universe behaves that way. Much of the confusion is because there is a subtle difference between the pursuits. For example, the statement that water is a great solvent because it is a polar molecule is a scientific statement. It can be proven by experiment, etc. The statement that water behaves that way because God created a system that makes it behave that way is a religious statement that attempts to answer why the science is the way it is.

Or, another issue, the big bang is the current theory of how the universe was created. The question of why the points singularity is there or how that was created is the realm of religion and philosophy.

What winds up happening to conservatives is two-fold. First, the religious right exerts too much power in the party due to them voting on their social agenda, not their fiscal agenda. With more fiscal minded people not turning out in primaries, the religious right gets their candidate. Second, conservatives are typically for smaller goernment spending. Each of the groups listed in the article benefits from democrat views on spending, regulation, etc., etc.

Also, I heartily agree with the points Arles brought up as well.

part of the problem though warhammer is that the religious right is anti-intellectual. they don't think in the reasoned way that you think. they would say "water is a great solvent because god wanted it to be, and he made it a polar molecule."

That's not quite what I was saying. I would argue that liberalism has a pretty strong stranglehold on HOW education is run in this country (hence my comment on the NEA and teaching "life management skills"), though, and that has generally been for the worse, as the focus has been on teaching things OTHER than basic skills in public schools.

And while I may be colored by my current experiences with my local school board and how they've been given awards by national education groups for how they've pushed diversity at the expense of a stable educational environment, I've noticed this trend for a long time, as my family watched the curriculum at my old junior and high school change from the time I went through until the time my youngest brother graduated.

Everybody's gotta throw around extremes. Anybody who thinks that are conservative Christians can be painted with the same brush is either unaware of the facts or flat out distortiung the truth, perhaps for emphasis. My dad is an Evangelical minister with a ton of credentials such as chairing the Graham Crusade and also working for the WV Council of Churches on gambling, and would be known far and wide as one of the more influential conservative Christians int eh area. He has his doctorate. His wife has a masters. I have a masters, and he would be pickled pink if I got my PhD in polisci and taught it. Someday he wants to retire and go teach at a college. The churches I have been a part of embrace education both spiritually and secullarrly. Any idea that conservative Christians as a whole just disdain those with a higher education is silly based on my expereinces. Of course, there are a few idiots who are conservaite Christians, just like there are eco-terrorists on the other side, but environmentalislm is not painted by teh same brush by a few idiots with too much time on their hands, but conservativism is not so lucky.

Again, there is a VERY subtle difference which I am not even sure that I elaborated properly.

With the water example, that is a perfectly good explanation that is not at odds with science. If you are religious and believe that God created the universe (regardless of how that might have been achieved or what processes were used) then it goes without saying that God wanted water to be a polar molecule, etc., etc. In the mind of the religious person, God created the universe and the laws that govern it.

Thinking some more, and with more sleep than I was working on yesterday, I have a different example. In the past, in the minds of the ancient Greeks, the Greek gods were given credit for everything. If there was a storm, it was because the storm god wanted to smite some one. Lightning was created by the lightning god hurling down lightning bolts from the clouds, etc.

Today, I think we all know that lightning is caused by the uneven distribution of charge in a storm and the electrical discharge is due to the laws of physics trying to achieve a lower energy state. This is a scientific reason for why lightning occurs.

Now, the religious person would claim that this is due to God's crafting of the laws of nature or the universe. Meanwhile an atheist would claim that it was due to the laws of physics. Again, there is not a big difference in belief or definition. The difference is that the laws of nature are attributed to God in the case of a religious person, while the atheist believes the laws of nature are there by chance.

As I said before, there is a very subtle difference, which I can certainly recognize, I am just not sure that I am elaborating it very well.

I think that David Brooks has a good point.

From what I have seen, many folks with PhDs have grown quietly disenchanted with quite a few aspects of left-wing politics and policies, most notably affirmative action as it is currently practiced, speech codes on college campuses, teachers' unions whose primary purpose is to keep bad teachers teaching, and so on. If there was still a Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party, or even a William Buckley wing, they might find a new home there. But there is no possibility of a single one of them jumping ship and supporting a Republican Party whose anti-intellectualism is so venomous, and whose celebration of mediocrity is so unabashed.

sorry - didn't mean to imply all. perhaps i should have just said "a very vocal minority."

Those would be the "few loudmouths".

Yeah, the same people that look at gays as "sinners". When they start accepting LGBT people into their ministries, and not as reclamation cases, you can tell me that they are a compassionate people.

I find it disgusting that people still experience this horrid bullshit. It is truly terrible. I truly feel that if the evangelicals were in power, there would be a muted sort of genocide against unrepentant gays, and that is unacceptable to me.

Let the Evangelicals be Evangelical. Let them seek office. After all, that is America. Let anyone seek office. Please. I am begging my fellow Americans...please don't let these intolerant, unconstitutional people ever gain power.

I am a black american. My ancestors fought for fairness. They endured hardships that I will never have to endure.

I am not gay. However, if me having to be gay helps lend credence to their fight for equality, then call me gay. In spirit, I will be gay. FUCK THE BIGOTS, AND MAY HELL EXIST SO THEY CAN ROT IN ITS BORDERS.

Also, let me speak on people who are against abortion. Fuck you. Worry about yourself. The police don't consider a pregnant mother able to drive in the carpool lane. Are you anti-police?

A fetus can't feel a thing. Tell me what you felt when you were a fetus. Yeah..you didn't feel a thing. That's because your first memory was when you were 3 or 4 years old.

I'm all for abortion. I eat steaks. I think a fully grown cow has a more developed nervous system than an unborn human fetus.

Feel free to disagree.

Sigh, where I work, there are plenty of conservative faculty members, even in the sciences. They don't take the extreme views of some southern conservatives (especially those in Cobb Country we'll call the textbook stickerers) but some have very conservative moral views. However, what Bucc said was correct. Funding has been cut under Bush, and that's funding that we use to support our research and our families. So most are tending to be left-leaners this election. But believe me, even higher educated people in a technical school let their moral beliefs determine voting behavior.

As for whoever said "science is the study of the universe around us and how it works. Religion is the study of why the universe behaves that way." I don't really understand how religion can be a "study" of anything. There is no "research" going on and every answer is essentially the same, God made it that way. So sure, you can use your example about water and say the ultimate answer is that God made it that way, but really, that's the same answer to every question. Evolution, gravity, etc. I'm not knocking religion, I am moderately religious, I just don't see it as a "study" of anything except human faith.

And by the way Arles, I didn't get my advanced degree to "help the world" or any of the reasons you stated above. I wanted to learn more about science and put myself in a better position to run my own life, or at least make a lot of money in industry if I went down that path. In fact, I'd say most of the reasoning for my advanced degree was looking at how to make more money in the future and possibly even start my own consulting business.

Ah OK, sorry I misunderstood you there.

On the topic as you've clarified it, I agree that much of public education has lost its way. I'm not sure if I'd put the entire blame at the door of "liberalism", however. There's rampant under-funding, for instance, parents who don't care, parents who sue at the drop of a hat, and some school districts who have to fight a running battle against creationists. There's plenty of blame to go around for the sorry state of public education these days.


Same here. My brother, who was 4 years behind me in school, went from public to private for his last two years in part because the quality of the curriculum had gone downhill so badly. And that was 15 years ago now.



Again, this is the point a bunch of people are missing in this thread.

There are plenty of conservatives out there who are good people, just like there are plenty of liberals out there who are good people (JiMGA's opinions notwithstanding). Anecdotally, two of our best friends are born again Christians (not sure how to capitalize that). And there's clearly a lot of common ground between the new progressives in the Democratic party and the intellectual, fiscally conservative, socially moderate wing of the GOP.

That's not the point.

The point is that the anti-intellectual, evangelical, intolerant wing of the GOP that gained ascendancy with Newt Gingrich, culminated in the George W. Bush presidency and has Sarah Palin as one of its standard bearers, is not these people. But it is the modern GOP.

And thus there is no room in the modern GOP for old-school conservative intellectuals specifically, and intellectuals in general. Even Christopher Buckley.

I agree that this is the real point.

At least here in the northeast, the republicans have more or less lost the suburbs. A lot of northeastern yuppie types who would have been republicans twenty years ago no longer see the GOP as a real choice. The perception (real or imagined) that the Republican party is no better (and possibly even worse) than the Democrats on fiscal policies, coupled with the alignment of the GOP towards social policies that are generally not in line with the culture of the Northeast, makes support for the Republican party a tough sell these days. That the traditional wing of the Republican party (and traditionally populated by moderate northeasterners) are considered "RINOs" today, also gives these voters pause as to whether the Republicans running in these elections actually have real influence in their party.

The article also pointed out:


I wonder if this is already starting to manifest in Obama's fund raising abilities in relation to McCain. This could be a serious issue for the Republicans in the long run...

I agree with this post. And for purposes of your example above, I will also be gay.

Wanna go make out?

+1

cept I'm not black. :( :banghead: :rant:

Don't mistake Republican for conservative. Please. Current crop is not conservative.

Repubs are hurting because they've lost their way. I don't see a party to vote for since the Dems are just insanely liberal and my party (hurts to say that) are liberal wannabe's.

That's all fine. Only one problem with the post:

While 99% of Evangelicals may be Republicans (I won't use conservatives, true conservatism is dead at the moment), most Republicans are not Evangelical.

In truth, Evangelicals won't get power now no matter who is elected. Bush is pro life, correct? What exactly has he been able to do in 8 years to curb abortions? Supreme Court justices? Please. Spare me.

Since 1980, we have had 22 years of Republican administration and 8 years of a Democratic one. Are gays treated better now than they were in 1980? Are abortions down from 1980? How about race, are we worse off in race relations than we were in 1980?

The reality is that the populace as a whole determines how people are treated. Racism has started to decrease in America when a majority of mainstream people looked down upon racist rhetoric. (it is not gone and I'm not saying discrimination still doesn't take place, please don't spin this off as me saying everything is perfect) If abortions are to go down it will take an overwhelming movement from the people to do it, not a couple of people elected to office.

The reality is most "conservatives" vote that way not to stop gays from having families or to prevent 16 year old rape victims from having abortions. . . they vote that way for economic reasons. Free trade. Smaller government. Personal responsibility. I have an ever so slight lean right. And yet I'm against the death penalty, against religion in schools, for gay rights, and am unsure on the aborition issue and would never base my vote on that because I don't think the guy in office can control it anyway.

What's changing?

As I noted above and someone else in the thread already did as well, true conservatism doesn't exist anymore. Reagan is spinning in his grave at a 700 billion dollar buyout for example. True conservatives are looking at other paths. Libertarian for example.

Painting people with broad strokes is pretty simple. Republicans do the same thing by callinlg all liberals communists. It's silly, stupid, short sited and wrong to do it. But people from both sides play the game none the less. . .

Well, what else can he do? That's about the extent of it, other than signing symbolic partial birth abortion bans. He turned Roe from a 6-3 majority into a 5-4 majority. Both of his justices were pro-life. He certainly did better than Regan (1 of 3 pro-life) and Bush Sr. (1 of 2 pro-life).

Aside from not being black, I'm with you here.


Aw, hell. Well for one, it's the DOT and not the police that defines a pregnant mother not being able to use the HOV lane.


So if you don't remember when you were under a year, is it okay to kill kids that young?

Oh, or it's the feeling thing. What about killing people in a coma? Or, ooh, under general anesthesia. There you go.

I'm sure a 8 month old fetus can feel things, most certainly pain. If your point is that a person can't remember way back then, I'll give that to you.

Suggest a another thread for this discuss as I can see this spiralling out of control.

What's your position on the requirement by some states to have a second physician present to prevent the aborted kid from being snuffed out if he happens to survive?

That's all he can do and yet that won't even be enough. OK, someone finally gets to the supreme court and they overturn Roe V. Wade. Then what? It simply goes back to the states control like it was before Roe V. Wade. Then it becomes chaos. Abortion, like it or not, isn't going anywhere for a long, long time. It's just not happening. Because of that, I won't vote on that issue, no matter how I feel on the subject. (As noted earlier, I'm undecided on it.)