It finally dawned on me.
I can't help but notice that Right bloggers are defending the legacy of Tony Snow and Left bloggers are trying to call him another loser flack. I'm also noticing how some have blamed Fox for the legs on Jackson's ridiculous gaffe. One has repeated the litany of Righties up to Ailes at the top. I've always noticed that dozens of folks who don't bother to lookup Hayek still can't figure out what a semi-intelligent writer such as myself does following the marching orders of Bill O'Rielly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. The fact is that I don't, but that doesn't stop the guilt by association.
What I've figured out, appropos a phrase that sticks with me, is that the Left associates dissent from its panglossian policy experimentation as stupidity. The reference is here from William Weston, emphasis mine:
The least educated people have the most diverse group of political discussion mates, whereas people with graduate degrees are the least likely to talk politics with people who disagree with them. I can testify to how easy it is for conversation among academics, the most educated group of people, to turn into a one-position echo chamber. Liberalism is taken to be an IQ test, and the rare conservative is encouraged to be quiet or go elsewhere. For political disagreement I go to the coffee house, which in our town draws a broader range of people than the faculty club contains.
This is the land I grew up in, and of course with a family background of academics, it made sense. To do for those who previously couldn't is a sign of progress, and we should be all about progress. If you're not, you're stupid. Which naturally includes thier constituency - those who don't know how to do for themselves and need the work of society to help them out - society led by ... academics, the only people smart enough to show the way.
Of course all intellectuals aren't liberal or progressive. And that's what makes the Left agonize. They believe that the progress inherent in their views must be the way that the lumpen masses see things. The Left is elitist, but they assume that their efforts on behalf of the masses will always be supported by the masses. And so in a democracy, they should always win. That's why they hate Fox News, because it destroys their monopoly. It gives people who aren't rich reasons to think like people who are. (And it's always the rich industrialists who is the intelligencia the academics are most envious of - after all that's where they get their money).
This explains a host of questions that black conservatives get, and any Republican who doesn't appear to be a wealthy miser. "How could you possibly betray your own best interests" is the root question. They simply don't understand intellectual diversity - that people's own best interests is not always down with a policy program or an agenda of 'progress'.
Moreover, on that IQ test thing - they really can't stand that Right Radio connects with average people, and that politics isn't always an intellectual pissing match. That's why the Left tends to gravitate to big hunking world-historical ideas just beyond the reach of the ordinary Joe. Global Warming / Climate Change is just a perfect sort of thing they love to suggest is beyond the ken of the best minds on the Right. Nothing pleases the left more than 'scientific consensus'. Whether it be the Iraq Study Group, or the IPCC or the War Crimes Tribunal. That's why they call it scientific socialism. It's supposed to be good for you.
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