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.
87 Responses to “More Condescension Needed”
Register
RSSLogin
Yglesias Tweets
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
February 5th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I’m condescending to your reading comprehension abilities. Try again, Einstein.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
It is commonplace among both social psychologists and regular folks to recognize that very often people’s opinions are not based on ‘fact and reason’, but are rather driven by prejudices, values, childhood associations, wishful thinking, and all kinds of ostensibly nonrational processes. Some people are more prone than others to see that they and those in their group have these tendencies. Upon seeing this tendency, there is a tendency for the certainty or confidence that had attended (at least some of) one’s commitments to weaken. I have no idea whether conservatives or liberals are more prone to doing this, but it is false that just because one holds an opinion, even one that one is very committed to, that it follows that one is convinced that it is based (entirely) on fact and reason.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Honestly, it never ceases to amaze me that some people seem to be seriously suggesting one side does this (going from “you’re wrong” to “your view is illegitimate”) more than the other.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Since conservatives hate anything French, I guess that Gerard Alexander won’t be having Brie or Camembert with that whine.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Having seen what happens when so-called conservatives gain the reins of power, I’m pretty sure that all these so-called conservatives are either so stupid or so full of shit that I feel pretty good about telling them to take their ideas and shove them up their asses sideways.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
At some level, I think liberals and conservatives even disagree on what constitutes “fact and reason,” so I’m not sure a fair comparison is really possible.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
The low point of the op-ed may be its appeal to Leno’s “Jaywalking” segments, which the author uses to counter the Kos poll of Republicans.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Not to be smug, but before clicking on the link, I predicted that the item was from the Post. I think the problem is that many conservatives themselves fear that liberals are smarter. Their resentments are more about education & intelligence than money. (Who does, say, Glenn Beck foment resentment of more, rich, badly educated people or well-educated, middle-income or upper-middle-income folks?) Right-wing demagogues seem a bit fixated on it. The President is a confusing & troubling case for them, because nonwhites have traditionally been one of the few groups modestly intelligent whites have been accustomed to condescending to intellectually, but Obama also has the markers of education & intelligence that arouse consciousness of inferiority in them. This bears on the “arrogance” thing.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
I don’t think the piece is a whine, I think it’s a critique of bad thinking.
Obviously everyone believes that his views are correct. Not all views are or should be based on fact (moral beliefs come into play, for instance,) but if liberals believe that their views are based on fact alone, they become unable to examine their moral beliefs. You might also want to examine the “not just wrong but illegitimate” claim.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
The passage Matt quotes is pretty confused. But it does raise a serious point: today’s political discourse, on both sides of the political spectrum, often consists of characterising political opponents in moral terms. This makes their views not just wrong or misguided, but unacceptable, evil and dangerous (or so the rhetoric goes). That is a problem because the democratic model of politics is based on the idea that an opposition party is never so morally debased that it can be legitimately excluded from office. Politics is also a strange mix of trying to reach a consensus and straight out manipulation – so the application of moral terms presupposes an ideal that is not only unattainable but probably misses the point – a bit like a poker player complaining that an opponent who bluffed her is a liar.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
There is a word for people who make a claim but don’t think they’re right: liars.
This is the kind of defense that teenagers use.
Teenager: Oh, you always think you’re right!
Adult: Well, of course I do. That’s because I don’t say things I think are wrong.
Teenager: See that just proves what I’m saying!
The question isn’t who thinks they’re right — all honeest people do whenever they aren’t lying. The question is who IS right. Any liar can use the “you think you’re right” defense. In fact it is tailor made for liars, which the Republicans are.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Over the course of my life, I’ve learned a lot from conservatives. I read Burke; I listen to conservative economists.
The problem isn’t “conservative thought,” the problem is the American Right, and specifically the Republican party. And the problem is not just that their ideas are wrong, and not based on fact.
The problem is that the present incarnation of the Republican party no real interest in solving collective problems, no moral seriousness, no candor, and lack the courage to put the collective interest over short-term partisan gain.
Watch the President’s question time with House Republicans, and then ask yourself which of these two sides has more commitment to truth and more willingness to acknowledge good ideas, whatever the source.
I admit that I do believe most Republican officeholders are less thoughtful than most Democrats. But that’s not why I hate them. I hate them because they have become morally vacuous, demagogic obstructionists who contribute nothing to the national conversation.
February 5th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
11: I do seem to recall that a big part of the critique of GWB, including in Obama’s The Audacity, was based on the idea that he was too certain that he was right.
February 5th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Woo sarcasm Matt Y! I believe he’s lamenting the lack of humility and lack of good faith on the part of the American Left.
Many on the Right frame this particular phenomenon as “conservatives believe liberals are wrong, while liberals believe conservatives are evil.”
February 5th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Liberals are funny!
February 5th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Whether defined as the Republican Party or the DC-think-tank-based conservative movement, conservatism is a broken, worthless intellectual void in 2010. The freaking libertarians, socialists, and anarchists have ideas more worthy of serious consideration.
Condescending? Oh hell yeah. Global warming denial, Iraqi intel revisionism, massive fiscal retrenchment during the Great Recession, torture, Birfer conspiracies, xenophobia…and all of this articulated by Rush Limbaugh, Eric Cantor, and Jonah Goldberg.
Condescending? Abso-freaking-lutely. Nobody ever condescended to Newt Gingrich. Nobody ever condescended to Barry Goldwater. Nobody ever condescended to Richard Nixon. These were serious people.
Look is this crapola. I mean, look at it. Of course liberals are condescending. Conservatives have decided to respond to the disasters of 2006 and 2008 by moving to Cloud Cookooland.
February 5th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
It’s quite incredible that Republicans have managed to change the political discourse to the extant that it is a virtue with the village that you not believe what you say. This is not even hypocrisy, which at least has the virtue of the speaker believing what he says would be good for to follow just not for his own special circumstances. It’s the worst from nihilistic cynicism.
When Palin says Rahm should be fired for using the term retarded, of course she doesn’t really mean it! If she did, then she really would be the bafoon that the loons on the left claim she is! Likewise, when she mildly chastises Rush for defending Rahm, she didn’t even mean that either, and Rush, Rush!, at least has the moral consistency, or ego-maniacal self-regard, to have his feathers be ruffled by it.
Remembering back to the sorry Terri Shievo incident when government business was brought to a halt, with national politicians summoned to Washington on 24 hour notice, the only redeeming thing that villagers could find in the whole atrocious piece of political theater was pointing out how each of the major players, did not in fact believe what they were saying, and knew full well that nothing they did or said could make any difference.
February 5th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
I’ve got lines, I’ve got circles.
Adolph Hitler was a socialist!
Stop condescending to me!
February 5th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
I especially like this bit:
“Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics [in the 1950s] stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival.”
This is one of those passages that helps the reader calibrate just where the author’s coming from. It’s Alexander who’s chosen to use the term “right-wing” here, rather than “conservative” or “Republican.” So we’re talking Joe McCarthy and the JBS and Goldwater and Buckley, not Ike and Rockefeller and the Dulles brothers. And yet Alexander complains that those who have studied the politics of these right-wingers have focused too much on “paranoia, intolerance, and insecurity.” Hmmm, perhaps he has a point. If Gerard Alexander were doing the studying, what attributes of the right-wing politics of the 1950s would he prefer to stress?
February 5th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
I think it’s more that Alexander simply started watching this movie in the middle. I remember a time around 2003-2005 when reasonable liberals like Matt, Kevin Drum, etc. actually gave the hacks a fair chance! You’d see puzzlement on why someone like Jonah Goldberg, who after all was writing in the pre-eminent conservative publication, would write something so bafflingly incoherent. “Maybe this Goldberg piece is fucking stupid, but we’re sure the next one to come out will reveal the thoughtful, intellectually honest conservative that we’re all sure is within.” It was only in the runup to the 2004 election though that people realized that the thoughtful piece was almost never going to show and that even most of the leading lights of the movement were venal hacks.
February 5th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Aaron # 9: ever hear of moral realism? The idea of a moral fact?
I’d be astonished if Gerard Alexander himself didn’t sometime, somewhere, in the dark of night, feel dismayed at the low level of a lot of rightwing discourse. And if he didn’t harbor at least a measure of contempt for some of the popular figures on the right.
Sometimes I travel in low company, & when I do I often get defensive about my uptown acquaintances’ condescension toward my low companions. I assume Alexander’s no different.
February 5th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Actually I happen to know Gerard Alexander and, as it happens, he is a very smart fellow. (For the record, I’m as far-left as he’s far-right.) I was surprised to read this piece. For reasons that I better not try to fathom, he dragged himself into a mud pool trying to create a coherent “narrative” out of a bunch of tidbits. But the problem is not the coherence of his narrative is its worthlessness. We are supposed to believe that all “liberals” (hey, what are we socialists, chopped liver?) have the same, Politburo-approved view of all conservatives. Mind-boggling. This prime real estate in the Washington Post (talk about the “liberal media bias”) would have been much better used arguing FOR conservative views instead of just whining. Is it something about the Washington Post? Is it something about the American Enterprise Institute?
February 5th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Adding a bit to my previous post. In a well functioning Democracy with a competent media, if we had the following facts:
1) Obama stated that he supports constitutional and human rights during his election campaign.
2) The Obama administration fails to close Guantanamo bay.
I would expect the following lines of criticism and see them as engaging in a constructive debate, even if I disagreed with them.
- Obama shouldn’t have committed to supporting human and rights during his campaign, those are not important issues.
- The treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo is constitutional and human, no need to close it.
- Obama should have followed through on his promise to close the base.
- Obama needed to prioritize agenda and work accordingly, closing Guantanamo had to be delayed due to the logistics of governing.
Instead we get the following:
Obama should have promised to close the base because he needed to passive the crazies on the left to get elected, but he made the fundamental mistake of believed his own rhetoric, due to his excessive self regard, and now, foolishly, wants to close the base but can’t due to political constraints. A pickle for whom he has only himself to blame.
February 5th, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Conservatives: Our higher average incomes aside, we’re simple, hard-working folk who may not be as smart as some tweed-jacketed Berkeley professor, but we’ve got common sense and values.
Liberals: Conservatives aren’t very smart.
Conservatives: Liberals are such arrogant, condescending jerks, saying we’re not smart!
I think it’s probably true that liberals sometimes think conservatives are dumber than they really are — but if so, that’s mostly because conservatives over the past 30+ years have decided to market themselves as anti-intellectual and, to some extent, even anti-intelligence. That doesn’t mean liberals should believe all of the stuff conservatives say about themselves, but it hardly seems fair for conservatives to blame liberals when they do fall for it.
February 5th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Conservatives views being based on reality and facts? Yea that’s a laugh.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Conservatives, generally, are whiners, and now that they’ve realized that their ideology is held in low regard by most of America, they’re complaining that they don’t get the respect they feel they deserve. If they hadn’t mindlessly shilled for Bush and made total asses of themselves in railing against Gore and Kerry for turning out to be right about the main arguments of the day, then maybe they’d be taken more seriously.
But for now, just about every Republican partisan out there spent the last 8 years shilling in favor of deregulation, torture, the invasion of Iraq, and the awesome wonderfulness of George W. Bush while mindlessly parroting whatever GOP talking points were being repeated on a regular basis. So screw them, of course they’re wrong and don’t know what they’re talking about. They can come back when they’ve learned better and stop forwarding those inane right-wing chain e-mails. Then maybe they’ll be respected as adults.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
21: No, I had not heard of the term “moral fact.” Moral realism, a little bit.
But I did not intend to dispute that moral claims are claims about reality; rather I was refering to the fact that some (not all) liberals admire our current President for his pragmatism and his belief that we can refer to empirical facts in order to avoid moral questions, which they themselves regard as necessarily subjective. Believing that they can look at facts and derive conclusions, without any interpretation (moral or otherwise) being necessary, leads to an unquestioning acceptance of hidden interpretations.
Maybe this is wrong and Gerald’s piece is wrong as an interpretation of contemporary liberalism, but simply stating that of course people think they are right and their views are based on facts is not an adequate answer, especially since GA indicted liberals for viewing conservative ideas as illegitimate and unworthy of consideration, not just wrong.
Many on this thread have noted conservative anti-intellectualism. This may make the liberal attitude understandable, but does not really make it a smart or wise way of thinking or talking about political issues. Often statements by the President and others can reduce to “that sounds like something Bush would say, therefore it’s wrong.”
February 5th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Then read it this way: conservatives believe that liberals are incorrect. Liberals believe that conservatives are evil.
Sure, there are conservative jerks who reciprocate – but it’s a far, far more common problem on the left. You rarely hear about liberal speakers being prevented from speaking at an event – while conservative speakers are regularly harassed, shouted down, and sometimes assaulted.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
James Robertson @28 apparently understands neither statistics (You “rarely hear about it?” How rigorous!) nor irony (*cough* town halls *cough*).
February 5th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
conservatives believe that liberals are incorrect. Liberals believe that conservatives are evil
Maybe if conservatives weren’t such vigorous advocates of racism, bigotry, torture and war, we’d have a better opinion of them
February 5th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Go ahead, #29, you want to assert that it happens as often? Prove it
February 5th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Re Aaron (#9): “Not all views are or should be based on fact (moral beliefs come into play, for instance,) but if liberals believe that their views are based on fact alone, they become unable to examine their moral beliefs.”
If one’s moral beliefs don’t have at least a nodding acquaintance with fact, then they appear arbitrary. For instance, my view may be that allowing grown adults to doink 12 y.o. children is bad? Why? Just because I think it’s icky?
Ideally, I’d support my view with facts and a reasoned position. Hypothetically: it might be that my experience has been that it’s detrimental to the child’s mental health; and that research supports my experience; and that long standing Judeo-Christian tradition strongly discourages it; and that the Lord has forbid it in scripture.
Someone may look at my reasoning and see holes in it, which is fine. But, it doesn’t take away from my contention that one’s adult moral beliefs should be able to stand upon reasoned thinking.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
@28. Here’s a helpful Amazon book list by conservative authors:
Books Likely to Be Banned by President Obama
Happy reading!
February 5th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
“… they’ve realized that their ideology is held in low regard by most of America…”
Tyro, get out of the house sometime, and try to stop “mindlessly parroting” the Borat fans at ThinkP4Kidzz:
Generic Congressional Vote:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/generic_congressional_vote-901.html
February 5th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
When someone starts complaining about how their opponents are condescending, or mean, or stuck up, it usually means that they can’t actually defend their arguments on the merits. Don’t just tell me I’m a jerk for disagreeing with you. Defend your argument. If you can’t, I’m going to assume you just haven’t thought it through.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
I don’t think that American conservatives are evil.
They are just assholes.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Dead on. If you’re right about something, the overconfidence of your opponents is a small point, not the key issue. On the other hand, if your political philosophy revolves around feeling offended, then that becomes a big deal.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
You rarely hear about liberal speakers being prevented from speaking at an event – while conservative speakers are regularly harassed, shouted down, and sometimes assaulted.
It is amazing how rarely James Robertson has heard about how over 1800 peaceful demonstrators were arrested in NYC during the 2004 Republican National Convention, or how wearing the wrong t-shirt would get you ejected from a Bush speech or how tea baggers deliberately employed a strategy of town hall disruption last summer.
Seriously, have you been in Albania for the past ten years, or what?
February 5th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
conservatives believe that liberals are incorrect. Liberals believe that conservatives are evil.
The first time I saw this, I honestly thought it was a joke, and a pretty funny one at that. The joke, of course, is that the hypothetical conservative uttering this statement isn’t arguing that liberals are incorrect, but rather that liberals are evil. How ironic!
But then it turned out that lots of self-described conservatives actually say this to each other on a regular basis, apparently without any sense of irony. Which kinda blew my mind.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
conservatives believe that liberals are incorrect. Liberals believe that conservatives are evil.
I don’t necessarily think either part of this is true. As a liberal, I don’t think the vast majority of conservatives are evil. I just think they have a fundamental lack of empathy for people not like them. Health care, for instance. When confronted with the fact that thousands or tens of thousands of Americans die every year because of a lack of health care, they just shrug their shoulders, because they have no connection to that kind of life. They have a decent job and they have insurance, and so does their family and friends. It’s very difficult to care in that kind of situation. The statistics are just meaningless to them.
And as for the other part of the statement, I don’t necessarily think based on the past year that conservatives think liberals are merely incorrect and not evil. A lot of the rhetoric I’ve heard over the past year has a strong undertone that liberals are actively trying to destroy everything that’s good about America. Take global warming. I’ve read a lot of posts from people who honestly think that we’re making up global warming and its threat because we want to use it specifically to punish businesses as part of a larger assault against capitalism. They apparently honestly think there’s an ulterior motive behind everything, that motive being to increase government control and usher in socialism.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
Indeed. Rather than uselessly generalize, I prefer to address specific claims. Item: conservatives held it as an article of faith that Saddam had WMD, and more specifically, some sort of nuclear capability. “Liberals” – or at least non-conservatives tended to be more skeptical of the Bush administration’s claims.
So on the issue of who was right and who was wrong, conservatives clearly lost. If the canonical “they” insist that they were still right somehow, that they were wrong but for the right reasons, that “liberals” were only right by accident, that sort of thing, then of course there’s going to be some condescension – and very richly deserved it is too.
So it goes. Don’t look at the attitude, look at the specific issue. And guys – when you’re wrong, man up to it. Denying that you’re wrong is only going to lead to bad blood. It’s as if we’re playing Cowboys and Indians and I shoot you from three feet away, and then you run off claiming that I’ve missed, laughing maniacally all the while, because after all, what can I do about it.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
It’s clear to me that the liberals/moderates (or those who would have been moderates 50 years ago) have more smarts than conservatives. This isn’t to say there aren’t some smart conservatives; there are quite a few. But conservatives are more driven and determined.
That said, I think that conservatives and liberals simply have different values, and that goes a long way in explaining why they hold contrary positions on different issues.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
I note that Alexander complains pointedly about the condescension of Chris Mooney’s “The Republican War on Science” without bothering to challenge a single one of Mooney’s claims.
If science worked like that, Copernicus wouldn’t have had to offer a proof that the earth moves around the sun; he could have just called Ptolemy an arrogant liberal.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
32: “One’s adult moral reasoning should be able to stand on reasoned thinking.” Agreed.
My point is that there is interpretation of facts going on (not just moral interpretation, either.) To use your example, we describe certain states as consistent or inconsistent with mental health based our idea about whether these are good or bad states to be in.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Progressives think conservatives are evil because conservatives are not utopians and conservatives think progressives are stupid because progressives are utopians.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
I read to the end of Alexander’s piece in search of conservative insights my “liberal condescension” might have lead me to overlook. Alexander mentions only one: “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.” This insight is not being ignored. On health care, Democrats devised a plan that would allow people to keep their existing insurance if they wanted to, rather than forcing everybody into a (presumably) improved system. On greenhouse gasses, Democrats are considering a cap and trade system, which means that the market, rather than the government, will handle the details of allocation. What else liberals could do with this insight is not made clear, unless the idea is that we should just throw up our hands and concludes that the problems that our nations faces are insoluable.
If conservatives have anything useful to contribute to the national debate, Alexander hasn’t identified it.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
“Conservatives think liberals are stupid,” regardless of the falseness of this claim (The eliminationism is a phenomenon of the right, not the liberals in America) would mean that it is the right, not the left, that is condescending to their opponents. Generally I do find that conservatives have turned off their brains when it comes to their political reasoning abilities. A movement represented by Beck, Rush, and driven by right wing chain emails is neither smart nor, if you consider ability to reason a moral issue in and of itself, good.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
This isn’t to say there aren’t some smart conservatives; there are quite a few. But conservatives are more driven and determined.
Anyone ever see James Pinkerton on bloggingheads.tv? I love that guy, and by “that guy” I mean the one on bloggingheads.tv, not the one I see on Fox. Highly educated, highly intelligent, I don’t agree with everything obviously and there are times where he says something where I want to pick my jaw up off the floor but overall when he’s talking I feel like he’s someone worth listening to.
Then I see him on Fox and he’s a moronic, braying, hyena. Maybe *he* thinks conservatives are stupid and needs to act like that. I don’t know what the answer there is.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Yglesias really is off base here, at least based on that quote. And it is a shame because the way he is wrong gets in the way of showing proper contempt for current conservative thinking in this country.
It would be silly to hold a position that one does not think is correct and strongly supported. But it does not follow that other people’s views are “illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration”.
It happens that too much of conservative thought these days is ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. The idea that tax credits would allow us to get universal health care coverage at no cost is the kind of idea that is unworthy of serious coverage. Putting forward a plan to balance the budget in order to say one has a plan and then disowning the content of that plan is not worthy of serious consideration. Arguing that global warming is not occurring because it is cold outside today is not worthy of serious consideration, etc.
But Yglesias above makes this claim of all ideas that he doesn’t hold, and that cheapens the legitimate contempt that liberals have for actual conservative ideas of late.
February 5th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
I think his point was that conservatives are humble and always mindful of the fact that they might well be wrong.
Yeah, right.
February 6th, 2010 at 1:43 am
Part of the motivation for Alexander’s complaint is that he probably knows a lot of liberals (he’s at UVA), and some of them aren’t really respectful about his views. He coming from a very parochial perspective where liberals are not working class people or single mothers or minorities (who can’t even read, according to Tom Tancredo!), but upper-middle class, mostly white, highly educated people, among whom conservatives are apparently the only group that doesn’t get sympathy. This is also an argument that inevitably comes up when people are saying something really stupid and they’re being called on it. “You’re lecturing me!” It’s is no coincidence at all that this is coming out right after Obama went toe-to-toe with the GOP.
But there’s something else going on, too. There is in the conservative movement a kind of good cop-bad cop routine that they play with liberals. On the one hand liberals are fascists, talking to them (”if you must”) means that you’re “arguing with idiots”, etc. Liberals want to ban the Bible, set up death panels, kill off unwanted elderly people, etc. Obama is a racist terrorist sympathizer who was born in Kenya and came to power through an election stolen by organized crime rings. Liberals are understandably exasperated by these views, and rightly point out that they’re pretty stupid, and that people who believe them are not very credible.
But that’s condescending and elitist! Of course this is a good line of attack to try with independents who may have had a radical college prof or a grouchy feminist girlfriend. But it often works well on liberals themselves, many of whom, if it weren’t for political partisanship have a tough time taking their own side in an argument. Telling conservatives that they’re dogmatic and narrow-minded makes them feel like you’re caricaturing their steadfast defense of truth and their “commonsense values”. Telling a liberal he’s a condescending elitist zealot really bugs him and makes him want to find a way that Sarah Palin might actually have a point.
February 6th, 2010 at 2:12 am
Yeah, dude. It’s not like someone has laid claim to being fact-based.
February 6th, 2010 at 2:52 am
Sam M, really? Go, please, and look up “reality based community.” You may be surprised to find that the phrase comes from a Republican.
And really, when one side claims that the invasion of Iraq was a legitimate use of military power, that it presented a significant national security issue, or (as one of our laughable commenters insists) that the invasion served the cause of advancing freedom, and the other side recognizes each of these as nothing more than dishonest propaganda, it’s hard not to notice that facts have a liberal bias.
That’s just one topic. Should we go into the notion that Social Security is in poor fiscal health? That spending a trillion dollars to move the revenues from Social Security into the betting parlor is a way to make it solvent? Tax cuts pay for themselves? The US Military is under-funded?
Look, you are welcome to tell all the lies you want here. But at the end of the day, it’s better for you if you at least know you are lying. Otherwise we are forced to decide you really are stupid.
February 6th, 2010 at 3:17 am
Well, to be fair… conservative beliefs are pretty evil, and clinging to them in the wake of the Bush debacle does appear to represent a commitment based far more in faith than in reason. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say a goodly number of Republican beliefs– denial of global warming, creationism, birtherism, death-panelers, Tax-cuts-as-panacea– are essentially based in faith, and seem impenetrable to reason.
February 6th, 2010 at 3:52 am
It’s difficult to generalize, but I believe it’s quite possible that, given the same level of indoctrination, an American liberal will sound more arrogant than his wingnut countrpart. On the other hand, the wingnut will probably have a slightly higher degree of moral certainty.
autoit 0.394142678938806
February 6th, 2010 at 5:54 am
[...] Matthew Yglesias » More Condescension Needed [...]
February 6th, 2010 at 9:57 am
[...] Matthew Yglesias: 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. [...]
February 6th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Yeah. Conservatives oppose abortion and gay rights because they think they are incorrect, not evil.
February 6th, 2010 at 10:49 am
Many conservatives are ideologically blinded by the holy light emanating from their religious aura. There are plenty of racists and homophobes and sexists and other cretins and morons in the “right wing”.
And many conservatives (usually these same ones) seem to feel that liberals are evil – fascists and Stalinists.
So the old joke conservative/evil — liberal/stupid joke doesn’t work very well.
There are, of course, examples which confirm the joke – liberals, for example, think conservatives are evil if they believe that a fetus has inalienable rights.
Liberals think conservatives are evil because conservatives are more concerned about the moral hazard and free-rider problems inherent in government policy.
At this point, both sides seem to be pretty good at calling the other evil. It’s one of the reasons why 59 votes doesn’t get you Health Care Reform.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:08 am
Addressing one of Matt’s unusually snarky (even for him) comments:
There are surprisingly few interesting facts that are actually correct. The vast majority of things that are considered facts are generalized and extrapolated interpretations of very limited truths.
Yes, of course, there are lots of mundane facts that are clearly true – Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House (well, unless she’s died/resigned/been promoted in the time between when I wrote this and you read this). Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Trig Palin is Sarah Palin’s son. Those are all boring truths that no one should really care about. … oh, right…
But I’m not talking about those facts. I’m talking about interesting facts – the ones worth discussing – for example, I find it absolutely mindboggling that liberals can be so mystically credulous about the effects of stimulus “$X in stimulus will create Y jobs”.
Really? You really think that’s a fact? There are so many variables in that equation, combined with the inevitable reaction by human actors to make that claim impossible to justify. I would laugh, if I was not so sad.
On so many economic issues, you guys seem so impossibly, irrationally faith-based. And yet you think those faith-held beliefs are facts. And call people evil when they disagree!
February 6th, 2010 at 11:20 am
This conservative complaint sounds plausible in the abstract, which is usually the level at which the issue is discussed endlessly at FOX News and in GOP talking points.
But here is the reality if you scratch below the surface. The Radical Right is demanding that liberals give respect and legitimacy to a point of view that says all but Radical Right ideas are illegitimate.
Republicans have not ground the government to a halt because President Obama refuses to listen to right wing Republican views. They’ve shut down the government because Obama refuses to govern AS a right wing Republican.
When Christian fundamentalists find themselves forced to live side by side with people who don’t share their particular sectarian views, they call this an “attack on Christianity.”
When gays object to having their homosexuality called a crime against nature and a sin against God, they are accused of “attacking people of faith.”
When the president is called a traitor to his country because he tries to build bridges of trust with other countries by admitting past US wrongs, or when he is accused of being a foreign born Muslim intent on giving the country away to Muslim terrorists because he thinks terrorists caught on American soil should are prosecuted and convicted in American courts according to American standards of justice, the Radical Right accuses liberals who attack them for these views of being hypocrites who refuse to keep an open mind about the wisdom of conservative dissenting points of view.
What should be clear to everyone by now about the sorts of arguments we’re hearing from the writer Matt highlighted in this post, is that conservatives are demanding that they be given respect by liberals for whom conservatives show absolutely no respect whatsoever.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:32 am
Yeah, that really is the most pathetic, sniveling op-ed I’ve seen in some time.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:48 am
I think the problem with American conservatives is that many of them are Puritans. They seem to believe victimless joy is a sin. So they unduly enjoy the failure of others.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Heh. My dad is a Jeebus man, has been ever since he was “saved” fifty years ago. Nevertheless . . . when one of his cronies started poor-mouthing Obama because his tire pressure comments, Dad went off on him, called him a fool and an idiot. That’s not because he’s a “liberal” – he’s anything but – it’s because he was(and still is to some degree) an auto mechanic with over fifty years of experience.
Tell him he’s a “condescending liberal” because he doesn’t hold with such nonsense, he’ll likely pop you one, Jeebus or no.
I’ll say it again: it’s not attitude, it’s issues. And on certain very public, very well known issues, conservatives have been mightily, objectively wrong (for example, the claim that Saddam had WMD.) To whine that you’re being persecuted and condescended to because of your ideology when you’re actually being mocked because you have your facts wrong strikes me as the behaviour of a perennial loser . . . especially when such losers have also made it a point to declare that people should “take responsibility” for their actions.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:57 am
It is telling, is it not, that Alexander can point to a whole 2 instances where conservative predictions/warnings have proven (in his view) to have been vindicated: the inner-cities in 1960 and welfare reform in the 90’s. Liberals will probably be happy to point out 10 or 20 of their predictions that were borne out during the Bush era alone. Of course, that would probably just feed into the whole “arrogant and condescending” meme that Alexander has going.
On a more general note, the left controls almost all of our culture. The right controls a lot of real power (money and property), and nearly all the entrenched interests. I think its probably inevitable that the group that uses cultural power is described as “arrogant” and “condescending”, while the group that uses traditional power is described as, I wouldn’t use the word “evil” here, but would probably use the words “selfish” and “heartless”.
February 6th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Point one: that’s just straight up the pipe Keynesism orthodoxy going back 70 years and more. It might be wrong . . . but it hasn’t been proven wrong yet. Which brings me to
Point two: the concept of falsifiability. If a statement can be falsified, it’s not a matter of absolute faith (though admittedly someone can believe or disbelieve the statement on faith before all the facts are in.)
So, going with this then, I’d say that most economists would agree that cutting taxes does not increase revenues, and that generally speaking, cutting taxes decreases revenues. And the contrary claim, that cutting taxes raises revenues, has been amply disproven for a long, long time now. Any claim to the contrary, usually along the lines of “How do you know that factor X was taken into account . . .”, is nothing more than the operation of blind faith. Which brings me to
Point three: An elementary concept, I know, but I’ll condescend to “conservatives” and say that if you make a claim, the burden is on you prove it, not on anyone else to disprove it. If you say that “America has the best health care in the world”, for example, and someone points out that other countries have better statistics for, say, life expectancy, you aren’t allowed to ask questions like “but did you account for environmental factor X or genetic factor Y”, for the simple reason that you’re supposed to be the one doing the accounting when you made the original claim.
“Conservatives”, iow, have this distressing habit of making assertions like this (Republicans are better for the economy than Democrats, for example), and then challenging others to prove them wrong. With, of course, themselves as the arbiter of whether or not they’ve been proven wrong, ie, the old “If you can’t make me say I’m wrong I win” shuck and jive. Frankly, most people don’t operate that way most of the time, and recognize that sort of technique for the dishonest patter that it is.
And that is most definitely not being “condescending”.
February 6th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
@64: for example, the claim that Saddam had WMD
Now, that’s just bullshit; you’re being delusional. That was mostly liberals (”liberal interventionists”) and neo-conservatives (who are also a sort of liberals too) who agitated for the Iraq war. The conservatives (”paleo-conservatives”) were consistently against it.
autoit 0.648761451477185
February 6th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
It is telling, is it not, that Alexander can point to a whole 2 instances where conservative predictions/warnings have proven (in his view) to have been vindicated:
So you knew that the Himalayan glaciers would not likely disapear by 2035? Right? Or that all the AGW models have been exactly wrong for the past 10 years? Hell, even Phil Jones himself admitted that there has not been any warming since 97. I imagine that Alexander had plenty of examples just not the time.
February 6th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
@ Judd:
When I make the claim that “all liberal predictions are correct” then your reply is relevant. Since I did not make that claim, kindly do not drag us off-topic, thank you. There are plenty of global warming posts around on this site, go post on one of them.
February 6th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I consider myself liberal, so I am surely biased here, but her eis why I believe in the condescension. Liberal (at least most) tend to be preagmatic in that if a policy works, they tend to approve, and if not they tend to be open to other resolutions. My sense is that conservatism has a more orthodox view. As examples I can use the privitazation arguments. Where privitization ( a conservative model) has worked, it seems to me that liberals have accepted it. However, conservatives now view it as an answer to all, where liberals know that it has a limited role.
Or, lets look at the market. Where liberals once hated 9or at least distrusted) the “free market” many have accepted that it has many positive aspects that can be used to make a better society. Conservatives believe that a “free market” can cure any problem even where it is clear that it can not.
It seesm to me that liberalism tends (like science) to be a much more self correcting philosophy, while conservatism (like religion) tends to be reinforced dogma without questioning. The names of the philosophies tend to suggest that (conservatives want to conserve whatever already is, apparently because we must already live in the best of all available systems. liberals want to “experiment” to find better ways to do things)
i know that liberalism has accepted many previous conservative concepts and is willing to apply them to new problems ( ie. privitization to some public problems, such as municipal contracting), but i find conservatism willing to accept liberal policies that are now the way things are (medicare, social security) but unable to imagine that the next liberal program could be beneficial as well (applying medicare to those under 65 for instance). I would like to hear how I am wrong, and how conservatism does use previously liberal solutions applied to new and differing problems.
One last aside, I can’t stand how some conservatives are willing to say that any conservative who actually held power wasn’t a real conservative (thus avoiding the blame for say 2001-2008 deficits, or iraq wars, for instance), or that neo cons are somehow liberals. Conservatives not only campaigned for bush et al, but actively campaigned for his re election and for the election of the sarah palin’s of the world. i accept that Dennis Kucinich is a liberal, Bill Clinton, and Obama (even if they don’t fulfill every criteri I want) so please accept ownership for those you chose to govern.
February 6th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Conservatives believe that a “free market” can cure any problem even where it is clear that it can not.
Liberals do too.
February 6th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
so please accept ownership for those you chose to govern.
Gladly!
February 6th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
What Judd is doing is nothing more than trying to make you play the “If you can’t make me say I’m wrong I win” game: Instead of sticking to the topic, which is conservatives being derided for hold to theories that have long since been proven false, he wants to lure you into an exchange that degenerates into “Is too!” “Is not!”, where at the least he hopes to force a draw.
And yes, I believe he’s doing it intentionally, and yes, that’s not a Good Thing.
February 6th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Brad @ #1:
I’m condescending to your reading comprehension abilities. Try again, Einstein.
This.
February 6th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
A couple of things…..
1. He will be giving a speech at the AEI on Monday. I’m sure there will be absolutely no smug, condescending smacked-a$$ed conservatives there for that one, and….
2. Notice that this “Opinion Piece” was not open for comments.
February 6th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
This was perhaps not the right time to say it. Ignore what I said.
February 6th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
I think a lot of liberals have beliefs about the legitimacy of certain values or policy preferences–or put another way, beliefs about what constitutes a sensible utility function–and I think a lot of liberals believe that conservatives’ views don’t measure up. Unfortunately, the value of ultimate ends or different conceptions of “the good” aren’t really things that are self-evident or that can be determined by rational examination of facts. I think that’s what the op-ed is getting at, though perhaps it could have been written more artfully, and I think that’s an important point.
February 6th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
The “reality based community” issue is a case in point about how this dynamic plays out. Originally it was said as a mocking derision of liberals for sitting around “studying reality” while manly men of action in the Bush administration were “changing reality [in Iraq]“. Now of course the right wingers turned out to be completely wrong, and it turns out that you can’t ignore Iraq’s ethnic and historical reality and you can’t remake the place into abyear zero libertarian paradise with Heritage foundation interns.
It was when the liberals seized on this obvious point and embraced their role as part of the “reality based community” that the right wingers started whining at the mean liberals being condescending. If I were a man
in late middle age who just watched my hero George w bush have his presidency end in ignominy and watched a bunch of young activists sweep in a young senator into office and get all the attention, I’d feel condescended to as well, because for good reason, no one would take me seriously. But there is probably a reason for that. Why do bush cultists abd tax cut/deregulation fanaticists feel that they are entitled to be taken seriously now ?
February 6th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Then read it this way: conservatives believe that liberals are incorrect. Liberals believe that conservatives are evil.
Sure, there are conservative jerks who reciprocate – but it’s a far, far more common problem on the left. You rarely hear about liberal speakers being prevented from speaking at an event – while conservative speakers are regularly harassed, shouted down, and sometimes assaulted.
This certainly hasn’t been my experience. If there’s a left-tilting imbalance between those who think their opponents are merely mistaken as opposed to just plain evil, I haven’t seen it, and my admittedly anecdotal experience suggests the opposite.
On the narrower, specific point of harassed and shouted-down right-wing speakers, you can’t be harassed and shouted down if you don’t get invited to talk in the first place. If
— and I say if — there’s an ideological imbalance in behavior there, I’d suspect that that’s the reason.
February 6th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
neo-conservatives (who are also a sort of liberals too)
Hey Humpty Dumpty, do “nationalism” next! Then do African American Vernacular English!
February 6th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
There is nothing wrong in believing in what you are believing. What is wrong with liberals is that they believe in wrong things. Then everything is just making it worse.
What makes me wonder is why liberals believe that their views are “self-evident” and “based on facts and reason”? Why do they need facts and reason if their views are self-evident? And if they think that they have “facts and reason”, why do they need “self-evident” on top of that?
I guess that Alexander has some difficulty presenting the argument, so let me do it for you. An obvious problem of liberals is that the do not believe in such a beast like “self-evident”. So they resort to facts, and facts are usually somewhat messy, e.g. while there is melting all over Arctic and most of the glaciers are receding, some glaciers are growing! On top of that, many liberals think that only deniable statements are valid. But then it is very simple to deny them! Especially if YOU do not need the facts.
It is much better to build you views on a sounder basis like illumination. Say, you accept Ayn Rand as your personal Lord and Savior, and then poof! you understand exactly as much as you need. Say, if climate change models were worth understanding, by they grace of Lord Rand you would understand them — and you do not! So they are BS. QED.
February 6th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Sorry for typos: in my browser, the “Preview” is not working.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Of course liberals are condescending morons. That’s shown time and again in these comments when they invariably react to unfamiliar ideas with hysteria and venomous name calling. In fact, most of the horrible ideas currently touted by the red-staters are “Progressive” ideas in the first place. Prohibition and endless foreign wars to make the world safe for democracy are just a couple of these horrible “progressive” ideas. Woodrow Wilson WWI era style suppression of dissent is another. Hell, most of the southern Republicans are just old racist Democrats. Our politics consist of hysterical socialist Democrats (whose Democratic Socialist ideas have destroyed much of third world) fighting with war-mongering Dixiecrat Democrats.
We are doomed.
February 7th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
1. I forgot to mention that after working in Ann Arbor for 25 years, I learned that liberals generally HATE, LOATHE and DESPISE ordinary working class people.
2. Thomas Frank is quite a major league dullard and cement-head. For example, here is an interview of Frank by uber-Liberal Bill Moyers (whom I respect):
Frank is clueless, in the very least, about regulatory capture and its inevitability. He’s also clueless that most of the progressive regulatory agenda was put into effect by the financial elite as a cartelization mechanism. For whatever reason, liberals just love these awful ideas.
The fact that Frank has an audience at all is testament to the fact that liberals know no history and their Keynesian economic ideas are an obvious fraud and hoax.
February 7th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Considering how many conservatives are willing to use bad faith arguments to advance an agenda they know they can’t admit to in public, then yes, I’d say that he has a reason to believe conservatives don’t believe their own arguments. Exhibit #1: congressional Republicans swearing they’d love to work with Obama, but he just won’t let them.
February 7th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
That’s shown time and again in these comments when they invariably react to unfamiliar ideas with hysteria and venomous name calling. I
Bob, Bob, Bob: Your goldbuggery is not an unfamiliar idea. Not at all. We react with derision because it is a crazy and stupid idea, not an unfamiliar one. We’ve read your pamphlets.
February 10th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Condescending? I have to say after the last 8 years of a Republican in office I can’t afford such a big word. I’m a small potato. I come from a mixed family politically speaking. Armchair subversive shows that Republicans don’t have a corner on moral certainty. John Edwards shows what one man’s finger in somone’s navel, both of which isn’t a finger nor a navel can embarass a party if they didn’t already feel creeped out. I don’t feel Conservatives are less than or Liberals are more than. Its just there is a leaning toward something and a recoil from something else. We can feel it and see others not sure what they feel, getting tossed about by the wind of change.