February 10th, 2009
Follow the links to parts one and two
Part three: Elitism
Some of the most important battles in politics are waged over the meanings of words. Responding to the rhetorical question “Why are liberals so damn elitist?” Eric Alterman writes that it’s difficult to know exactly what conservatives mean when they say “elitism.” He then proceeds to describe exactly what conservatives mean by noting “the crime is apparently one of the mind,” and that the right judges elitism “on the basis of attitude, rather than income.” Curiously, Alterman claims conservatives shout “elitism” to beat back liberals instead of arguing with them. He thinks it’s used to preempt and dismiss liberal perspectives. This is actually a mirror image of Ann Coulter’s premise that liberals use “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobic,” “xenophobic,” and “stupid” to avoid arguing ideas with right-wingers. Like many of Alterman’s arguments, this one is intuitively wrong, but needs explaining to refute.
Elitism is indeed an attitudinal trait. While Alterman disagrees with this, he also perfectly understands that this is how conservatives have used it. He’s being sarcastic in the following example, but I couldn’t describe elitism better than he did: “It’s not about where you live, how much money you have, how many security guards you regularly employ, where you summer, what you drive, what you drive when you’re driving whatever else you drive when you’re not driving that, where you went to school, or where you think people should have gone to school.” Exactly, Professor Alterman.
Elitism isn’t necessarily about class; it’s about looking down on others. Certainly there are wealthy elitists, but not all wealthy people are elitist. Elitism is not contingent on class, education, or any other demographic category. Bill Gates owns multiple cars, likely employs his own security guards, summers wherever he wants, and doesn’t have to work another minute of his life if he doesn’t want to, but nothing I know about him suggests that he’s elitist. Yet even the poorest, white-trash leftist who looks down on Christian conservatives for not being sufficiently critical of their personal faith is displaying an elitist attitude.
So if elitism is a shallow tendency to look down of groups of people for having demographic characteristics one doesn’t admire, then it follows that liberal elitism is the presumption that liberals are superior to conservatives solely based on political alignment. While anyone who identifies themselves as liberal or conservative will naturally hold their ideals in higher esteem than others, what would make ideological particularism elitist is an arrogant, personal tone. Ironically enough, Eric Alterman provides more than a few examples of liberal elitism.
My first exhibit of Alterman’s snobbishness is his common claim that conservatives frame issues in simple “black and white” dichotomies, while liberals perceive “shades of grey.” His strongest evidence is a study which suggests that liberals are more willing to accept new ideas, but that could signify a lack of conviction as much as it implies a capacity for nuance. Either way, these contentions are demonstrably false. No matter how morally ambivalent liberalism may or may not be, conservatism cannot be reduced to simplistic, reactionary protest.
The American right has always been a predominantly literary movement, rooted and nurtured by words and ideas. Conservatism would be unrecognizable without its literary column. If American fascists had censored the publication of Whittaker Chamber’s Witness or Frederic Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, anti-communism may never have never caught on and induced the birth of American conservatism. Take away Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, and what we now call conservatism might have a different name. If the National Review had never been published, conservative ideas probably would not have been able to spread the way they did in the latter half of the 20th century. Moving away from literature, right-wing audiences dominate talk radio, and I won’t be the first to tell you that there are far more entertaining choices of media than explicitly issue-driven commentary. It takes more than watching syndicated episodes of The West Wing to understand conservatism.
I don’t doubt the intelligence of liberals, but on the surface, conservative perspectives on several issues are clearly more nuanced than liberal ones. For example, conservatives tend to believe that tax cuts across the board help stimulate the economy by allowing businesses to keep more capital to invest in more opportunities, often resulting in the hiring of new employees. Contrast this counter-intuitive concept with the anti-intellectual left-wing mantra “tax cuts for the rich,” which insultingly implies that the rich are the only people conservatives intend to benefit with tax cuts.
Immigration is another issue which liberals frame in “black and white” terms while conservatives wrestle with its moral ambiguity. Conservatives recognize that illegal immigration is a cultural and economic issue whose ethnic implications are incidental. If white people with a general tendency to resist assimilation started illegally residing in America, immigration would still be a serious issue to conservatives. A sure way to undermine American culture would be to introduce a large population of immigrants who are ignorant of, and even hostile to it. Contrast this argument against illegal immigration with liberal protests, where poster-board advertises inanities such as “no human being is illegal;” as if that breaks the conversation wide open.
The ideas that conservatives see things in simplistic terms is in part an unfortunate by-product of the fact that liberals tend to be self-styled moral relativists, while conservatives believe in a transcendent moral authority. Classical conservative dogma states that matters of right and wrong lie on a plane untouched by humanity’s ability to recognize evil. This is not the extreme moralizing position one might expect. Even liberals generally agree that crimes such as pederasty are wrong no matter what reasons are invented to excuse them-yet this argument depends on the existence of absolute morality, even if it’s narrowly defined. Even if one doesn’t agree with my reasoning, it’s obvious that even the most maligned conservative doctrine, absolute morality, is cerebral, and not a dippy general attachment to authority.
Just as irritatingly condescending is Alterman’s corresponding claim that liberalism is more demanding than conservatism, which if true, would mean liberals are more self-sacrificial. While it’s undeniable that leftists spend more time picketing and protesting than rightists, is that really a sacrifice? The unmatched standard for mass protest happened at Woodstock, and it’s difficult to argue that attending a self-congratulatory, drug-fueled concert for days on end is more of a sacrifice than a lively vacation. Even today’s protests are social events that aren’t exactly inhospitable to its participants. If marching against the Iraq war was truly a sacrifice, it would have been rare, and not a predictable phenomena on college campuses and outside big party conventions the past seven years. At its root, activism is simply the combination of belligerence and direction. It’s not necessarily something to frown upon, but getting yourself arrested for sitting on the white house lawn isn’t nearly as sacrificial as opposing a left-wing monster, communism, by standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square.
This begs the question: what exactly is it about liberalism that makes it more demanding? No one in America is punished by the government for simply being a left-wing activist. I could stand on a soap box all day and shout anti-conservative speeches through a megaphone and the most I’ll be accused of is disturbing the peace. Perhaps being on constant vigil for political transgressions, i.e., always being “conscious,” can take a psychological toll on someone, but conservatives have a much clearer case that their political doctrine is more demanding.
The absolute moral authority so important to conservative thought is just that: absolute. It makes claims on us whether we like it or not. For example, in the conservative mind, there are no good reasons to cheat on a spouse. The fact that not all rightists live up to their professed ideals only speaks to how difficult they can be to uphold. The liberal theory of moral relativism necessarily dictates that cheating is o.k. in certain circumstances. Considering mankind’s ability to justify even the worst crimes (Al-Qaeda released videotapes with measured, if ultimately wrong reasons for attacking the United States on 9-11), that’s not anywhere near the vicinity of sacrificial. Making excuses for stealing (my family needed the food) cheating (my wife ignores me) and lying (Republicans did it first!) is always easier than not doing those things in the first place.
Perhaps the most glaring example of liberal elitism comes before the table of contents in Why We’re Liberals. One of the opening quotes in it is from John Stuart Mill, “…stupid people are generally conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.” For Christ’s sake. Everything I’ve written up to this paragraph is unnecessary. Mill’s arrogant proclamation describes everything conservatives mean by liberal elitism.
Next week: conclusion-purposeful confusion
Cross-posted at Modern Conservative