The American Right and Anti-Intellectualism

[badgenome]

Mr Khan said:

badgenome said:

Mr Khan said:

It could just be me having one of my naive youthful freakouts about the fact that there are stupid people in the world and trying to blame it on something more substantive than human nature.

It probably is. Most people are not anti-intellectual but simply unintellectual, and this is true regardless of political leanings. That you see the right as being this way moreso than the left is likely a result of your own political allegiance since it is a common thing to see the worst elements of a group as typifying said group, particularly when you are already inclined to dislike them.

I still wouldn't give up the idea that it's a bigger problem on the right than it is on the left. I have seen nobody on the left that is complaining about the tendencies of left-wing voters (or if they are, they're complaining about conservative tendencies of left-wing voters, like the accusations that the diehard Hillary supporters or the PUMA folks of 2008 were some degree of racist), whereas you see conservative intellectuals (again, George Will, or even that article you cited) complaining about the tendencies within the party, unless that is merely a reflection of the fact that the GOP is currently a party in flux, moving towards some transformation.

I wouldn't call Shikha Dalmia a conservative. At all. And as I mentioned before, Glenn Greenwald has been all over the left as of late over their silence about Obama's decision that he can order the death of an American citizen without due process when they'd previously hyperventilated over Bush's wiretapping and waterboarding. Greenwald and other intellectually honest lefties have been pretty distressed about the sudden evaporation of the anti-war movement circa November 2008. You may not see that as the same thing exactly, but I think the left's "YAY BLUE TEAM!" mentality is about as unintellectual as you can get.