Denialism

Palin as Populist Chic

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by

Chris
in

I am enjoying the news post election, because what was once news media “liberal bias” about Sarah Palin is now simply common sense.

Even more fun is the frank conversation about the conservative movement. Today’s Journal has a must read by Mark Lilla on how the very conservatives who valued intellectualism and elites were corrupted by “populist chic.” Lilla recalls Jane Mayer’s recent article on Palin, noting how conservative intellectuals chose Palin as a candidate that was appealing to the masses. But in so doing, conservative intellectuals mirrored their liberal rivals. Lilla explains:

Back in the ’70s, conservative intellectuals loved to talk about “radical chic,” the well-known tendency of educated, often wealthy liberals to project their political fantasies onto brutal revolutionaries and street thugs, and romanticize their “struggles.” But “populist chic” is just the inversion of “radical chic,” and is no less absurd, comical or ominous. Traditional conservatives were always suspicious of populism, and they were right to be. They saw elites as a fact of political life, even of democratic life. What matters in democracy is that those elites acquire their positions through talent and experience, and that they be educated to serve the public good. But it also matters that they own up to their elite status and defend the need for elites. They must be friends of democracy while protecting it, and themselves, from the leveling and vulgarization all democracy tends toward.

He concludes:

…As for political judgment, the promotion of Sarah Palin as a possible world leader speaks for itself. The Republican Party and the political right will survive, but the conservative intellectual tradition is already dead. And all of us, even liberals like myself, are poorer for it.

Comments

  1. Blake Stacey

    Are we really poorer for it? From the godless radical pinko perspective, the only thing the death of the “conservative intellectual tradition” means is that it’s harder to disguise old bigotries with a pseudo-intellectual veneer. Were conservative intellectuals really that good at keeping progressive liberalism grounded in reality, or did they just help hold the Overton Window of national discourse closer to the domain of blind, frothing insanity?

    Reply
  2. ushi

    He should try reading the Popes because thay are amazing and the theology coming from the Vatican. Too intellectual for liberals who do not know abortions kill living humans! They think that an homosexual and an heterosexual relationship are the same. Nature knows the difference; was an homosexual marriage EVER fertile? The senators who were intellectual democrats allowed the FM and FM mortgage fiasco to continue and the world economy is down the pan. Nobody could be THAT stoopid. In UK, labour allowed another boom bust. Of course it will be bust when it is based on credit! The credit crunch isdeliberately created, folly with purpose. What exactly? Where does credit come from, who allows and stops imaginary money?

    Reply
  3. Katharine

    ushi –

    Stick your imaginary friend up your ass.

    Reply
  4. D. C. Sessions

    If ushi did not exist, it would be rhetorically necessary to invent hir.

    Reply
  5. D. C. Sessions

    Somehow this seems like an appropriate time to remind people of one of the great political blog posts of all time.

    Reply
  6. Otheus

    Beware of “intellectuals” like Mark Lilla, whose intellectual honesty amounts to admitting his own bias. The problem is not that what he says about Palin, Republicans, and intellectual conservatism is wrong; the problem is that he reveals this as if it were a New Thing. With the nomination of John McCain for President, Republicans cemented the case that theirs was not about intellectual ideas, but about populism. We could even go back to George W. Bush, whose pretense of an intellectual conservative ideology was as wet toilet paper. Bush, at least, argued for the remedies of these ideological intellectuals (lower tax rates across the board, lowering capital gains taxes, eliminating the triple investment tax, upholding the death penalty), but even in 2000, his talk revealed that he held a very shallow understanding of these ideas.

    So, bravo, Chris H, for appraising an observation that is at least eight years out of date.

    Reply
  7. Mad Hussein LOLScientist, FCD

    Is there a political equivalent of Poe’s Law? If so, I call ushi on it.

    Reply
  8. Kagehi

    Ushi— Not going to bother with the rest, but seriously… The **fail** in the enconomy was 50 times larger than the entire debt in the whole FM/FM mess. I have you to read a plausible explanation why a couple of institutions that where used by ****both**** parties to make themselves rich, yet is blamed on liberals, can possible cause a 50 fold drop, over and above what the companies themselves lost.

    Then again, this is the sort of BS you people ramble on about all the time, “If we allow liberal atheists to do X, then all 270,000,000 ‘Christians’ in the country will lose the one true faith, over night.”

    I mean Christ on a fracking baked good, how frelling insecure do you have to be to believe that a minority, any minority, is going to, or has somehow, managed to single handedly destroy the economy, the government, religion, or, for that matter, “traditional marriage”. Its odd how you people are so lacking in faith, that you are scared there is a liberal hiding under every damn bed, like some sort of boogie man monster, all waiting for just the right moment to take everything you hold precious away from you, by doing nothing more than voicing an opinion that is different, or shouting “Boo!”. Paranoid much?

    Reply

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