There’s a rather brutal piece of satire on the website of The New Yorker this week headlined “A Conservative History of the United States.” Brutal because it uses actual historical malapropisms by actual latter-day “conservatives.” An excerpt:
1500s: The American Revolutionary War begins: “The reason we fought the revolution in the sixteenth century was to get away from that kind of onerous crown.”—Rick Perry
1607: First welfare state collapses: “Jamestown colony, when it was first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and dying in the snow.”—Dick Armey
1619-1808: Africans set sail for America in search of freedom: “Other than Native Americans, who were here, all of us have the same story.”—Michele Bachmann
1775: Paul Revere “warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells and making sure as he was riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.”—Sarah Palin.
1775: New Hampshire starts the American Revolution: “What I love about New Hampshire… You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world.”—Michele Bachmann
1776: The Founding Synod signs the Declaration of Independence: “…those fifty-six brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen.”—Mike Huckabee…
And so forth.
This will no doubt delight much of the magazine’s readership, as it plays to the beloved liberal theme that conservatives are conservatives because they are, well, stupid.
And it’s true that in recent years, there have been certain strains in politics that call themselves “conservative” that tap into a rich American tradition of anti-intellectualism. But of course, there is also a rather respected conservative intelligentsia, and you’ll notice that none of these quotes come from George Will or William F. Buckley or William Kristol or Charles Krauthammer.
And it should also be said that one or two of the most absurd-sounding assertions aren’t completely inaccurate. There were a few black soldiers in the Confederacy. What’s wrong is how some on the extreme fringes of latter-day “conservatism” — OK, let’s be blunt, neo-Confederates — try to use that odd historical footnote: To excuse secession over slavery, and to argue that there’s nothing racist about flying that flag in black folks’ faces. That there were a few black soldiers in the Confederacy simply illustrates how wildly complex and idiosyncratic human experience and motivations can be. There was also a tiny handful of soldiers of Chinese ethnicity in Confederate gray, but one would be a fool to draw broad political points from the fact. (Another such anomaly comes to mind — among the troops in Wehrmacht gray that Allied invaders encountered in Normandy in 1944, alongside the East Europeans forced into German service, was a small group of Koreans. How they got there was a wild and strange saga. There are chapters in this world’s history that read as though they were imagined by the writers of “Lost.”)
But such quibbles aside, there’s a lot here for admirers of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and others to wince at.
I initially just glanced at this and was going to move on. But what grabbed me was the byline on the piece: Jack Hitt. I’m assuming that’s the writer from Charleston, whose brother happens to be Gov. Nikki Haley’s commerce secretary, Bobby. Given the connections between Nikki and ex-Gov. Palin, I thought that was of passing interest…
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By the way, about those four Koreans captured in German uniforms in 1944… They are strong contenders for having been the most hapless, jerked-around soldiers in military history. Here’s what Stephen Ambrose writes about them:
“How on Earth did Koreans end up fighting for Hitler to defend France against Americans? It seems they had been conscripted into the Japanese army in 1938 — Korea was then a Japanese colony — captured by the Red Army in the border battles with Japan in 1939, forced into the Red Army, captured by the Wehrmacht in December 1941 outside Moscow, forced into the German army, and sent to France.”
It’s traditionally considered a universal right of all soldiers (at least, in the U.S. Army) to gripe about their service experience. But most soldiers would have to shut up and humbly bow their heads in the presence of these poor Sad Sacks…
Sure, WFB was wicked smart, as is his son, but CTB, as well as several other noted conservatives, distanced themselves quite dramatically from Sarah Palin and her ilk in 2008.
I’d add a couple of points: First, that line about Jamestown as “socialist venture” has been around a long time, passed around by people who don’t seem to be aware that Jamestown was founded by a for-profit corporation, and that it was “socialistic” in the same way that a ship on the high seas was “socialistic”–draconian discipline, everybody working for the company, fed out of the galley, etc.
Second, Hitt actually skins his own ignorance with the bit about Dan Quayle and the pledge. He seems utterly unaware that the “pledge of allegiance to the Christian flag” isn’t simply some made-up hash of the pledge to the American flag. There’s an actual Christian flag, familiar to a lot of us church-goers, and well I remember reciting the pledge to it every day in Vacation Bible School, right after the better-known pledge to the Stars and Stripes. I recall it somewhat differently than Quayle’s version: “I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior for whose Kingdom it stands–one brotherhood, uniting all mankind in service and love.” But it would hardly surprise me that there are different versions. In any case, this is hardly “getting the pledge wrong”; it’s just a different pledge, one that Hitt ridicules for the perfectly awful reason that he’s nver heard of it.
OK, I’ll give you Buckley, but Will, Kristol and Krauthammer?
That’s all you got for intelligentsia on the right?
And don’t try George Gilder, either.
None of those I named would ever make these kinds of mistakes.
In which of the 57 states were these comments spoken?
Victor Davis Hanson outclasses any of the conservatives listed by Brad. Read his bio.
I knew smarter conservatives than Victor Davis Hanson in grad school. All of them, alas, are now dead.
I think that Rick Perry is a proponent of teaching creationism in Texas class rooms.
I see that you have Michelle Palin and Sarah Bachman quoted.
If former NASA employee, Gene Krantz, were not a government employee, he should have trademarked “Failure is Not an Option” with Apollo 13.
I am sure that we can expect some boners from SC Governot Nikki Haley, author of “Can’t is Not an Option”, a fictional autobiography.
“I knew smarter conservatives than Victor Davis Hanson in grad school. All of them, alas, are now dead.”…Steve Gordy
Please, names and bios to back up your claim.
Bart has been rather perceptive consistently.
Are you referring to the same Bill Kristol who heartily endorsed McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin? 🙂
Any time someone presents a viewpoint that links classicism with evangelicalism I suspect a problem.
The linkage between an ancient Greek/Roman (and Phoenician / Egyptian / Mesopotamian / Persian )world views and Monotheism is a dangerous disconnect. The agenda to that is some sort of cultural imperialism that totally ignores the birth of Monotheism on the far fringes of the empires. In fact, such a linkage is probably closer to the Conservative History of the United States lampooned in the subject satire.
The problem is not an unbridgeable gulf between the West and the Islamic world (both Monotheistic), the problem is fundimentalism – their’s more than ours, true, but nonetheless ours as well. Hanson seems to have the vigor for being a leading intelligentsia type, but appears a bit light on the rigor.
Mike Huckabee is a creation science proponent.
Conservatives are not conservatives because they are stupid. The GOP of the post-Reagan era, however, has raised intellectual incuriosity to some kind of virtue, has denigrated education and certainly derided anything smacking of outright intellectualism. There are plenty of smart conservatives out there but they tend to be limited to writers/pundits/thinkers, not politicians. That’s also true to some extent among liberals, or Democrats, but not as uniformly so, intellectual-types are not weeded out of the political process as readily.
Also, and this is really the simpler explanation: the radicalization of one party over these past 30 years means that its voices of intellect (which will by definition be less radical) are naturally going to be marginalized.
Sort of by definition, ideologues, of whatever persuasion, are more closed-minded than the rest of us.
Of course, that doesn’t make them stupid. To be a true ideologue at least requires some capacity for abstraction, right? In theory, at least…
Sort of by definition, ideologues, of whatever persuasion, are more closed-minded than the rest of us.
– Brad
The rest of US? I take it from that comment you regard yourself as open-minded. Interesting how people see themselves.
To satisfy those inquiring minds: the late Professor J. H. Hexter; the late Professor R. R. Palmer; the late Professor H. A. Miskimin. Among the living: Professor H. A. Turner. You can find them and their major works in biographical dictionaries of 20th century American historians.
“To satisfy those inquiring minds:”…Steve Gordy
Even with the tinge of sarcasm, I do appreciate the references and to satisy an “inquiring mind”, it is my intent to research and read the works of the list of scholars you so kindly provided.
Sorry, should be “satisfy”
@Burl
I guess we won’t know until Obama releases his Harvard transcript so we can compare, right?
By the way, on the subject of transcripts, I’m going to go ahead and end all the suspense over mine, well ahead of running for office…
First, I didn’t go to Harvard. After one disastrous semester at USC (it turns out that even though you’re thousands of miles away from your parents, you’re STILL expected to get up in the morning and go to class — who knew?), I sat out a semester. I spent most of that semester playing golf, and playing pickup basketball at the base gym at NAS Memphis. It was a balanced curriculum. I’d play basketball all morning, then golf all afternoon. Sometimes, to test my versatility, I’d switch it around. (And I did, too, get a job that semester, delivering pizzas. I kept that job for one eight-hour shift before quitting. Sound bad? I’d like to see how you like a job that pays $1.25 an hour, and consists entirely of delivering pizzas to sailors and marines who wouldn’t know a tip if it slapped them upside the head. To this day, my Social Security records show that my earnings for 1972 totaled $10.)
Then I started at Memphis State (a.k.a. “Tiger High,” because it was a commuter school, and the student body consisted mostly of Memphians who lived at home while attending MSU as a sort of extension of high school). Academically, my career went like this: At the end of two years, I had something close to a 2.0. I maintained that performance with approximately zero studying.
Then I met my wife. She had good study habits, and I started doing what she did. For my last two years, I maintained about a 3.8.
The very last grade I got, just a couple of days before graduation — an A, and just about the only A in that class — pulled my GPA up to a 3.0 exactly.
That’s pretty much all you need to know, I guess.
I really sweated that last A. It was a tough one. Not that the subject matter was tough. It was basic copy editing. The problem was that the teacher was capricious, and known for jerking people around according to his whim.
I went to see him to find out what my grade was. He sat me down and proceeded to tell me all my failings, and how my work was never as good as what I was capable of doing, yadda-yadda. In other words, he did everything he could to make me think I was getting a C in the course, before telling me I’d gotten an A…
Is the current nominee the best and brightest available?
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/romney-tax-return-2011.jpg
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/09/24/899441/romney-plane-windows/
Also interesting, in a sociological way, the manner at the MA debate in which Brown sneered at Warren by calling her “professor.”
In my final semester in college (University of Missouri, journalism and anthropology schools), I took only two courses. I worked all day every day on the final sequence of PhotoJournalism and would up with a D for the semester. Good enough to graduate. Of the ten students in the class, one got a C, two of us got Ds and the rest failed to meet the professor’s standards. Brutal.
The other course was a comparative osteology sequence in Forensic Anthropology. I read the textbook, and showed up only for the midterm and final and the oral, and got a C.
Go figure.