I know I said I would leave the political campaign we just went through, alone and move on to other things BUT there are some things that need discussing, possibly for future use.
I read the ultra conservative WALL STREET JOURNAL because, after all, I am very conservative when it comes to finance and economy issues. The Wall Street Journal has also amazed me by the amount of “other” viewpoints it allows into it’s pages.
This Saturday I read the article by Mark Lilla entitled “THE PERILS OF ‘POPULIST CHIC’ “; it definitely caught my attention.
Professor Lilla talks about “conservative intellectualism” of the past with such iconic figures as William F. Buckley, Irving Kristol and Jeane Kirkpatrick and he laments the demise of this conservative intellectualism with the Sarah Palin debacle.
The turn towards “populist chic” aka Sarah Palin, has taken conservatives away from elitist intellectuals to Joe the Plummer type of “anti-intellectualism”; Joe and Sarah know better how to run the country than someone with an elitist education or with any type of education at all.
Professor Lilla, a liberal, is sad to see this shift in conservative politics because it makes the country, as a whole, poorer for it.
To all my friends that saw Palin as their next president and battled all suggestions of her incompetence, all I have to say is that these scholars and other observers of our political society are basically saying what I have been saying from the start; picking Palin and then defending her was dumb. Not just a stupid move but an unintelligent move, meaning that real simpletons have taken over the Republican Party.
I read the ultra conservative WALL STREET JOURNAL because, after all, I am very conservative when it comes to finance and economy issues. The Wall Street Journal has also amazed me by the amount of “other” viewpoints it allows into it’s pages.
This Saturday I read the article by Mark Lilla entitled “THE PERILS OF ‘POPULIST CHIC’ “; it definitely caught my attention.
Professor Lilla talks about “conservative intellectualism” of the past with such iconic figures as William F. Buckley, Irving Kristol and Jeane Kirkpatrick and he laments the demise of this conservative intellectualism with the Sarah Palin debacle.
The turn towards “populist chic” aka Sarah Palin, has taken conservatives away from elitist intellectuals to Joe the Plummer type of “anti-intellectualism”; Joe and Sarah know better how to run the country than someone with an elitist education or with any type of education at all.
Professor Lilla, a liberal, is sad to see this shift in conservative politics because it makes the country, as a whole, poorer for it.
To all my friends that saw Palin as their next president and battled all suggestions of her incompetence, all I have to say is that these scholars and other observers of our political society are basically saying what I have been saying from the start; picking Palin and then defending her was dumb. Not just a stupid move but an unintelligent move, meaning that real simpletons have taken over the Republican Party.
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