I can't remember whether I posted a link to this op-ed column, which appeared more than three months ago. If so, I apologize for the duplication. The author, political scientist Gerard Alexander, says that liberal (he means progressive) condescension "comes in the form of four major narratives." I find the first of the four the most interesting:
The first is the "vast right-wing conspiracy," a narrative made famous
by Hillary Rodham Clinton but hardly limited to her. This vision
maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not
because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they deploy
brilliant and sinister campaign tactics. A dense network of
professional political strategists such as Karl Rove, think tanks such
as the Heritage Foundation and industry groups allegedly manipulate
information and mislead the public. Democratic strategist Rob Stein
crafted a celebrated PowerPoint presentation during George W. Bush's
presidency that traced conservative success to such organizational
factors.This liberal vision emphasizes the dissemination of ideologically driven
views from sympathetic media such as the Fox News Channel. For example,
Chris Mooney's book "The Republican War on Science" argues that policy
debates in the scientific arena are distorted by conservatives who
disregard evidence and reflect the biases of industry-backed Republican
politicians or of evangelicals aimlessly shielding the world from
modernity. In this interpretation, conservative arguments are invariably
false and deployed only cynically. Evidence of the costs of
cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda;
arguments against health-care reform are written off as hype
orchestrated by insurance companies.This worldview was on display in the popular liberal reaction to the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Citizens United
v. Federal Election Commission. Rather than engage in a discussion
about the complexities of free speech in politics, liberals have largely
argued that the decision will "open the floodgates for special
interests" to influence American elections, as the president warned in
his State of the Union address. In other words, it was all
part of the conspiracy to support conservative candidates for their
nefarious, self-serving ends.It follows that the thinkers, politicians and citizens who advance
conservative ideas must be dupes, quacks or hired guns selling stories
they know to be a sham. In this spirit, New York Times columnist Paul
Krugman regularly dismisses conservative arguments not simply as
incorrect, but as lies. Writing last summer, Krugman pondered the duplicity he found evident in 35 years' worth
of Wall Street Journal editorial writers: "What do these people really
believe? I mean, they're not stupid—life would be a lot easier if
they were. So they know they're not telling the truth. But they
obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth. . . . The
question is, what is that higher truth?"In Krugman's world, there is no need to take seriously the arguments of
"these people"—only to plumb the depths of their errors and imagine
hidden motives.
There are two things I can do if you assert proposition p. First, I can ask for your grounds, to see whether p has any support. Second, I can assume the falsity of p and impute bad motives to you for asserting it. Only the first of these is intellectually honest. The second, besides being intellectually dishonest, is personal. It shifts the focus from the truth of p to your motive for asserting p. Sad to say, but many academics (including philosophers, who ought to know better) take the intellectually dishonest path. Their aim is not to ascertain the truth but to delegitimize those with whom they disagree. One wonders why these people went into academia, when they have no aptitude for it.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 