It’s fun getting all indignant though…

I do disagree with the Chomsky and Zinn comment. Those guys can only be placed in the same boat as Beck and Malkin on the criteria of tone, not when considering anything deeper.

It’s a waste of time to draw any serious conclusions from what is marketed and sold. Because that’s primarily about selling books, not about debate or deep thought. And selling books, especially non-fiction, is about identifying a target demographic, and delivering what that market wants, Why in the world would anyone be surprised that the best-selling political books comprise preaching to a choir? I mean, really.

What conservatives want right now under current circumstances is simple solace, and that’s what they are getting. It’s not about what conservatives think, it’s about how they feel.

That’s the stage conservatives are at in the swinging of the political pendulum. Slightly revised notions will be popularized later. When they do, they’ll likely be ridiculed, not recognized as say an advancement over Beck. The thought and likely the books are there right now, or being written. But they are not being marketed and heavily sold because the audience is not at a stage where they want deep rethinking. (Which by the way will lead to 95% reaffirmation, which will vex and astonish liberals when it’s not dismissed by the public as no more than a re-hash). But make no mistake, the heavyweights will weigh in in time for the 2012 election. I wish folks here would remember that I said this when it happens. But when it does, they’ ll be too busy excoriating and dismissing, just like they did with the last cycle.

But, therein lies the crux of the problem for conservatism; people don’t want intellectualism (or at the very least they do not appear to want intellectualism).

Actually, that’s the crux of the problem for ALL serious thought about complex modern issues. It’s comical to imply that this is any sort of especially challenging problem for conservatism. Progressives right now are busy patting themselves on the back for incipient healthcare reform and environmental reform. So I guess that maybe they they are suffering from the delusion that the folks on their side are not enamored of slogans, buzzwords, oversimplifications, and assurances that the other side is evil and wrong. Bush lied. People died. Right everybody? Sums everything up with no need to say anymore, right?

I’m all for “yes we can” optimism. If it’s tempered by realism. I have serious concerns when this optimism manifests as some sort of delusion that yes we can make whatever changes we want regardless of our ability to pay for them.

When it comes to deep thought about complex modern issues, what both asides really need is a lot more stuff that goes “if we make change x, we’ll experience positive effects a, b, and c, _and_ negative effects p, q, and r. How shall be choose?

But it aint happening. Right now, progressives are eagerly anticipating the delivery of long-wished-for ponies and rainbows, while conservatives are mostly wondering how progressives stopped the delivery of their ponies and rainbows. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So, they want to ram religion down your throat – as long as it is THEIR religion. They want a tax cut – don’t care about the deficit or anybody but meeeeee. They want to stop spending money – unless it’s something THEY want like a good war. They want bipartisanship – unless it means that THEY are the ones that have to give something up – screw that!

Even the so-called conservative Republican governors are growing their state’s budget at a much faster rate than inflation and population growth would make necessary.

This came up in the ’06 Michigan Governor’s race, where Conservatives claimed Granholm was administering a growing state budget. This was technically true, but missed several salient points.

1) Bush loved block grants. When the Feds make a block grant to a state the entire grant technically becomes part of the state budget. In other words Conservatives were blaming Granholm for implementing Conservative ideas.

2) States pay a lot of health care expenses. Medicaid, state employees health plans, etc. are not free. And, like all health spending, they’ve been going up at ridiculous rates. In Michigan we also have something called “revenue-sharing,” which means the state gives tax money to municipalities who turn around and spend it on health care for the police.

It was particularly dishonest for them to say this in Michigan because the GOP controlled both houses of the Legislature since the mid-90s, and Michigan’s GOP has always been fanatical about taxes. Granholm didn’t raise a tax until 2007, and I guarantee you the economy was not increasing state revenue during that time.

As for intellectual liberals,
Jimmy there are thousands of them. If there were no intellectual liberals there would be no liberal professors for you-all to rail against. Juan Cole, Henry Louis Gates, and Paul Krugman immediately spring to mind. Other liberal commentators have equally impeccable academic credentials. For example Barbara Ehrenreich has a PhD in cellular biology.

Still more liberal commentators don’t have these pieces of paper showing they are intellectuals, but still manage to include deep thought in their analysis of what happens. Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post both do that.

On the right I’ve seen some intellectuals. They’re mostly economists. This may be because so many anon-intellectual, or even anti-intellectual, right wingers get airtime. There’s got to be somebody

Then there are psuedo-intellectuals like George F. Will. Will looks intellectual, but tends to be completely destroyed on some very basic fact every few months. Such as that time he claimed the New Deal made the Depression worse.

The issue might just be that right now they are defining themselves as reactionaries, similar to how the democrats attempted to use the ‘We aren’t Bush’ as their way of advancing.

Paul Krugman might be on the list. I’d like to count Fareed

I find Krauthammer to be utterly predictable and not very deep btw.

The reason that the intellectual conservatives have to credibility is the eight years of the Bush Administration

Nah, I think its because people watch T.V. and surf the web more than they read books. Thomas Sowell and Chuck Krauthammer have books, but they don’t have their own half-informitive, half-entertainment hour on cable T.V.

Similarly, who is the bastion of modern progressive thought? Is there even one? or is it just hollywood celebrities and liberal counterparts like Olbermann and Matthews on Cable news? How about nut-jobs like Chomsky and Zinn, do they count?

As long as politics is merged with entertainment, and it approaches the public in soundbites because government beurocracy is too complicated and boring to understand, this is how the public will approach politics.

Why should any vote pay attention to intellectual conservatives when they behave in such a non-conservative manner and seem totally uninterested in implementing conservative policy. Even the so-called conservative Republican governors are growing their state’s budget at a much faster rate than inflation and population growth would make necessary.