Liberalism (Bites)

San Fran Columnist - “Are Americans Unusually Stupid?”

By J. Wesley ⋅ April 18, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

There’s an old stereotype that rural people are small-minded and think every way of life other than their own is stupid or immoral. These days, thanks to mass media, that just isn’t so. No matter how backwater your town, you’re exposed to “progressive” ideas and alternative lifestyles. Ironically, it’s people living in ideological cocoons like San Francisco or academia who really evince a provincial mindset.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Robert Scheer is a perfect example of the type. Troubled and perplexed by McCain’s high levels of support, Scheer writes:

“Are Americans unusually stupid, or is it something our president put in the water? . . . Assuming likely voters are not now thinking of yet another Republican president simply because John McCain is the only white guy left standing - an excuse as pathetic in its logic as the decision four years ago to return two Texas oil hustlers to the White House because they were not Massachusetts liberals - must mean that tens of millions of Americans have taken leave of their senses. If not the white-guy syndrome, why would even a shocking minority of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters say they prefer McCain to the other Democrat? How otherwise to explain the nation’s widespread bipartisan rejection of the Bush presidency and yet a willingness to let McCain continue in that vein?”

You can see where liberals get their reputation for open-minds and empathy, no? Scheer can’t understand McCain voters, so clearly they must be either stupid or malevolent. Like provincial minds everywhere, he assumes that all thinking people believe as he does.

Really though, Scheer’s screed is nothing more than a distillation of Obama’s opinion of middle America. Conservative values are not the result of honest belief, but of false consciousness, racism, economic insecurity, or plain cussedness.

Obama has spent his entire adult life in ideologically inbred environments — first at Harvard, then as an ACORN activist and later in politics. He made diverse friends ranging from far-leftists all the way to slightly less far-leftists. As his wife said the other day, “Barack’s a lawyer, I’m a lawyer, everybody we know are lawyers. I’m sure half the people in this audience are lawyers …”

Like Scheer, Obama can’t imagine how any thinking person could disagree with him. And it shows.

UPDATE: Re-reading Scheer’s column, it’s even more frivolous than I’d thought. Since neither of the Democratic candidate is a “white guy,” how can “the white-guy syndrome” motivate Democrats to cross-over to McCain if their chosen candidate loses the primary? And remember kids — don’t question his patriotism!