From what I’ve read about the government of the current PRC, their top ranks are filled with what we in the West would call “Technocrats.” Dollar for Dollar, pound for pound, I have reason to believe that they’re smarter than the top brass of the GOP or the Democrats. If the intelligence of our politicians poses a serious danger or threat to our lives or the life of the planet, perhaps it is a failing of the electoral system in the U.S., or of liberal democracy as a whole.*
*Unless you believe that the GOP holds a global monopoly on stupid or pandering politicians, and that the vast majority of politicians of all mainstream, electable parties in democracies worldwide are insightful, intelligent, brilliant people.
I just have a problem with Brits making fun of our politicians. I don’t make fun of theirs. But in this increasingly interconnected world I suppose it should be expected.
But the quote in the OP specifically accuses Republican leaders of being uneducated and the Republicans in general of wanting candidates who are uneducated. Three times in one paragraph, in fact. One can debate whether these people are ignorant, since that’s a term with some leeway, but they are not uneducated.
No one who reads my post would doubt that I agree that evolution and man-made global warming are scientifically correct, or think that I’m much sympathetic with the Republicans in general. However, I do believe that there are many issues in the world that require engaging the intellect, and those are only two of the many. There’s no basis for accusing the Republicans of being broadly anti-intellectual. One need only think back to six years ago when Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and the conservative base almost unanimously rejected her because she lacked education and experience. (And other things, but those were the most common complaints.) So Bush withdrew her nomination and instead put forward the Ivy League-educated Samuel Alito, and there were no more complaints.
You also forgot about Obama.
There are, “Hey buddy, wanna catch the game at my house after church?” Christians and then there are, “Heeeee Dieeeeed foooor Meeeeee, Waauuughhhhhhh, Waaaauuughhhhhhh… His Blood… for Meeeeeeeee!!!” Christians.
Perry, Bachman, and Shit-foam McGee are the latter.
Yeah, well, Obama still loses points. But fewer of them.
If people are going to use the phrase “lowest common denominator” while trying to say other people are ignorant at least learn what it means first. It’s the opposite.
Dawkins is a caricature of a leftist public intellectual. He reminds me of that Martian in the old Ed Wood movie going on about how Earthlings have “Stewpid! Stewpid minds!” It doesn’t take a political scientist to understand how people who think like him cannot succeed in electoral politics.
Yes, in fact there is.
“Intellectual” is a regular part of the Right’s political speech and not spoken in an admiring tone.
And when you claim “there is no basis” when a quick Google search gets you plenty, you’re marking your post as political speech.
There are plenty of right-wing intellectuals, but they tend not to be quite as naive and sour as left-wing intellectuals. Also, they don’t run for president.
By intellectual, I mean a person who develops his opinions mainly by reading the accounts and opinions of others. Most people aren’t like that. They develop their opinions mainly from their personal experiences and from the opinions of people they personally know and trust. If you can’t accept that and deal with it constructively, you’re going to be in for a miserable life. You can hear the anger and frustration in the quotes from Dawkins and Garrison Keillor. 80 years ago it was the right that didn’t understand that; these days it’s the left.
I’ll give you an example. If a white guy in Mississippi is a racist, the left sees it as evidence of stupidity. Isn’t this guy familiar with expert opinion, which states categorically that black people are as good or better than whites, and anyway if they are worse than whites it’s because of the legacy of slavery? Hasn’t he heard of the cruelties of Jim Crow and how it’s his responsibility to atone for them? In reality, it may be that the guy has had a series of negative personal experiences with black people. Even if most black people are great, statistically, there are always going to be some whites who haven’t personally experienced this. You can curse such a person for being provincial and close-minded, but where does that leave you? It’s like a dog howling at the moon.
I’m not suggesting racism is OK or that there isn’t a moral dimension to this. But if you don’t put aside the judgments, you’ll never understand why people hold these opinions that seem so ridiculous and offensive.
By the way, I voted for Nader in 2000.
No, it’s not, as you said, “bullshit”. It’s a well known scientific fact that all humans begin their lives at conception (this is really sixth grade biology and something known since the late 19th century). As it is, there was a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee report about 30 years ago on this very thing where both sides of the abortion debate were invited to bring forth witnesses to testify as to when [a human’s] life begins, with their only being one individual arguing human life doesn’t begin at conception.
Of course, that’s not really the point. The point I was making is that both parties are anti-intellectual when it suits them in order to win brownie points with their bases. Neither is better than the other. If it’ll garner them votes in an election, politicians will tell people what they want to hear. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
So, it’s well known to science that there’s no such thing as identical twins or chimeras? News to me.
Oh, and to this comment from Hyperelastic:
It’s also true that most Republicans are pedophiles, if by “pedophile” you mean “person who holds right-wing political views”. The fact that folks think that “intellectual” means “develops opinions by reading opinions of others” does at least give a reason why Republicans would think that they’re anti-intellectual, except that intellectual doesn’t actually mean anything remotely resembling that.
Of course, the real irony is that, by that bizarre definition of “intellectual”, the right tends to be more intellectual than the left. Right-wing thought is heavily dominated by ideas mimicked from a few influential folks. Who’s the left-wing equivalent of Rush Limbaugh, or Glen Beck?
Cite for this? IMHExperience, Chinese “technocrats” are generally not well educated, worldly nor critical thinkers. YMMV
Education doesn’t have to mean credentials, the article accuses them of ignorance and a lack of education. Which they do have, they are not educated about basic facts of biology irrelevant of their credentials. Uneducated seemed like a metaphor for uninformed rather than lacking credentials in that article.
And the GOP does want candidates who are uninformed when being informed means you don’t subscribe to party orthodoxy. Saying ‘the science supports evolution and climate change’ will count against you with many GOP voters who see evolution as undercutting their religion and climate change as a liberal conspiracy.
I remember having heard this argument a few years back about the current state of China, and how their government has evolved since the days of Mao. This first article I found by googling “Chinese Technocrats” seems to support that:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,165453,00.html
I’m more than willing to be corrected on this point, since I still find much of the PRC mysterious. But insofar as Dawkins seems to chastise the GOP for not understanding science, it sounds to me like that’s not a problem in China. They may not be worldly minds in the sense of a liberal arts major, but they certainly have formal education. I mean, a huge portion of politicians in the West tend to be lawyers. Even though I’m going to law school in the Fall, I don’t consider it to the be all end all of education. Perhaps it fails as an “Apples and Oranges” argument.
Cite?
Not that there was a silly hearing regarding when “life” begins (not that life beginning and something being human are necessarily the same thing, but I digress), but that both sides of the debate were invited to bring forth witnesses. For the most part, it was a pretty pro-life group that was invited. Some were even what one might call activists.
Bah, question begging – in this construction, you’re predefining “life” as “the moment of conception.”
I have no idea what that’s supposed to prove, especially since nobody I’m aware of has ever (coherently) argued that a fetus isn’t alive, and no pro-choice argument I’ve ever heard hinges on assuming the opposite.
“Lowest common denominator” is a very common idiom that means precisely this – it’s used to refer to attempts to pander to the dumbest and least sophisticated people.
The idiomatic usage has little to do with the actual mathematical meaning, but that doesn’t make it “incorrect.”
If you keep engaging OMG on his abortion thang this thread will derail. His “point” has been hashed over in (very) long threads before. Nothing except hijack will come of it.