# "Why the Right Went Wrong" by E.J. Dionne Jr. - Anyone read it? Opinions? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 3, 2016, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127 "2016-04-03T21:04:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/21 "2016-04-05T15:12:20Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > How can one reliably identify an intellectual? I think it would be easier to identify a non-intellectual, and **Derleth** pretty much has the right of it there. You and I can disagree on the facts, but we are generally going to agree that there are facts and that they are important. Conversely, there are people on Facebook who have no interest in facts. I corrected someone who reposted some nonsense about gay adoptions from Mike Huckabee, and her response was “look, this is just what I believe.” In other words, she implied that it was just her opinion. The problem was that what she “believed” was a dry statistic implying that children raised in same-sex households are more likely to commit violent crimes as adults. We didn’t disagree on the facts; we disagreed on what a fact was. Her position was clearly anti-intellectual. Similarly, when I correct people who post about the dangers of vaccination, GMO foods, and so on, their invariable response is that I’ve been brainwashed. Any subsequent exchanges make it clear that this is not a position they’ve arrived at rationally. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/22 "2016-04-05T15:31:37Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I think it would be easier to identify a non-intellectual, and **Derleth** pretty much has the right of it there. You and I can disagree on the facts, but we are generally going to agree that there are facts and that they are important. > > Conversely, there are people on Facebook who have no interest in facts. I corrected someone who reposted some nonsense about gay adoptions from Mike Huckabee, and her response was “look, this is just what I believe.” In other words, she implied that it was just her opinion. The problem was that what she “believed” was a dry statistic implying that children raised in same-sex households are more likely to commit violent crimes as adults. We didn’t disagree on the facts; we disagreed on what a fact was. Her position was clearly anti-intellectual. > > Similarly, when I correct people who post about the dangers of vaccination, GMO foods, and so on, their invariable response is that I’ve been brainwashed. Any subsequent exchanges make it clear that this is not a position they’ve arrived at rationally. > [@Derleth](#): > > For a start, having a policy platform and arguing based on some form of consistent logic. This takes out the High Broderites, who attempt to conflate “maturity” with an air-headed fallacy of the mean, the hooligans, who simply barrack for a side and demonize everyone who isn’t on their side, and the pure opportunists. > > The people who are left are the ones who realize that policy has at least some role in running a country. They might have a totally insane policy, like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, but they’re neither snarling yobbos nor utterly insincere pieces of cotton candy. There’s something _solid_ to their ideas which can be debated. > > After that, real intellectuals recognize the role of intellectual honesty and, therefore, evidence and lack of inherent fallacies in crafting a good policy. The ones who don’t might be very intelligent, but they argue themselves into tight little epistemologically-closed circles which amount to castles in the air. Good art, maybe, but not workable politics. Based on those definitions, do either of you agree that: > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > “Conservative intellectual” was already becoming an oxymoronic phrase in Reagan’s day. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/23 "2016-04-05T16:11:58Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > How can one reliably identify an intellectual? Broadly defined, an intellectual is simply a person who is passionately interested in knowledge and ideas for their own sakes; by that definition, a scientist or philosopher or literary critic who takes no interest in politics or social issues would be an intellectual. However, [a different definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual) is also current: > [@](#): > > An **intellectual** is a person who engages in critical study, thought, and reflection about the reality of society, and proposes solutions for the normative problems of that society, and, by such discourse in the public sphere, he or she gains authority within the public opinion.[1][2] Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or as a mediator, the intellectual participates in politics, either to defend a concrete proposition or to denounce an injustice, usually by producing or by extending an ideology, and by defending a system of values.[3][4] > > Socially, intellectuals constitute the intelligentsia, a status class organised either by ideology (conservative, fascist, socialist, liberal, reactionary, revolutionary, democratic, communist intellectuals, et al.) or nationality (American intellectuals, French intellectuals, Ibero–American intellectuals, et al.). The contemporary intellectual class originated from the _intelligentsiya_ of Tsarist Russia (ca. 1860s–70s), the social stratum of those possessing intellectual formation (schooling, education, Enlightenment), and who were Russian society’s counterpart to the German _Bildungsbürgertum_ and to the French _bourgeoisie éclairée,_ the enlightened middle classes of those realms.[a] British conservative writer Paul Johnson wrote a book, [_Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky,_](http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-From-Tolstoy-Sartre-Chomsky/dp/0061253170) mainly focusing on the personal lives of famous intellectuals (as defined in the Wiki article) and purporting to show that intellectualism goes hand-in-hand with being a bad person to those individuals one actually has to deal with. Notably, however, the book only covers intellectuals of a liberal or leftist bent. There are no chapters on Edmund Burke, Thomas Carlyle, Michael Oakeshott, Joseph de Maistre, Wilhelm Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, Russell Kirk – at least some of whom were persons at least as odious as the ones Johnson blasts – Rand certainly was, and Nietzsche was even crazier than Rousseau. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/24 "2016-04-05T16:23:47Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Based on those definitions, do either of you agree that… No. If anything, I look back fondly on Reagan-era conservatives who tried to justify their policies with facts rather than naked ideology. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/25 "2016-04-05T16:38:16Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Perhaps the problem, especially in the universities, is an intellectual echo chamber, since conservative voices are rarely even heard or read. On many social issues, the same findings have been offered for 50 years with little in the way of advancement. It’s as if a few liberals got together and solved all the world’s problems sometime during the Kennedy years and are surprised that we’re too stupid to get it right. What “findings” are you referring to? This statement is an echo chamber itself. It’s the same old stew I’ve heard a million times. If you don’t like scholarship, why don’t you write a thesis? If you don’t like anything that happens in universities maybe you are an anti-intellectual. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/26 "2016-04-05T16:40:24Z")
Ideological discrimination in universities prevents them from being able to have the same kind of vigorous debate that you see in the hard sciences. So when a few professors say, “Caring for the poor is a proper role for government” there’s no one to say otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/27 "2016-04-05T16:41:13Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Broadly defined, an intellectual is simply a person who is passionately interested in knowledge and ideas for their own sakes; by that definition, a scientist or philos In what specific ways does George Will fall short of this definition? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/28 "2016-04-05T17:09:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > “Conservative intellectual” was already becoming an oxymoronic phrase in Reagan’s day. He might have had some degreed think-tank wonks advising him, but I doubt any of them could fairly be considered intellectuals. As for those supporting him from the outside, most of them would have been like George Will – he is no intellectual, he just plays one on TV. Well… I think you have to give him intellectual rigor cred for this position. It got the nesting hens at the National Review in a squawking flutter. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-wont-give-the-nominee-a-hearing-explained/2016/03/18/25df8ab2-ec8a-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-wont-give-the-nominee-a-hearing-explained/2016/03/18/25df8ab2-ec8a-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html) > [@](#): > > The Republican Party’s incoherent response to the Supreme Court vacancy is a partisan reflex in search of a justifying principle. The multiplicity of Republican rationalizations for their refusal to even consider Merrick B. Garland radiates insincerity. > > Republicans instantly responded to Antonin Scalia’s death by proclaiming that no nominee, however admirable in temperament, intellect and experience, would be accorded a hearing. They say their obduracy is right: ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/29 "2016-04-05T17:20:06Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Based on those definitions, do either of you agree that: “Becoming”? Sure. It was _becoming_ an oxymoronic phrase the moment Nixon inaugurated the Southern Strategy, bringing swaths of very anti-intellectual racists into the GOP. Reagan continued that, so the shoe fits. **It does not mean the GOP was ever, nor is now, entirely anti-intellectual.** Trickle-down economics is a policy. It’s a bad, empirically worthless policy which is rightly worth no more than a horse laugh in refutation, but it has a chain of connected logic in back of it and it can be attacked by breaking that chain. So my definition of intellectual is looser than **BrainGlutton** ’s. Fine. For my sins, I’ll probably have to accept George Will as an intellectual. That doesn’t mean I have to accept Donald Trump as an intellectual, even if Ted Cruz likely barely makes the cut. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/30 "2016-04-05T17:28:08Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > That doesn’t mean I have to accept Donald Trump as an intellectual, even if Ted Cruz likely barely makes the cut. Heh Trump is an intellectual like a burro is Seabiscuit. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/31 "2016-04-05T17:28:28Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > In what specific ways does George Will fall short of this definition? The “for their own sakes part.” Compare Flynn Carsen in [_The Librarian_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Librarian_(franchise)) franchise – he is no intellectual. He knows everything but, so far as the viewer can tell, he never seems to think very much about anything; his vast knowledge is nothing to him but a kit of tools and weapons to accomplish his missions. Or, compare a lawyer – as you know, a lawyer must have knowledge and not only of the law, but need not be an intellectual, and most lawyers of my acquaintance have not been. Will’s knowledge is but a set of rhetorical tools to serve a political agenda, not to **think** about its value or meaning; Washington think-tanks, I have no doubt, are full of such highly educated non-intellectuals, though there may be some intellectuals among them. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/32 "2016-04-05T22:44:12Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > In what specific ways does George Will fall short of this definition? He’s a corporate tool. His beloved party has run away and joined a cult, and none of his thinking was able to predict, or stop it; and the only thing left he can do is make rationalizations about it to protect his little fief as a talking head. Not an intellectual at all. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127/33 "2016-04-05T23:23:55Z")
Or take someone like Newt Gingrich. Here’s a guy who supposedly cares about ideas. But he’s also capable of this interview: [Newt Gingrich discusses the merits of Donald Trump.](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/03/newt_gingrich_discusses_the_merits_of_donald_trump.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-right-went-wrong-by-e-j-dionne-jr-anyone-read-it-opinions/751127.md?page=1)