Politics & Intelligence
One of the bedrock assumptions of the left, at least since the 1960s, is that Democrats are by and large smarter than Republicans. Clive Crook in the Financial Times, while focusing on the disdain which the doyens feel for the hoi pollio, summarizes:
Democrats must learn some respect
Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.
Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.
It is an attitude that a good part of the US media share. The country has conservative media (Fox News, talk radio) as well as liberal media (most of the rest). Curiously, whereas the conservative media know they are conservative, much of the liberal media believe themselves to be neutral.
Their constant support for Democratic views has nothing to do with bias, in their minds, but reflects the fact that Democrats just happen to be right about everything. The result is the same: for much of the media, the fact that Republicans keep winning can only be due to the backwardness of much of the country.
The nomination of Sarah Palin has driven the cognoscenti over the edge. Their attacks on her have distilled and crystallized all of the venom they feel toward their inferiors who have the temerity to challenge their wisdom. Though I will not link to the post, I read a learned treatise over the weekend which purported to "prove" that Sarah Palin could not have an IQ above 110 (and the author was being generous in ascribing such a high IQ to her.) I would suggest that even if the meme is accurate (something I am not ready to accede), it misses two crucial points about intelligence and the application of intelligence:
For my purposes, I would accept the definition of "G", general intelligence, as a measure of problem solving ability. G is what is measured by IQ tests and has a very good correlation with academic success.
The first problem with basing policy decisions on the prescriptions of those with high IQs is that high IQ is not particularly well correlated with judgment. In fact, a compelling argument can be made that judgment is far more important in our leaders than IQ.
The second point I would like to emphasize is that the importance of high IQ depends primarily on the problems toward which high IQs are directed. There are a great many extremely bright members of the professoriate who direct their prodigious intellects at problems that fail to rise to the level of trivia. One example comes from the evolution of feminist studies. It never took a high IQ to puzzle out that women had the intellectual capacity to take part as full human beings in the workings of society, though it was certainly important (and remains important), to understand the roots and persistence of bias. It does not require a high IQ to know that a woman should be able to do any work of which she is capable and take part in any way she desires in a society founded on the principle of individual freedom. It does, however, require a very high IQ to discern (the modern feminist shibboleth) that there are no fundamental biologically derived differences between men and women and that gender is a social construct imposed upon the populace by the powerful for the interests of the powerful. That is an argument that requires volumes of erudite, often inscrutable, prose. As such, only the very brightest can actually wade through it, and only the very brightest can actually believe it. Sadly, those with lower IQs have only the knowledge gleaned from their own senses and experiences; if they believe there are, on average, real differences between men and women that is simply a testament to their intellectual limitations.
[As an aside, I would like to note that the neurobiological and the sociological and psychological evidence supporting the idea of differing brain morphology between men and women is accumulating at a rapid rate. See Gender differences seen in brain connectionsand John Tierney's As Barriers Disappear, Some Gender Gaps Widen.]
I suspect much of the rage that has uncovered itself from the left, the fury that a redneck idiot like Sarah Palin could be swinging an election of one of theirs that they thought was a done deal, away from them, is a reaction to once again seeing their deserved power slip away. Professors of post-modernism, feminist and queer studies and other such arcana, are fairly well paid and receive tenure at some of our most prestigious institutions, yet the unwashed hordes rarely accord them the respect and awe they so richly deserve. It is a puzzle that some of our best and brightest have failed to elucidate (despite their high IQs.) Since much of the MSM has studied in the same prestigious institutions and have incorporated the same sense of superiority, it is very difficult for them to recognize their own provincialism and attend to their own limitations. Further, the intellectualization that passes for learning in much of elite academia (and please note that, thus far, such foolishness has not yet infected the hard sciences, though if Harvard is any omen, the future is of concern) specifically impairs judgment. When all situations must be forced to conform to the procrustean bed based on the quasi-Marxist dialectic of oppressors and oppressed, judgemt must necessarily be suspended lest it fail to adhere to the proper paradigm. I would much sooner trust the judgment of an Alaskan redneck to the judgment of an Ivy league graduate with little experience in the real world whose thinking has been contaminated by what passes for education in the post-modern university.
I'm floored about this. I can't believe these same people go to Disney!
I know. The sad thing is, these people who say or post this vile stuff, truly believe they have moral superiority - disgusting.
Talk about dirty pool.
