Intellectually speaking...

Here are two startling ideas that you have probably not hear before:

• There is a strong anti-intellectual streak running through the American collective psyche.



• Republicans/Conservatives benefit from this tendency.

But then we have Matt Stoller announcing (MyDD :: Needed: A Line in the Sand on Iraq) the demise of the conservatism, as an intellectual brand:

Obama, who is more and more staking out progressive territory (not boldly, but he is going there), is appealing to a group of independent voters that are increasingly sympathetic to liberalism. This makes sense. Conservatism has died, intellectually speaking. After watching New Orleans in tatters, Iraq in flames, and a government engulfed in corruption, the Republican brand is gone. And yet the Democratic brand, while slightly improved, is not sparkling with dynamism.

What are we to make of these claims? Conservatism (in its personification as the Republican Party) suffered an electoral defeat. Is this an intellectual defeat or a political one? If the 2006 election results were indeed a signal that government is a necessary and positive element in societal progress, then it would follow that the conservative demonizing of it has finally been challenged and rejected. This is however, at best an optimistic conclusion. It is far more parsimonious to conclude that the people, especially independents, did not intend any sort of ideological message in their recent choice, but merely their mild discontent with the most excessive acts of the Bush administration (and the GOP). A quick glance at PollingReports will assuage any worries the right might entertain that "independents" are anything more than those who sit in the middle of an already right-centered narrow range of differences between Democrats and Republicans.



The truth (at least the more justifiable version of it) is that the Democratic Party and liberalism have been intellectually dead for a few decades now. While the party continues to shuffle the deck chairs of populism, fickle labor support and a Dixiecrat legacy, the party faithful and their commanders are divided between DLC triangulators and "netroots" tacticians. If indeed there is an anti-intellectual streak running through the populace, it should be no suprise, in such an atmosphere of retreat from principles. The liberals have nothing to offer. Intellectually speaking.