It is a very old saw that America's Right likes to tell of its Left, that the latter is full of elitist intellectuals, while the former is comprised of lovable, down-home, we-don't-need-no-book-learnin' types. This story is ironic, because the appeal of, and appeals by, modern social progressivism are almost entirely emotional and pre-intellectual; it is the Conservative Movement that builds grand theories.
Liberals do not generally refer to general models of The Role Of Government when advocating for high spending on social services. They rarely cite the writings of great thinkers from their movement. Instead, they appeal to their listeners' hearts. "Isn't it awful," they say, "that people should go hungry in a country as rich as ours?" And when their plans fail, it is not because they hold intellectualism in too-high esteem, but because they overreach before getting to the thinking-it-through phase. The result is that whenever someone decides that something is bad for us (usually meaning for someone else), there is a great cry that the offending thing must be made illegal. Interdict Happy Meals with extreme prejudice, and all parents will become good parents. (While we're at it, why not imprison people who don't read to their kids?) End poverty by handing out money to poor people until they're not poor anymore. Never mind that there's not one kid in the world whose parents replaced a fast-food diet with broccoli steamed at home when they learned that their burger would no longer include a plastic toy. And a McDonalds that paid all of its workers twice as much would either lay off half of its workers or charge twice as much for its burgers, sell none of them, and lay off all of its workers.
No, it is the Conservatives who rationalize -- and consequently fail in different ways than their Leftist countrymen. For when the position paper from the Ayn Rand Institute for Morally Upstanding Right-Thinking conflicts with facts on the ground, what is the morally upstanding right-thinking man to do? Why, get new facts, of course! Can't get the textbooks to include your facts? Print your own textbooks. Can't get the schools to buy them? Home-school your kids. Can't square the hideousness of imprisoning a woman who won't bear the child of her rapist with the hideousness of murdering a single undifferentiated cell in cold blood? Nothing could be simpler: there are no children of rapists. Homosexuality melts away with a good talking-to. And those searching for the conservative version of biology, the conservative version of climatology, the conservative version of Wikipedia, or just a good Christian dentist will always be well served.
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