In Defense of Elitism

I was going to write a lengthy post with a great deal of substance, but then I spent the day working mostly on the Moderate Christian Blogroll and Blog Aggregator. I’ve already posted links to the new feeds I created, and will post the code for this tomorrow on my computer services blog, if all goes well.

But I really wouldn’t want having nothing much to say keep me from writing something, so I nurtured my negative reaction to this article in the Washington Post, which talks about some folks in Findlay, Ohio, also known as Flag City.

Now let me get several things out of the way. I appreciate these people’s patriotism. I’m glad they’re living the life they want to live. I also don’t think that one must be a racist in order to oppose Barack Obama. There are plenty of policy grounds on which to do so. In fact, were my priorities a little reordered, I could easily switch to McCain myself. There are many policy issues on which I disagree with Obama, they just aren’t the most important ones on which I’m basing my vote this year.

Obama took a big hit for making a few snide remarks about some people. He did so in too general a way, though many suspected, with some validity in my view, that he let the truth slip out by accident. I imagine he is frustrated by just the people he mentioned, and he doesn’t think that much of their views. He probably said it with more acid than he intended, but such are the risks of politics.

But some people are just plain stupid. I’m not running for office, so I can say that. If someone is opposed to Barack Obama because he’s going to raise their taxes, that’s a political difference. If someone is opposed because they think he’ll pull out of Iraq recklessly, that’s a political difference. But if someone is opposed because they can’t pronounce his name, or they think he’s an Arab, or they believe he just must be a closet Muslim, that’s just plain stupid.

I recall Tolkien’s description of Hobbits as folks who liked books filled with lots of things they already knew set down plainly without contradiction. He said it with some affection, I think. There’s a great value in people who are ordinary, who don’t want to spend their time in college or some academic environment, yet who are actually quite intelligent and have a good sense of ethics. There are others whose stupidity and willful ignorance are dangerous.

There’s another version of elitism, or perhaps it should better be called anti-elitism, which attributes everything that an educated person does to his education. I get this over my more liberal views on Biblical studies. “The seminary ruined you,” I was told. Never mind that the seminary was much more conservative than I am and refused to publish some of my work. They say I was brainwashed into accepting the theory of evolution, never mind that the schools I attended were one and all young earth creationist strongholds.

These folks will look down on someone like Obama because of his Harvard education. That, again, is just plain stupid. If you don’t like his policies, argue against them. If you don’t like his attitude argue against that. But education is a good thing, whether or not you like the opinions of those who graduate. Give them the credit of actually having their own views. Oddly enough, the reason more educated people seem to tend to be more liberal may not be because of brainwashing. (And no, I’m not using “more intelligent.” “More educated” is intentional. I know too many genius level conservatives to say conservatives are less intelligent as a group.)

So I’m in favor of elitism. I like intelligent people. I like educated people. I like people who are willing to apply all that learning and think for themselves. There will be bunches of those on both sides of this election. There will also, unfortunately, be quite a number of stupid, willfully ignorant people.

I call the first group elite; the second group deserves no respect.