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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (116865)	5/28/2005 7:32:27 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793604

Seriously, I get this. But I also get that there's this great big red (what they used to call) inferiority complex out there that seeps into everything. And it really has nothing to do with the main point of this essay. It's just an expression of angst and hatred and a bonding exercise. I think it's non-constructive to foster this counter-productive attitude plus the distraction weakens his argument. The anti-Smarties are every bit as bad as the anti-Bushies. Much turns, don't you agree, on whether the "anti-Smarties" are just displaying a kind of hick jealousy and antagonism to the Smarties' superior knowledge, or whether they are reacting within reason to the Smarties' arrogance and assumptions of superiority? Also, much does turn, I think, on a cultural divide you don't seem to recognize at all - the division between those who see the world in moral terms and those who do not; who think it is narrow and bigoted to even try to do so. Smartland does not recognize the existence of a war or enemies; it cringes whenever Bush uses the word "evil." Smartland was perfectly exemplified by the chummy little chat Charlie Rose and Michael Isikoff had the other night as to whether Newsweek would take any lasting damage from the Koran-flushing story. (Isikoff thought not). Whether America would take any lasting damage was not a question that entered the discussion. Orson Scott Card may be quite far to the Right, but he is no fool. Neither is Victor Davis Hanson, who brings an extraordinary amount of wattage to a career that spans both Smartland and non-Smartland territory: academic and farmer. Both these men tell me that it is Smartland that has seceded from America as traditionally defined. I don't believe that we can just dismiss this message as something born of "of angst and hatred and a bonding exercise."