Glibness, Inteligence, and Palin

Daisy (my girlfriend) has informed me that many of her friends, most of them Smith graduates, believe me to be a "radical republican" based on my outspoken views on the election.  Given my vocal opposition to the expansion of government, our large military, non-defensive wars, the war on drugs, legislating morality, protectionism, nationalism, anti-immigration sentiment, . . . the list goes on; this is incredibly comical to me.  Then again, because I consider the vast majority of my acquaintances intelligent, yet find that the vast majority of them seem to be completely enamored with Barack Obama, a politician so vile and self serving I would hesitate to allow him near my children or relatives let alone vote him into a position of power over me; I do tend to harp more on the failings of the left than the failings of the right.  Recognizing this necessary bias, here is some more evidence of my radical republicanism: I agree with Todd Zywicki's defense of Sarah Palin's intelligence. His central point:

Some thoughtful people simply have a tendency to confuse intelligence with the ability to be glib, or more precisely, to bs. And I think that is much of what it comes down to--if Palin doesn't know the answer to a question, she just isn't that good at making something up.

I think this can be fleshed out a little more.  Many on the left went to colleges and universities dominated by leftist professors.  They learned to parrot the views of their professors without thinking deeply about the views they had adopted.  At the same time they came to the conclusion that their view were a result of this education.  That they believed the same things as their professors, and their professors were really thoughtful, even if their understanding of the arguments involved were only sufficiently developed to return an A-/B+ on the final exam, was evidence that their views were the intelligent ones.  The corollary is that those with whom they disagreed, weren't as much in opposition as ignorant.  That if only those in the flyover states had read the books they have read, or had received the education they had received, there would be no disagreement.

If this is the position from which one approaches politics, the glib BS artist will sound more intelligent.  By forming academic sounding sentences, using adverbs, and uttering vaguely progressive sounding words, the BS artist is able to bring the thoughtless leftist back to his or her college days.  "Ah, this is the person I should parrot,  they have thought about their views and sound intelligent, this is the right point of view to adopt and pass off as my own."  One moment from last weeks debate struck me as particularly illustrative of this point.  In response to a question about appointing judges in the context of Roe v. Wade, Obama uttered the following nonsense:

I am somebody who believes that Roe versus Wade was rightly decided. I think that abortion is a very difficult issue and it is a moral issue

To be clear, Roe v. Wade was NOT decided on moral grounds.  It was not decided that the unborn were not rights-bearers in the moral sense.  The court in fact decided not to answer the moral question at all and instead decided to rule on privacy grounds.  If one believes that abortion is a moral issue, and that abortion is morally permissible, the emanations and penumbras from which the court fashioned the right to privacy would be the WRONG way to decide the case.  For a constitutional law professor, the inability to answer this one without mixing up the facts of one of the most important cases of the last century is damning evidence of incompetence or agenda.

Then again, if you are the type of coastal elite leftist who I describe above, the answer would be great comfort.  "He holds similar views to my own on abortion, he speaks confidently, and uses words like 'referendum', he is intelligent and his views are the ones I will adopt."  Unfortunately, for those who can see through the BS, in this case those who might have actually read Roe v. Wade, his willingness to spout nonsense is evidence not of his intelligence, but an impeachment thereof.

Update:

So, now that the election is over, more stories come out.  I still think Zywicki's points regarding the difference between being smart and being glib apply to Biden and to a lesser extent Obama.  Also, I think we need to take these charges from the staffers of a recently routed campaign with a grain of salt (I can't believe she didn't know whether Africa was a country or a continent).  Notwithstanding all of that, to the extent this is true it says very little of whoever was managing McCain's campaign.

Comments

[A Leftist Professor-Type Who Found Your Blog By Googling]

You're right: your girlfriend's Smithie friends are wrong. You're not a radical Republican (you just seem to be a rightist Libertarian) but you sure are a rabid Republican. But frankly, I don't think her friends were concerned about your underlying philosophy, they were probably put off by your highly polemical style of discussing your views.

I'm a liberal Democrat, and nearly done with my Ph.D. in U.S. History. I have a number of Republican and conservative friends who also seem to share your basic ideological view point. (Believe it or not, I actually met a couple good conservative friends in graduate school!) I've had some great conversations about our competing visions of the nature of free will, the role of the state, and the social contract. (Talking about the election is more charged, so we usually avoid the topic.) These are all highly educated folks, many of whom went to better colleges than I did. And yet they respect that my views are my own and they do not condescendingly assume that my views were forced down my throat by my professors. Why exactly do you have so little intellectual respect for those who disagree with you?