Pat Schroeder and Robert Brandon: Conservatives Are Still Dumb

Let's take a moment to provide some context for our headline.

A few years back, a Duke University professor raised hackles by stating bluntly what a majority of intellectuals already assume: Conservatives largely avoid academia because they are stupid. Daniel Pipes provides the context here:

How do American faculty see politics? When professors are asked about their political outlook, they call themselves liberal about four times more often than the general public. In some departments (English literature most of all, followed by philosophy, political science, and religious studies) over 80 percent of the faculty calls itself liberal and under 5 percent calls itself conservative. This disparity has prompted "a substantial shift to the left" since the mid-1980s, and is still increasing.

Why are faculties so liberal? Conservatives complain of endemic political bias. Liberals retort that conservatives are dumb. In the memorable words of Robert Brandon, chair of Duke's philosophy department, "We try to hire the best, smartest people available. If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire."

Brandon was roundly blasted for this on the Web and even by Duke student conservatives, and seemed rather shocked by it all. He eventually "clarified" his comments in a Duke publication. Which for a leftist means adopting a superior, condescending attitude, evading the argument, changing the topic, and accusing conservatives of inexplicable bias themselves. The opener:

After two days of venomous, hate-filled emails from self-described "conservatives", I am convinced that there is a large group of people in this country who are not at all interested in a calm rational discussion of the issues raised by the recent ad in The Chronicle taken out by the Duke Conservative Union. However in the hopes that there are a larger number of people more interested in the issues, and less interested in spitting venom, I would like to clarify the comments attributed to me in The Chronicle article of February 10.

Of course, nothing Brandon had said earlier about conservatives was "venomous" in the least. Actually, he was just trying to be funny, and those dumb, knuckle-dragging conservatives were too dopey to get it:

In my response to the Chronicle reporter I gave a quote from John Stuart Mill that I thought was quite funny. I now see that humor is not much appreciated in this context.

Gosh, who knew? Humor is generally not appreciated when it is not funny. Brandon's error here was not that he lacked a sense of humor. His error was to express an absolute truth, something leftists generally avoid at all costs. He stated pretty much what most of his colleagues believe about conservatives 24/7. He does dissemble in his response later on, claiming that there's certainly no liberal bias in the philosophy department where he teaches. He carefully avoids statistics, however, blithely assuming we will just accept his authority, which we don't.

The gist of his observation—we can hardly call it an argument— is that the rest of the academic departments get a pass, since he can't speak for them. Of course, he secretly knows they're all leftists like him. But, by casually letting himself off the hook because he has no personal hand in their hiring situations, he smoothly glides out of range. "Who, me?" Pretty slick, actually. But also intellectually dishonest.

But back in the philosophy department, he breezily assures his readers

None of us would want such a bias to be there, and in virtually all cases there is no mechanism for it to be there.

Note the largely passive construction of this sentence. It reminds me of the politicians' favorite phrase when caught in flagrante in some embarrassing illegality: "Mistakes were made." We don't know who made them or how they happened, but those mistakes just suddenly materialized. The damnedest thing.

The killer phrase above is "in virtually all cases, there is no mechanism for it to be there." Right. "There" is no "mechanism." There are merely X professors on a hiring team who autonomically ferret out closet conservatives during the interview process and routinely blackball them. This is the way they avoid any challenges to their absolute authority. It also eliminates the inconvenience of having a non-Marxist on the junior faculty who might point out their consistently faulty reasoning. Their reflex ensures a conservative won't get hired. But there's "no mechanism." It just happens. "Mistakes are made."

Besides, according to Brandon, this is all a lot of silliness anyway, and conservative students should just grow up:

If conservative Duke students object to being taught by liberal professors, there is not much they can do about in the short term. But over the longer haul they could change the political landscape of leading research universities. Study hard, do well in school, go on to get a Ph. D. and get yourself a job teaching at a university. But if you do you might find that political indoctrination is not what really animates academic life.

This conclusion is actually probably the funniest thing Brandon has expressed to this point. Let's rephrase it, just to make sure you get the joke:

If conservative Duke students object to being taught by liberal professors, who almost certainly constitute over 90% of our faculty although we'll never admit it, there is not much they can do about in the short term. Or the long term for that matter. But over the longer haul they could learn to cave in to reality and help us assure that the political landscape of leading research universities remains Marxist throughout the 21st century. Study hard, parrot your leftist professors' Marxist bias in all that you write, do well in school (which you will if you do this), go on to get a Ph. D. and get yourself a job teaching at a university, which you will if you do as we say. If you do you might find that political indoctrination is not what really animates academic life. Because it doesn't need to. Because all its opponents have been exiled from academia. And because you've caved in and accepted your fate. And because you have, at last, truly learned to love Big Brother.

The furor over this nonsense has largely died down by now, although Brandon's statement is still a favorite among conservatives who are still rather shocked that a left-wing academic was actually caught admitting the truth.

But just so we don't forget how pervasive Brandon's attitude is amongst the intellectualoids, former Congressperson Pat Schroeder has stepped up to the podium to do him one better.

Liberals read more books than conservatives. The head of the book publishing industry's trade group says she knows why—and there's little flattering about conservative readers in her explanation.

"The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes,'" Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. "It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page."

Schroeder, who as a Colorado Democrat was once one of Congress' most liberal House members, was responding to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found people who consider themselves liberals are more prodigious book readers than conservatives.

She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who "can't say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion."

Hey, look, is it their fault that they're so much brighter than you or I? Needless to say

The book publishing industry is predominantly liberal, though conservative books by authors like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and pundit Ann Coulter have been best sellers in recent years. Overall, book sales have been flat as publishers seek to woo readers lured away by the Internet, movies and television.

Surprisingly, the AP writer gives the White House types a shot back at Schroeder:

Rove, President Bush's departing political adviser, is known as a prodigious reader. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Schroeder was "confusing volume with quality" with her remarks.

"Obfuscation usually requires a lot more words than if you simply focus on fundamental principles, so I'm not at all surprised by the loquaciousness of liberals," he said.

"As head of a book publishing association, she probably shouldn't malign any readers," said Mary Matalin, a GOP strategist who oversees a line of books by conservative authors, Threshold, at Simon & Schuster. Matalin said conservatives and others aren't necessarily reading less, but are getting more information online and from magazines.

It gets funnier. Schroeder is basing her idiotic observation on the following poll results:

Among those who had read at least one book, liberals typically read nine books in the year, with half reading more than that and half less. Conservatives typically read eight, moderates five.

In other words, according to this AP-Ipsos poll, liberals and conservatives in fact read roughly the same number of books per annum. It's the moderates, actually, who look like the dummies here. But what the heck. Schroeder is an arch-leftist. Therefore, whatever she says is therefore true. Who are we to point out her logical flaws?

Although we're used to it by now, it's absolutely breathtaking how little the average leftist really knows about the planet we live on and the people and creatures who inhabit it. First Brandon and now Schroeder publicly make fools out of themselves and have absolutely no idea they're doing so. Criticism is useless with people such as these. They are so righteous and so accustomed to not being questioned that they simply breeze right by the countless individuals who daily eviscerate their feeble arguments and put-downs of those who are not in lock-step with the various shades of Marxism that they preach.

Further, with regard to Schroeder, she perhaps fails to grasp why the publishers, the dying industry she represents, are falling by the wayside. Not only do they fail to provide advertising support to fast-disappearing newspaper review sections, themselves seriously endangered. They largely fail to publish books that appeal to the roughly 2/3 of this nation that are not card-carrying socialists, which actually includes a lot of Democrats.

Increasingly, independent minded individuals, tires of the propaganda being fed to them by academia, the publishing industry, and the MSM, are seeking their news and views on the Internet where the MSM and the publishing and academic gatekeepers have been unable to stamp out the opposition. In other words, if the average conservative reads one less book than his lefty counterpart, that might just be because he's seeking unbiased information on the Internet.

Pat and her publishing pals are slowly achieving the oblivion they deserve. By ignoring a substantial portion of their potential readership, they have driven it somewhere else. The change is becoming permanent, and none of them yet has a clue.