At the recent convention of Republican/Tea-Party “Values
Voters”, Rich Santorum sniveled that social conservatives will never get a fair
hearing in “the media” (a clip that was no doubt a hit on the Republican
house-organ known as Murdoch Fox "News"), then went on to say something revealing:
We
will never have the elite -- smart
people on our side.
The italics represent the intonation of the original (heard
on the radio).
First, let us note:
Such an attitude is self-fulfilling. The more the Republicans denouce “smart people” as
such, the further they will firm up their impressive monopoly on morons.
Second, a linguistic sidelight. We earlier commented on the well-documented phenomenon, of
words originally coined as insults
being bravely adopted by their targets, and -- given fairly blameless
behavior by the targeted groups, in what followed -- the words eventually
becoming referential and emotionally neutral: Tory, Quaker, and the like. Now, this newish trend among rightwing
Republicans (a descriptive phrase
that may eventually fuse to
a single word: rightwingrepublican) is the converse of
that: You start with a perfectly
neutral (or even positively-toned) word, and chant it over and over, with
enough venom, that it becomes a hate-word for your clique. This has happened notably with the term
liberal -- a word etymologically related
to liberty, and which for hundreds of
years connoted ‘tolerant, generous’ (as in: “with a liberal hand”). And now, it might happen with smart.
Allow me quickly to confess, that I have myself done
something superficially similar on this site, by carefully cultivating, in post
after post, the term Nominalist as a term of abuse. The difference is:
(1) No-one stupid enough to fall for the
“chant-it-to-hate-it” approach has even heard of the term “Nominalist” (which
has its home in medieval Christian theology, with stray surviving technical
contemporary uses that do not overbrim the boundaries of Anglo-American
analytic philosophy), nor have the least idea what I am talking about, on this
subject or any other;
(2) It’s funny, folks -- satire -- metapolitics -- phree-phloating philosophy.
Anyhow, back to politics: I am myself, as it happens, a Values Voter; and some of the Values I value
are: competence, intelligence,
honesty, humility, flexibility …
These we do not find in the current crop of upstart TeaPublicans.
In terms of adherence to traditional Christian family
values, I am so Attilic as to be a likely vir
non gratus in the tearooms of Bryn Mawr, as you can easily verify here:
But I would not vote for Romney-Ryan, Perry-Palin, or
Beelzebub-Tr…. T-T-Trrr.. (omigosh, it’s sticking in my throat) T-T-T-T-T-TRrrrrrrrrrr ….. (ukhh!
the foul taste of the name!
it’s enough to make you barf -- omigosh -- it’s about to come out, in a
stream of projectile vomiting)
Donald
TRR-RR-RRUMPP-P !!!
-- wouldn’t vote for such trash though you paid me or slayed me.
[Update 18 Sept 2012]
Another Value I rather value
is not posing as a squeaky-clean family man while associating closely with utter scumbags:
Romney "47
Percent" Fundraiser Host: Hedge Fund Manager Who Likes Sex Parties
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