“Intellectual Enlightenment” and Liberalism

Tom Chivers of the UK Telegraph, in a recent column, made the statement that, if a Republican wins the White House this November, science will lose. Mr. Chivers tries to make the case that conservatives, in general, do not share the same level of “enlightenment” possessed by liberals. This extreme level of condescension that typifies liberals is one that has been with us for a very long time. But what exactly makes liberals think that they have a monopoly on enlightenment?

In his article, Mr. Chivers states that, “Fifty-two percent of Republican voters reject the theory of evolution.” So what? What does belief in evolution have to do with the workings of government? Does one’s acknowledgement of Darwin’s theory automatically qualify one to lead a group of people and control the pursestrings of a nation? Since when has a correlation been established between one’s belief in evolution – or not – and one’s understanding of economics or the intricacies of international diplomacy? Perhaps Mr. Chivers would care to explain to us – the unenlightened – why there does, in fact, seem to be a direct correlation between the aforementioned enlightenment and a propensity to espouse the principles of socialism. Why do those that favor the confiscation of other people’s money through various schemes of wealth redistribution seem to be – or at least present themselves to be – the enlightened ones?

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Mr. Chivers also brings up the issue of global warming (now known as “climate change”) and the fact that Republicans, for the most part, have refused to buy into the scam. Mr. Chivers fails to acknowledge that the global warming issue has been exposed as being a fraud of epic proportions. The reality is that cap & trade policies so revered by the left are nothing more than schemes to facilitate worldwide redistribution of wealth as industrialized nations are penalized and forced to make reparations to third-world nations. Does it come as any surprise, then, that the intellectual elitists are squarely in the corner of the global warming crowd?

The intelligentsia – the elitists in our nation’s institutions of higher learning – are, almost without exception, left-leaning in their political ideologies

The intelligentsia – the elitists in our nation’s institutions of higher learning – are, almost without exception, left-leaning in their political ideologies. What makes these individuals feel that they are eminently qualified to set our national policies with regard to anything? The problem is that they seem to believe that they are qualified to set policies with regard to everything – everything from school curricula to taxes to environmental control to foreign policy and everything in between. Our current president is, without a doubt, in his mind anyway, the elite of the elitists and his resume includes, of course, "college professor". Is it mere coincidence that the enlightened ones feel a moral imperative to take money from those that have earned it and bestow it upon those that have not? It could be argued that the enlightened ones, in concert with complicit broadcast and print media, have gotten us to where we are today as a nation today – nearly sixteen trillion dollars in debt with no end in sight. Do we have a better-educated nation than we had thirty years ago when the spending binge was a mere shadow of its present self? Based upon the percentage of high school students that actually earn diplomas, the answer to that is “no”. It is nearly universally agreed that the quality of public education in the US is dismal – and not improving – even though we have been, for decades, pouring billions upon billions of tax dollars into the coffers of education. Which takes us back to the article by Mr. Chivers. Is it not rather odd that the level of presumed "enlightenment" of a group of people is directly proportional to the degree to which that group espouses confiscating other people's money? Perhaps it is not odd at all - especially when considering the big-government mindset of the liberal.