A friend of mine who studies Classics sent me a link to a Rush Limbaugh transcript wherein Limbaugh rants against Classical Studies for thousands of words. I was going to write about it, about how strange it is that the Straussians — who love the study of ancient Greece above all else — have cast their lot in with this culture-hating oxycontin addict, but when I read it more carefully, I was unable to figure out what Limbaugh was trying to say. He likes Victor David Hansen, who studies or purports to study Classics, and he applauded a caller for sending her kids to a Catholic school where they are forced to study Latin.
I was overthinking it, Limbaugh was making fun of the study of Classics because he saw a picture of an OWS supporter who was majoring in Classical Studies. But then he likes Victor David Hansen and Catholic schools, so it’s good when they study or teach the same things.
Likewise, Elias Isquith is right that I overthought my recent anti-Bobo screed about whether Red State non-college grads were Burkean patriots or mooching, looting, strapping young bucks:
Contra DougJ’s guess, I don’t think Brooks is trying to take a swing at slothful or stupid Real Americans. He’s just desperate — as it was always evident the GOP would be — to turn Occupy into humdrum representatives of the liberal elite, alighting the fireworks of culture war in a ham-fisted attempt to distract the nation from its ongoing class-based strife. The representatives of “Red Inequality,” then, are merely collateral damage, their struggles are cited by Brooks in a cynical attempt to claim the moral high ground and implicitly damn Occupiers and the like as petty, envious, and above all narcissistic.
Cleek’s definition of conservatism is the best yet written:
today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today: updated daily.
And a corollary is that today’s conservative rhetoric must oppose whatever liberals want today, updated daily. It’s as simple as that, and persons attempting to find a more complicated motive in the narrative will be prosecuted. I’ll try not to fall into this trap so much anymore.
Jenny
But this has been going on for 40 years, since the Strassians turned to the Nixon brigades for shock troops and various Nixonian resentment strategies to gain power.
Brian S
I’d add another corollary, which is that conservatives want whatever they mistakenly believe will piss off the straw-liberals they’ve invented inside their pointy little heads.
Martin
Straussians, I hate Illinois Straussians.
Villago Delenda Est
My emphasis.
Will the endless Memorial Day weekends at the octoplex from Hell down at the mall never end?
Is there no limit to the projection we must endure from the likes of BoBo?
Henry II had something to say about this sort of fucking dilemma of being beset by troublesome pseudo-intellectual idiots, IIRC.
Digital Amish
For reasons left unexplained, I occasion to hear Limbaugh more frequently than I’d like. Denigrating education (classical and non) is pretty much standard schtick. My guess is that it’s so his regular listeners can relate.
C.J.
It makes things easier, but it also makes politics more depressing. Your choice.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brian S:
This. Absolutely this.
Their minds are closed tight; the light of reason cannot penetrate beyond the event horizon of the “conservative” mind.
At this point, I fear, they are absolutely beyond all hope.
Arclite
Sorry, a bit off topic, but I just thought I’d stick another fork in NY’s Finest:
Papers! Where are your papers! PAPERS!!
Seriously, who knew walking around with no ID could land you in jail. It’s like living in Soviet Russia:
JGabriel
DougJ:
So, if liberals announced that they wanted to lower taxes for the rich, then conservatives would be against it?
I think we’re missing the greed motive here. It’s not enough to oppose liberals — there’s gotta be a profit in it, whether monetary or power.
.
handy
@JGabriel:
No they would just lie about it.
AT
Ancient Greecians were gays who worshipped Zeus, they have nothing worth teaching us.
/christianisted that for you
Janus Daniels
today’s “conservatism” is whatever benefits the richest rich the world has ever known
BonnyAnne
Rush has long hated ladies like myself, because I’ve got a non-traditional marriage (he cooks, I make money), AND I’m a feminist, AND we live in Seattle (how effete and decadent is that?).
Now there’s another way I piss him off every day: my education. I’ve got not 1, but 2 BAs in classics: Classical Studies and Latin.
I’m feeling so smug and pleased, I want to award myself a dumb little prize. The “Limbaugh award for Excellence in Pseudo-Intellectualism” or something.
Stillwater
Doug, you were wondering about The Reactionary Mind a while ago. It’s a good read. It’s basically an elaborate argument justifying exactly what Cleek said so long ago, or at least it is thru the first half.
I think Corey Robin got all his ideas lurking here.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Cleek’s definition of conservatism is the best yet written:
today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today: updated daily.
I so desperately want conservatives NOT to kill themselves in despair if Obama wins a second term. I mean, really, it would make me cry and sob all over the place.
sven
With Cain’s collapse, conservatives have to find a new ABR (anyone but Romney).
Any bets on who it will be?
TPM has some early polling and it looks like it might be….
Newt!
AA+ Bonds
He’s an inhuman monster of a drug addict of a man, of course he hates Western civilization and wants to annihilate the field of studies that birthed the American Revolution
AA+ Bonds
OH HI MY NAME IS JAMES MADISON I WROTE SOME STUFF YOU MAY HAVE READ, I TAKE IT LIKE ME, YOU KNOW TULLY QUITE WELL AS THIS IS GODDAMNED THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
AA+ Bonds
DPS
To speak as a long-time reader and a professor of Classics at an institution that I’m sure has Rush’s automatic contempt:
He has no fucking clue what Classics (the study of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds) is, as evidenced by his invocation of Dickens, who is a couple of millennia (or so) too recent and way too non-Mediterranean.
Instead, he’s railing against students taking degrees that aren’t immediate and obvious training for a particular job within a commercial enterprise. He might as well be bitching about English or History majors, but Classics is apparently what came across his desk today.
For Rush, if a company doesn’t automatically know where you fit into the machine, you’ve wasted your life and deserve whatever you get.
AA+ Bonds
I cannot for the life of me understand the desire to make Americans actively more stupid about the founding of their country.
What does Rush Limbaugh think the Founding Fathers read by candlelight? Maxim or something?
AA+ Bonds
If it isn’t clear,
Classics = The American Revolution
and Rush Limbaugh is, effectively, illiterate.
Bill Murray
@Brian S: the straw liberal is pretty clearly a stereotyped 60s hippie
AA+ Bonds
He thinks Classical Studies include English literature, AHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHA this is absolutely clear evidence that Rush Limbaugh would be actively despised by every last Founding Father, conservative or liberal.
Every Founding Father would look on Rush Limbaugh, and shake his head, and sigh that fools like this would always be with us, lolling drunkenly in the path of American progress.
Jebediah
@AA+ Bonds:
If only that were the worst of that blowhard junkie sex-tourist’s flaws…
AA+ Bonds
Rush Limbaugh should be forced to either learn as much Classics and Latin and Greek and Cicero and Xenophon as the Founding Fathers did, or shut the fuck up about the Founding Fathers forever and never again speak their names
Jebediah
@AA+ Bonds:
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Calouste
@sven:
Newt will be the new non-Romney for a few weeks, and then when he flames out we’ll probably see Palin make a late entry. Must say one thing about the GOP primary voters, they actually do work out that the one candidate after another that they line up as the non-Romney (Trump, Bachmann, Perry, Cain) are absolute blattering idiots, it just takes them six weeks longer than anyone with even half a functioning brain.
I still think it is possible for someone to drop in the race late, ignore the early primaries (they have their delegates cut in half anyway because they start too early) and ride the anti-Romney wave to victory. Anyone with some name recognition would get a lot of free publicity anyway just because of the late entry. Or it could just be that Ron Paul gets to the front of the non-Romney queue at the right moment.
Yevgraf
Cleek’s right on target. About 25 years ago I checked a book out of my law school library titled “the Second American Revolution”, by dominionist douchebag John Rutherford. The purpose of it was (as near as could be gleaned from such a disorganized and vague piece of shit) to inspire the reader to rage at the notion that conservatives could ever be wrong about anything. The tautology expressed was not one where the ideas were explained, but instead the situational conservatism of the moment.
I never did turn it back in (it got lost in the trunk of my car for years), and I wound up paying for it. It sits on my dusty old shelf in my basement, unread by anyone but me.
Lurking Canadian
The Straussian angle isn’t hard to understand. The whole point of being a Straussian is that The Right People should be reading the classics. They don’t care what the rubes read. Indeed it’s probably better if the rubes stay away from Plato, lest they get ideas above their station.
Tom Levenson
@Lurking Canadian: This. The haute conservative idea is authoritarian, with civilized overlords quietly managing affairs that hoi polloi need not/are incapable of concerning themselves with.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lurking Canadian: According to the Straussians, at least as I understand them, it isn’t so much that the peasants would get ideas above their station, it is that the peasants are incapable of understanding the classics and would misinterpret them with tragic and/or horrific results.
Omnes Omnibus
Also too. And I will walk and talk in gardens all wet with rain. And I will never ever, ever, ever grow so old again.
Samara Morgan
@Mastertroll
no.
Conservatism is the defense of the status quo as risk management.
That is why its still popular, because it appeals to peoples FEAR.
Libertarians are crypto-conservatives. They maintain the systems are “too complex” to be understandable, so “experimentation” is required. But experimentation largely devolves into the majority electorate choosing the status quo because it is “safer”…i like to think of this as localized mob rule, or the tyranny of distributed jesusland….it is what delivered the 2010 election results.
And Isqueef is a crypto conservative glibertarian like all of the League of Incredibly Boring Glibertarians.
Samara Morgan
@Calouste: well…..Newt could win.
Christine O’Donnell said a lawngnome can beat Obama in 2012.
Scott P.
Damnunt quod non intellegunt — Cicero.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Stripped of the insane jargon, your explanation is the flip side of cleek’s. Liberals tend to want progress and improvement. Progress and improvement require change. Conservatives tend to fear change. Conservatives oppose progress and improvement. Therefore, conservative oppose what liberals want. In some ways, it has been reduced to a heuristic device on the right.
ETA: Obviously this is a grossly over-simplified explanation.
Samara Morgan
@Mastertroll
Isqeef is never right. Have forgotten when he godwinned you?
You did overthink that though.
The reason is Salam-Douthat stratification on
cognitive abilityIQ.Something no glibertarian or horse-race pundit will EVAH mention.
And something no PC bourgie Ballonjuice Frontpager will EVAH discuss either– because you are all bioluddites on IQ.
:)
Ben Cisco
Brooks is Brooks. If you’ve ever read him, you know what you’re going to get EVERY time you read him. He really is the worst sort of courtesan, a member of the Ferengi media that would gladly watch the country burn so long as his place in it remained undisturbed.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: i can agree with that– but i unpacked the underlying reasons better than cleek– she was just being flip. Her statement is a slogan.
mine is an explanation.
I thot we were against sloganeering?
i cant keep up.
:)
David Derbes
Ben Cisco coined a phrase for the ages: Ferengi media.
I’m off to spread that meme. Thanks!
JoyfulA
Rush just got confused a bit. He heard “Classics” and took it to mean “Liberal Arts,” which sometimes does include a touch of Dickens.
Natasha
“Forced” to study Latin? “Forced” is a little loaded, no? Perhaps DougJ agrees with Rush in his heart of hearts? “Required” might be better, as in “required to study algebra” or “required to study physics.” Or history or art or any number of good things.
There are bad things to be “forced” to learn, but I wouldn’t count Latin among them. There might be more allegedly “practical” things to study, I suppose, but I don’t think anyone’s mind will be irretrievably warped by the required study of one of the Classical languages. Also, too Hebrew and Sanskrit.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Never underestimate the fact that radio hosts need to fill up empty air waves and time. I haven’t listened to Limbaugh in over ten years but even then he was repetitive and boring.
RalfW
I don’t know the book Stillwater refers to, but indeed we are all doing a great disservice – conservatives themselves being the worst offenders – in calling these right-wing reactionaries anything other than reactionary.
They have no policy ideas. They have no positive vision for America. They have no patriotism other than fealty to a flag – just look at how they reacted to Osama, Quaddafi, the successes with drones in taking out Afghani Taliban, etc.
Indeed “today’s conservative rhetoric must oppose whatever liberals want today, updated daily.” But the rot is deeper and more fetid than that. To call it conservative is to destroy what was once a decent name for, and a movement itself, I didn’t really like but didn’t hate either.
And if there’s one thing conservatives are good at, it’s destroying what was once decent. Ergo, they don’t conserve. They don’t deserve the name.
Mr Blifil
Everything about Rush Limbaugh makes sense when you understand he exists to sell lawn sprinklers.
Chris
Fixed that for ya.
The first conservative reaction to the Osama killing I saw was a friend whose Gchat away message changed instantly to “I give full credit to President Bush” – which is more or less what the entire conservative blogosphere was saying within hours.
They’ve got the whole tribalism thing down pat, but their tribe is the Republican Party, not America. All victories have to be creditable to the Republican Party, even in foreign policy where party differences were supposed to “stop at the water’s edge.”
fourmorewars
DougJ apologizes at the end of the post, but his is hardly the most egregious misconnect-with-our-new-reality of the last few days. I’m afraid mistermix has to be singled out, in this post,
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/11/01/lost-it-in-the-sun/
for imagining that word ‘might’ was ‘only to satisfy the editors,’ rather than its being there to give the editors and the entire mainstream media an excuse to drop the matter entirely, no matter its screaming criminality. Also for believing Congress might investigate with intent to pursue any kind of penalties, even if the Democrats were in control.
jayackroyd
These aren’t “free markets.” Dean Baker’s new book The End of Loser Liberalism makes the case for a series of “private sector” segments of the economy which have nothing to do with free markets.
Dean’s my guest tonight at Virtually Speaking. Calling the pharmaceutical monopolies a “free market” is to give the wingnuts a huge, Orwellian advantage in policy discussions. It’s like calling the money center banks laissez faire capitalism.
And don’t get me started on “intellectual property.”
DougJ
@jayackroyd:
I will check out the show tonight.
KeithOK
@Brian S:
Good Example: Saying “Merry Christmas” to liberals in an attempt to enrage them (though they don’t show it we know beneath the surface they are seething and the fact that they can’t show only makes it more satisfying to the conservative well-wisher.
r€nato
@DPS: Rush may not be able to articulate this, but what he and his like-minded ilk want is to turn the university/college experience firstly into a tech school, and secondly into an institution of indoctrination into conservative dogma.
The notion of going to college in order to gain a broad knowledge of the world and learn *how* to think and learn – which will have the byproduct of preparing you to have a career in the real world – is anathema to them.
Those who think for themselves are generally immune to the propaganda and disinformation peddled by the right-wing noise machine. Besides, the more educated one is, the more to the left one tends to be. Stop all that freethinking nonsense in college, and you snuff out future generations of liberals.
r€nato
@Lurking Canadian:
isn’t that… elitist???
Julia Grey
Rush is the “common man” Jefferson warned us about.
McJulie
I have come to suspect that modern conservatism is primarily concerned with making sure that other people get punished. Their burning desire to see others suffer is so extreme and all-consuming that they will allow themselves to suffer a bit as long as they can be assured that somebody not-them is guaranteed to suffer more.
xian
@DPS: I studied Latin in high school and on a college tour my dad asked the docent if they had a good classics program. He said, “Oh yeah, Shakespeare, all that.”
xian
@KeithOK: i think the real subtext is “Saying “Merry Christmas” to
liberalsJews”Bill Arnold
@Brian S:
There is another related corollary, that if it pisses off liberals, it must be good for conservatives. (e.g. if the Progressive outrage machine gets fired up about it.)