Dare to be stupid

Via Roy Edroso at Alicublog with are treated to the utterly unironic call to arms for conservatives not to be intimidated by smarter, more educated people than themselves. This tendency toward Forrest Gumpism is hardly surprising given that the current crop of nativist conservatives are the direct intellectual descendants of the "Know-nothings" and the current administration's motto, despite Bush's intention to be the "edumacation president", is the most hostile to science, reason and fancy book-learning since, well...possibly Andrew Jackson, but at least Old Hickory, for all his faults, recognized the danger posed by corporations.

From Alicublog, first quoting then analyzing Lee Harris' original paean to thickheadedness:

In a world that absurdly overrates the advantage of sheer brain power, no one wants to be seen as a member in good standing of the stupid party. Yet stupidity has been and will always remain the best defense mechanism against the ordinary conman and the intellectual dreamer, just as Odysseus found that stuffing cotton in his ears was his best defense against beguiling but fatal song of the sirens.

That's the close; the rest doesn't illuminate it much. Smart people will attempt to "pull the wool over the eyes of the rest of us," and though "the intellectual conservative of our day excels in good arguments," he must not use them to defend propositions such as (to use Harris' own example) resistance to gay marriage, because he might get out-argued by the smart alecks.

When the leading candidates for the party's presidential nomination all publicly state that they don't believe in evolution, can there really be any doubt that John Stuart Mill was right in calling conservatives the Stupid Party?

Crossposted from the woodshed