MATERIALIST GIRL PARTY:

Much Higher I.Q. (James Bowman, 8/26/2008, American Spectator)

[E]litism to Americans is not a matter of wealth or birth or education. Even in Europe, where that once was true, the elites are not so defined anymore. Nowadays, in the best spirit of American democracy, anyone can be an elitist. All you have to do is believe that you are smarter than other people and that, therefore, the all the other, less-smart people, if they know what's good for them, should be happy to put you in charge of them. They know better than you do how much money you should be making and how you should be making it and what you should be doing with it once you've made it, for example.

Doubtless the elitists' position on all these things is much more intelligent than yours, but -- wouldn't you just know it? -- a majority of Americans have never quite cottoned to having these things decided for them. They'd rather be governed by some pork-rind eating, country-music listening Skull and Bonesman who at least has the basic courtesy to flatter their tastes than by a self-styled intellectual who peers down at them and their regrettable amusements from a lofty height. Mr. Obama may be the grandson of an African goatherd, but he has all the arrogance of a duke -- considerably more than most dukes nowadays, actually -- when it comes to telling you how to live your life.

We can readily see why, then, Senator Obama should have chosen as his running mate a man who on more than one occasion has said of the President of the United States (who belongs to a different party), "This guy is brain-dead." Joe Biden, another Senator who, apart from a couple of years of practicing law, has spent his whole working life in the Senate and who has a senator's idea of "experience" in foreign policy, having run his mouth about it for 36 years, has an "impeccable" working-class background, but he once told a voter that "I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do." Believe me, it doesn't take nearly so much either of brains or of courage as Mr. Kinsley appears to think in order to attack that kind of political imbecility.

Although it has been clear at least since they made their once-hero William Jennings Bryan an object of derision because he was on the Stupid rather than the Bright side of the Scopes Trial, Democrats seem unable to process the fact that in the Puritan Nation elitism isn't a function of rich vs. poor but of Reason vs. Faith.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 26, 2008 6:54 AM