Liberal Misunderstanding

The New Republic is one of the more thoughtful liberal journals. Indeed, it may be the most thoughtful. Noam Scheiber is a senior editor at TNR. Therefore the rank misunderstanding of conservatives highlighted by one passage in a recent Scheiber article there reveals something more significant, I think, than purely individual idiosyncrasy.

…. Contrary to the widely repeated axiom that conservatives wanted Bush to appoint a “strict constructionist,” most rank-and-file conservatives don’t really care about legal philosophies. They care about their political objectives, such as abortion and gay marriage. Finally, while conservative evangelicals may oppose affirmative action when it favors minorities, they don’t oppose it in principle the way conservative elites do. In fact, they’re all for it when they stand to benefit. In a Fox News interview on Monday, Dobson hailed Miers as the first evangelical nominee in decades.

It may well be true that “most rank-and-file conservatives don’t really care about legal philosophies” any more than rank-and-file liberals do (though I tend to doubt it), but the charge of hypocrisy that follows is, I believe, offensively false.

First, notice the implicit, and false, equation of “rank-and-file conservatives” with “conservative evangelicals.” Later the rank-and-file-evangelicals are referred to as “hinterland conservatives.” As Scheiber apparently sees it, the world of conservatism has only two constituent groups: “Eastern seabord,” “Beltway” conservatives, i.e., “conservative elites [who] are frequently as credentialist, even snobbish, as the liberal elites they scorn”; and a bunch of Bible-thumping rank-and-filers in the “hinterland.”

Second, Scheiber claims that the evangelical rank-and-file hinterlanders don’t really oppose affirmative action in principle. They oppose it when it helps minorities, obviously because they are all racist, but they don’t oppose it when they benefit, as evidenced by James Dobson’s celebration of “Miers as the first evangelical nominee in decades.” In other words (actually, the same words), selecting a person for some position who is a member of an evangelical church is affirmative action for evangelicals!

This, of course, is ridiculous. But anyone who takes Scheiber seriously here will have to conclude that liberals don’t support affirmative action in principle — otherwise, they’d support the preferential selection of evangelicals as well as minorities.

Scheiber, not surprisingly, equally misunderstands the “conservative elites.” His article is entitled “Merit Scholars,” and the core of his argument is that

conservative elites are frequently as credentialist, even snobbish, as the liberal elites they scorn. Many conservative pundits and wonks attended top schools, read highbrow publications, and belong to exclusive professional societies. They firmly believe that elite credentials signify merit. This has important implications. For example, one of the reasons conservative elites are offended by affirmative action is that they equate it (wrongly, it turns out, but not preposterously) with a relaxation of standards. In their minds, in fact, cronyism and affirmative action are equivalent, since both undercut meritocracy for political reasons. “It’s not just that Miers has zero judicial experience,” wrote commentator Michelle Malkin. “It’s that she’s so transparently a crony/’diversity’ pick.”

But Scheiber here denies that even “conservative elites” have principled objections to affirmative action, objections based on the principle that colorblind non-discrimination is good and that distributing burdens and benefits on the basis of race, sex, or religion is bad.

No, according to Scheiber even the “conservative elites” only seem to object to affirmative action in principle. In fact, he charges, they object only because it offends their belief in meritocracy.

Baloney.

Say What? (1)

  1. LTEC October 6, 2005 at 10:58 pm | | Reply

    Nobody “equates” affirmative action to the relaxation of standards, since there are obviously ways of relaxing standards that are not affirmative action. Less obviously, there are ways — at least in principle — of doing affirmative action without relaxing standards (although I think this is very rare in practice).

    But to the extent that affirmative action is accomplished by giving preferences of some sort, then the standards which would otherwise have been in effect must have been relaxed in some way. If Scheiber feels that something other than merit has been relaxed, he should tell us what it was.

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