intellectual inferiority
Jonathan Chait writes at TNR about conservatives’ “Superiority Complex” with respect to their ideology. He identifies an oddity in the Right’s rhetorical gloating that is isn’t supported by the evidence:
With every Democratic electoral defeat, liberals have been made to endure the added ignominy of listening to every conservative op-ed scribbler and think-tank denizen lecture us on our intellectual deficiencies.These days, of course, the Republican Party has been routed and conservatives are beset by panic and gloom. You'd think this would, at minimum, give us a small respite from boasts about the right's victory in the War of Ideas. But no. They're still at it.
When the subject turns to Iraq, Chait makes this observation:
…it's certainly true that conservatives today are more divided than liberals about whether the Iraq war has been a fiasco. I simply disagree about what this fact tells us. Conservatives see their split on this proposition as evidence of intellectual acuity. I see it as evidence that roughly half of all conservatives are barking mad.
While I appreciate the snark, his conclusion is even better:
What explains the right's insufferable need to declare philosophical victory at all times? In part, it reflects the natural insecurity that comes with being conservative in a scholarly milieu. If I were an academic or a writer who made his living defending a party that routinely wins elections by appealing to rabid anti-intellectualism, I'd be a little defensive, too.But it also reflects the fact that conservatism is more of an ideological movement than liberalism. […] Like communists, conservatives have a tendency to believe that every question can be answered by referencing theory. […] I admit that liberals don't generally look to our intellectual forebears to tell us whether the Iraq war is going well. But, then, we don't have to. We can read the newspaper.