countering the "condescension" charge
The "liberal condescension" piece that I looked at here got a much fuller analysis by Paul Rosenberg at OpenLeft, in a six-part series subtitled "Projection and conservative victimology on parade:" Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and
Part 6. Rosenberg notes that "a careful reading reveals a welter of different forms of deceit woven together in his narrative...precisely the sort of sweeping, undifferentiated argument against liberalism as a whole that he accuses liberals of making against conservatives:"
As such it is a classic example of projection, based simply on direct examination of the argument presented. [...] ...this projection is an example of conservative victomology, in which relatively minor-even imagined-slights suffered by conservatives are magnified to gigantic proportions, in total denial of the fact that others suffer on similar grounds to a much larger degree. Since conservatives believe they are (or are aligned with) the natural, unquestionable leaders of society, and are morally superior to others, the asymmetrical nature of their perceptions of injury directly follows from their presumptions of moral superiority.
Citing page after page of example after example, Rosenberg thoroughly demolishes Alexander's argument before delivering the coup de grace that "liberals care about ideas in a way that conservatives generally do not:"
This goes back all the way to the Enlightenment--or even the Renaissance, if not earlier--with liberals pushing for the exploration and development of new ideas, and conservatives warning that it will all end in ruin. Conservatives, OTOH, care a great deal about loyalty, hierarchy, tradition, and running things, which also tends to make them rather keen on wars, and fighting in general, as opposed to sit down together with others and trying to work things out--which also, of course, involves thinking. No doubt Alexander would find this statement "condescending" on my part, but there's an enormous literature out there backing this up. For centuries now, conservatives have tended to rally round churches, the military, the landed aristocracy and other owners of property, while liberals have rallied round educational, artistic and scientific institutions. It's only natural that liberal think-tanks should be more university-like, while conservative think-tanks are more Vatican-like... as in going to war against the Reformation. [...] Alexander can try all he wants to characterize this as a liberal narrative based on condescension--but first he has to deal with the inconvenient fact that it's largely true.
Jamison Foser has some much briefer remarks at MediaMatters, observing that Alexander's argument is "filled with more holes than a donut shop" and is essentially an enumeration of "liberal criticisms of conservatives, which he mistakes for condescension:"
Those criticisms can, of course, be made in ways that are condescending. But that isn't what Alexander argues -- he argues that they are inherently condescending. They aren't -- not unless we want to rob the word of all meaning.
Conservatives will, as is human nature, try to deflect attention from their errors by various means--including acting like victims when they get called out. I would suggest that a better solution is simply to be wrong less often. Ignoring the substance of liberal arguments (are they true?) in favor of complaining about their style (are they palatable?) does not reflect well on conservatism, and do not bode well for its resurgence in the foreseeable future.
How's that for condescension?