DADvocate

A few days ago, George Will wrote an insightful column on elitist Obama and the elitist movement in the Democratic Party. Will traces the roots of the elitist movement back to Adlai Stevenson and Stevenson's run for the presidency in 1952 and 1956.

When a supporter told Adlai Stevenson, the losing Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, that thinking people supported him, Stevenson said, "Yes, but I need to win a majority." When another supporter told Stevenson, "You educated the people through your campaign," Stevenson replied, "But a lot of people flunked the course." Michael Barone, in "Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan," wrote: "It is unthinkable that Roosevelt would ever have said those things or that such thoughts ever would have crossed his mind." Barone added: "Stevenson was the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class American culture -- the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting."

You can easily see the "I'm right and if you don't agree or understand, you're stupid/evil attitude" so common in today's liberals.

But even more so does Will sum up the current elitist liberal attitude.

The emblematic book of the new liberalism was "The Affluent Society" by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. He argued that the power of advertising to manipulate the bovine public is so powerful that the law of supply and demand has been vitiated. Manufacturers can manufacture in the American herd whatever demand the manufacturers want to supply. Because the manipulable masses are easily given a "false consciousness" (another category, like religion as the "opiate" of the suffering masses, that liberalism appropriated from Marxism), four things follow:

First, the consent of the governed, when their behavior is governed by their false consciousnesses, is unimportant. Second, the public requires the supervision of a progressive elite which, somehow emancipated from false consciousness, can engineer true consciousness. Third, because consciousness is a reflection of social conditions, true consciousness is engineered by progressive social reforms. Fourth, because people in the grip of false consciousness cannot be expected to demand or even consent to such reforms, those reforms usually must be imposed, for example, by judicial fiats.

Essentially, the elitist liberal's position is because I'm more educated/intelligent/insightful/aware then you I have the right to impose my belief system and government on you.

Read some of the comments at this liberal blog to get a good feel of the elitist attitudes.

Re. when people vote their pocketbooks, they vote Republican. They want to be rich and beautiful and drive nice cars and live in big houses just like Republicans. They don't want to be living in Section 8 housing on welfare and foodstamps handed out by Democrats. Besides, Republicans are better businessmen (emphasis on men). They will know how to fix things.

Plus, they won't vote for Democrats because they will raise taxes (it's guaranteed, just ask any Republican) to pay for frivolous stuff like education and health care that creates a smart, healthy work force that is good for business and attracts investment. That kind of stuff is too complicated. A check in the mail from the U.S. Treasury, now THAT'S something a fellow can hold in his hand and understand, before spending it at Wal-Mart.

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Ha!

Most politicians get in trouble for lying.

Barack Obama gets in trouble for telling the truth.

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All of this didn't start in a vacuum. It started in 1972 with Roe vs Wade. And the case can be made that it even started earlier following Goldwater's defeat in '64. That was when the Conservative think tanks started going and in '72 they glummed on the abortion/ERA topics. The book by Thomas Frank "What's the Matter With Kansas" does an excellent job of documenting how the Right did this by aptly manipulating the social and religous concerns/fears of small town America.

Yep. The poor ignorant masses are putty in the hands of the master manipulators of the vast right wing conspiracy.

A sure bet is that Barack middle name Obama has spent very little time in small town America during his lifetime. Showing through clearly in his San Francisco speech is that he has no idea what small town Americans are like. He's probably read accounts by elitist snobs like himself and believes Deiverance and Macon County Line are accurate portrayals of Southerners and small towns. He's read the account in the big town newspapers that love to publish belittling news of small towns.

Are small town people bitter? No. Bitter is not the right word. Resentful better fulfills the need. People I know in my small town are resentful that rich big wig politicians keep promising everything and delivering nothing. They are resentful that idiotic Senators and Representatives promote corn ethanol that drives up food prices when anyone with half a brain could see that outcome. They are resentful that the government increasingly encroaches on their rights.

They are resentful that they are labeled as bigots and racists when they object to illegal aliens taking their jobs. They are resentful because they have watched their jobs outsourced due to free trade agreements.

They are resentful that they are ridiculed by elitists for their religious faith or for practicing the thousand year old tradition of hunting and fishing or for owning a gun for whatever purpose. The Constitution doesn't specify that guns may only be owned for a particular purpose.

Some people don't want to live in suburbs with $300,000 houses. Some people don't want to live in big cities. Some people want to live in small towns where every where they go they see a friend, where every where they go they get a smile and a friendly, genuine handshake. Or out in the country where, looking out the back window, they see a creek or a farm that provides food for those elitist snobs.

People from large cities may think they understand small town or country life. I doubt they do. Moving to my small town from a metropolitan area of nearly 500,000 where I grew up, it took me 10 years to become fully adjusted. Now I'd rather live here in a tent than in a mansion in the city. Plus, I'm much less likely to run into an elitist liberal snob in small town America.