A reader, "Rural Counsel," offered this deeply American comment on my post yesterday about Elite Northeast Conservatives:
I think it boils down to a rural versus urban mindset. Or in a related concept, to the old social classes. There was a time that conservative meant "wealthy." Prep school. Ivy League.
Those days are long gone. Conservative now contains the best of American independence and stubborness, self-reliance and work ethic, individualistic. And that, my friends, describes most folks who make a living off the farms and ranches across that "flyover" country.
Elitism doesn't cut it any more. We've seen that electing elites doesn't get us good government. Intellect is nice, but it doesn't fill the bill. We need more grit and temperment than we do PhD dissertations. These self-anointed conservative intelligentsia are about as outdated as the Electoral College; they need to get the chip off their shoulders and become a little more egalitarian.
I may spend my first and last hour of the day out in the barn feeding and watering cattle. I may clean stalls and spread manure on my fields. I sweat every summer getting my hay crop in, and take the chainsaws out in the woods in the fall to cut my firewood for the winter. I'm more likely to be welding on equipment or changing the bearings on the kicker on my baler than I am to be reading the NYT or National Review. I'd rather be taking my kids out to target shoot than being in the "know" about inside politics.
But you know what? I've got three engineering degrees (2 from MIT) and a law degree. I don't need to be told what to think. Just point out the facts; I can draw my own conclusions.
I've met plenty of folks with Ivy League degrees, and they aren't particularly better or brighter than the blue collar guys I used to work with in the chemical plants. And frankly, they aren't as nice. Or as trustworthy.
We don't need first class intellect and second class temperment in the Executive Office. Common sense and a "show me" attitude are the right tools.
We should vote for someone that we'd be comfortable sharing a foxhole with, not someone with the biggest stack of diplomas. Because the important part of the job is a lot closer to picking a business partner than it is picking a college president.
This reader sounds a lot like me: A chain-saw, pick-up truck and single malt Conservative - but I am a blue-blood and an Ivy Leaguer too, for whatever it's worth, these days: not too much. Which is for the best, probably, although it does enrich one's life in subtle and private ways.
