> I recall having a conversation with an economist from the South Africa central bank - a person of fairly conservative persuasion, but unlike US conservative - totally lacking the anti-intellectual or liberal-bashing shrill that is so characteristic of the US political discourse. This contrast helped me to realize that much of the so-called US conservatism is not really about a political philosophy of any kind, but sheer demagoguery directed at the perceived enemies and discrediting them by labeling them "elitist." Thomas Frank captured that phenomenon quite accurately in his _What's the matter with Kansas?_
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Something should be kept in mind, though. If you had said this 80 or 100 or 150 years ago, everyone would instantly recognize the phenomenon you're talking about (anti-intellectual demagogy etc.), but they would be baffled at the notion that it was characteristic of American conservatism. The opposite was true. It was precisely the people then thought of as the "conservatives" of the day who were always the *targets* of this kind of politics. The practitioners were almost always Democrats (and this was a thoroughly national phenomenon, not just in the South). If you want to understand where this kind of politics comes from, why it persists, etc., it's important to recognize that while it has always been there, it has definitively *migrated* to the conservative end of the political spectrum, and that this is relatively new.
SA