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Today, Jesse Singal wrote an opinion for the New York Times where he argued that Trump defunding youth gender research was a bad thing, despite the terrible research coming out of that part of science. He thinks that reform is in order, not slash-and-burn practices. In my opinion, there is definitely enough research out there by now that you can confidently release something like a Cass Report without anything new. Certainly, funding bad actors makes no sense, but to me, reform is little gain, and even a good new study must follow around minors that have gone through the unethical transgender science grinder.
It reminds me of an (unpopular) opinion Trace shared the other day on Twitter regarding the axing of funds for museums and libraries. Even if anthropology is 99% leftist, well, the institutions belong to those who show up, so right wingers just need to get in there and fix it themselves. While I appreciated that stance as it related to conservative law organizations, and as it related to Twitter when left-wingers were leaving the site en masse, I find it pretty distasteful to give up anthropology to positive feedback loops, and let our history become a mockery when it is within one's power to just raze it.
Deus Ex took a look at this perspective. Spoilers for Deus Ex:General Carter, after the UNATCO plot is exposed, decides to stay within the organization, because institutions are only as good as the people that comprise them. Later in the game, you see him in the Vandenburg compound. He has given up on his idea of reform and joined the resistance.
I'm going to guess most of this forum disagrees with Trace and Jesse on this matter in pretty much the same way that I do. Can you name any areas in government or other organizations where you do agree with them?
The fundamental problem the Red Tribe/American conservatism faces is a culture of proud, resentful ignorance. They can't or won't produce knowledge and they distrust anyone who does. They don't want to become librarians or museum curators or anthropologists. The best they can manage is the occasional court historian or renegade economist, chosen more for partisan loyalty than academic achievement and quite likely to be a defector. The effect is this bizarre arrangement where rather than produce conservative thought, they are demanding liberals think conservative thoughts for them.
Occasionally rightists will plead weakness to rationalize their lack of intellectual productivity, but this is nonsense. They have had plenty of money, plenty of political power, and a broad base of support. Unless we accept the Trace-Hanania thesis that they literally just lack human capital, we're left with the conclusion that the right-wing withdrawal from intellectual spaces is a sort of distributed choice. Razing institutions because you can't be bothered to make your case is just barbarism.
The red tribe produces plenty of petroleum geologists, clergy are generally quite intelligent, has successfully engineered affirmative action for themselves in the legal profession despite the legal profession trying to do the exact opposite.
What you’ll notice is access to status from non-academic sources(money, religion, conservative activism). This is a consistent pattern- the red tribe does not care about status within the school system for its own sake(which is the main reward for anthropologists).
All of this just seems to me to be implicitly conceding the point. My contention, contra Hanania, is not that Red Tribers are literally stupid. It is that Red Tribers are somewhere between uninterested in and actively hostile to intellectual/cultural production (by which I mean things like scholarship or art). But they are still very much interested in those products, hence my remark that they want liberals to think conservative thoughts for them. They want (liberal) artists to create conservative-inflected art, (liberal) historians to write conservative historical narratives, etc...
I think it's correct to say that conservatives don't care about academic status and prioritize income/general social status - that's my point. Nothing wrong with that on an individual scale (I'm certainly not one to talk), but a side effect of this taken across a whole society is an extraordinarily vulgar* culture that produces little thought, little art, and can't handle critical perspectives.
*for lack of a better term. I do not mean that it is rude/inappropriate.
That depends on what you mean by "Red Tribe" (everyone seems to have a slightly different definition).
It's not particularly hard to list right-wing intellectuals and artists. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Pound, Eliot. There was an intimate link between Italian futurism and Mussolini's fascism.
I think Yarvin's concept of the dark elves is useful here: internal traitors to the Blue Tribe who align with Red Tribe on certain key issues and provide intellectual and cultural support to the reds. If your definition of a Red Triber is a person who prioritizes "income/general social status" over intellectual development, then sure, ex hypothesi such a person will take little interest in cultural production. But you're ignoring all the dark elves who very much are in the business of thinking "conservative" thoughts, and as others in this thread have pointed out their perspective has been systematically censored in elite institutions.
I mean, Ross Douthat is not a red triber. He seems unlikely to deer hunt or listen to country music. He's clearly quite conservative, but he's a blue tribe conservative.
I think this exposes the fundamental flaw in the red tribe/blue tribe model and undermines this whole debate.
If we're defining "red tribe" (as Scott does, it's his model) solely in terms of class markers for the white working class, and dumping literally all other Americans into the other bucket... well, uh, yeah, it's going to be a tribe that values higher education less than the other bucket. Put the way you have, "the red tribe" isn't even represented by the Republican Party -- Trump is not a red triber in this sense, Josh Hawley (the Trumpiest senator) is not a red triber in this sense, Clarence Thomas is not a red triber in this sense, Alito is not a red triber in that sense, Amy Coney Barrett is not a red triber in that sense, all but very few in elected office is a red triber in that sense, Vance grew up in the red tribe but is very much not so red tribe now.
In fact, J.D. Vance is a perfect example; he grew up "red tribe" but adopted many values of the "blue tribe" as he gained social status, yet he's a fairly conservative guy who believes in God and cares about the needs of rural white people. If red tribers who adopt the beneficial aspects of the blue tribe like the pursuit of higher education, while having a religious conversion experience and supporting policies driven by patriotism, lose their "red tribe" cred... then the distinction doesn't actually cleave to anything relevant for whether conservatism or progressivism values art and scholarship more. It would mean that valuing art and scholarship makes you not a red triber, making the whole debate circular.
Conservatism, in any meaningful sense, isn't about being a member of the white working class. It's about having a commitment to conserving the values of the past that contribute to human flourishing. Often it's about believing in God.
If a devout Christian who reads his Bible every day and goes to church every Sunday and puts his hope in Jesus Christ for eternal salvation -- but also lives in a city and works in a computer science lab on a university campus -- is a member of a different tribe than his fellow parishioner who lives outside the city limits and works as a contractor, then not only these tribal markers but the Church itself means nothing. If we're going to talk about whether conservatism is intellectually vacuous, we had better get our definitions right first, just as we had better get our dogmas in a row before we start anathematizing people as formal heretics. We should probably try to understand reality before we condemn.
I go deer hunting with a senior partner at a CPA firm. He plays 70s country, has a masters degree, drives a pickup truck, speaks only English but thinks learning Spanish is generally wise(this is not echoed for eg French, Japanese, etc), wants nothing to do with Europe except maybe a vacation, and watches college football in his free time.
This is red tribe, but very much not working class. Now he probably valued money over self actualization(no one dreams of becoming an accountant, let’s be real) when he was ~20, which is a red tribe value that does go a ways towards explaining the conservative under representation in academia. But it’s tribal identity markers, not class, and there may be class markers involved but they’re tangential at best.
Yes, thank you for saying this. Conservatives tend to be a lot more practical about career choice, and working at a museum just isn't the kind of thing you can make a career out of that can support a family. When I was growing up, my parents told me a big long list of careers I should not get into, including music and art.
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