and to destroy the community’s way of life -- the
elite always cites “facts” or “science.”
Facts and science are not something (the masses
are told) that they can debate or discuss. Nor indeed
can they even aspire to understand them. That
power – the knowledge of good and evil – and the
authority which that power creates can be wielded
only by the experts.
A matter of preference, pride, and prejudice
The Enlightenment’s commitment to demonstrable
facts and to testable science thus creates both insult
and injury. It creates an insult in the sacrilegious
claim that scientific truth is superior to revealed
truth. And it creates an injury in that it means that
the traditionalists must always give way. Under
these circumstances is it at all surprising that “the
deplorables” prefer “alternative facts” which they
themselves can create or choose among, or that
the idea that drinking bleach is a good way to cure
Covid is embraced as making as much sense as
getting vaccinated?
In this context the expanding fight over public
schools – over whether it should be the parents,
local school boards, or more distant elites who
will decide what will be taught – takes on growing
significance. It may perhaps be simply a point of
amusement that in the distant past laws were passed
that school children would be taught that the
value of pi was 3, or that the teaching of “foreign
languages” was to be banned on the presumption
that Jesus Christ spoke English. It is not good engineering
or theological correctness that is now at
stake. The concern now is whether democracy can
function if “truth” is a matter of preference, pride,
and prejudice.
What we are seeing is not simply
a rejection of the cosmopolitan elite
and its policies by the proponents
of traditional culture.
social democracy and to “intrusive” government is
foundational in American political thought. (Indeed
what is more surprising than the election results is
that President Biden may in fact get some non-trivial
part of his “Build Back Better” human infrastructure
bill enacted into law. Had it been passed
in full it would in fact have transformed the role of
government in America.)
Two points worth underscoring do, however,
stand out. The first is that expansion of social welfare
and greater regulation of antisocial behavior are
opposed most strongly by precisely those Americans
who would most benefit from them. The second is
that we see in these voters not simply a rejection
of policies, but a rejection of core elements of the
liberal Enlightenment on which liberal, republican
democracy is based.
The knowledge of good and evil
Author and essayist Thomas Frank made the first
point brilliantly in his 2004 masterwork, What’s the
Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart
of America. The 2020 and 2021 elections have merely
confirmed that what was true in 2004 is still true
today: a substantial number of white working-class
Americans view the preservation of what they regard
as traditional values – or at least rhetorical support
for these values -- as more important than improving
their economic lot and that of their children.
The second point is a subtler one, and one that
in the long run may prove problematic for liberal
democracy. What we are seeing is not simply a rejection
of the cosmopolitan elite and its policies by
the proponents of traditional culture. We are seeing
the rejection of the very sources of legitimacy and
authority to which the elite appeals – “facts” and
“science.”
From the perspective of the community that Hilary
Clinton once insensitively referred to as “the
deplorables,” “facts” and “science” are tools of oppression.
They are not neutral realities. When the
elite wants to impose some new rule -- or, more
often, to deride traditional beliefs and institutions
The concern now is whether
democracy can function if “truth” is
a matter of preference, pride,
and prejudice.
SAM MAGAZINE 4/21 | 27