The Less Than Subtle Prejudices of the Left

Today, Charles Adler featured a long segment on some recent whiny callers from Alberta who shared the common distinction of hating everything and everyone in Alberta. You can listen to it here (7:00). Such snobs who look down upon people who [apparently] have less education than them annoy & anger me to no end. After listening to the show, I felt compelled to send Adler this letter:

Charles,

Thank you for following up on the calls from the two Albertans who hate everything about Alberta. Listening to them again I was reminded of numerous conversations I've had over the years with such left of centre folks. Such discussions always start out pleasant enough but eventually arrive at some point of contention. Rather than just agreeing to disagree, quite often the Academic Card is pulled out by these individuals, citing what degrees they have, what schools they went to, and thus making it "so obvious" that they know more than I do.

Such people frequently have an undergraduate degree in History or English or Philosophy and are lawyers or teachers or baristas. Yet miraculously their education and "high intelligence" has made them experts at:

• Economics (ex. Obama's stimulus bill is brilliant)
  
• Environmental Modeling (ex. Al Gore knows more about the environment than even God)
  
• Structural Engineering Design (ex. 9/11 was 'obviously' carried out by Bush & Cheney)
  
• Carbon Sequestration (ex. It's so easy to do but those damn oil companies are too greedy)
• Canadian Constitutional Law (ex. It's 'so obvious' that The Coalition is a normal part of our country's electoral history)
  
• The Middle East (ex. Israel is no different than Nazi Germany and Canadian & American soldiers in Afghanistan are no different than Al Qaeda)
  
• Demographics (ex. Canada is so overcrowded that anyone having a baby is damaging Mother Earth)
  

And on & on it goes.

They have convinced themselves that all academics (only of the left-leaning kind, of course) are the most brilliant citizens of the world who we must listen to or face certain peril within just a few years. In their minds, Barack Obama must be a genius because he went to Harvard, Stephane Dion is brilliant but just misunderstood, and Michael Ignatieff represents intelligentsia without compare. When asked how Stephen Harper ranks amongst this crowd, they sidestep it by referring to him as an "Evil Genius".

In their everyday lives they treat anyone without a post-secondary education with disdain. This includes waitresses, shop clerks, cleaning staff, farmers, construction workers, plumbers, etc. In the old days they'd refer to such people as being from the wrong side of the tracks. Nowadays the PC terms include "The NASCAR Crowd" and "Monster Truck Fans". It's the same prejudice though, just disguised in a less forthright package.

They have rebuilt a Class System alright. But what these faux academic snobs don't realize is that they belong to a Class System of the Clueless.