Romney Donor Says ‘Lower Income’ People ‘Don’t Understand What’s Going On‘ (thinkprogress.org)
Texas GOP rejects ‘critical thinking’ skills. Really. (Washington Post)

Sometimes it feels like you could set your watch by the frequent “let them eat cake” moments of the Romney campaign and its supporters. Romney’s “I’m not concerned with the very poor” gaffe faded out of public discussion long before it ever should have, and this latest one isn’t getting nearly as much attention as it deserves either. Perhaps we can pin this on how our schools don’t teach French history like they should — although “freedom fries” may be long gone, there’s still a lot of anti-French sentiment in this country — but most people still attribute the cake quote to Marie Antoinette when there’s no record of her ever having said it. Many of her royal predecessors said it, though, for at least a century before the French Revolution. Unfortunately for them, back then they didn’t have Rush Limbaugh and Fox News Channel bemoaning how unfair it was that people wanted to take cake out of the monarchy’s mouth, and we all know what happened to Marie Antoinette. (Okay, if you’re an American who was educated after conservatives mucked up the schools then you probably don’t know, so I’ll have to tell you: She was beheaded.)

Ignoring the almost comical audacity of using the phrase “common people” — for all their money, you’d think these people could afford public speaking coaches to help make sure they don’t sound that out-of-touch and snooty — the bold-faced proclamation that people who don’t see things the way that she and her fellow big-moneyed Republican donors see them “don’t get it” and aren’t “as educated” makes the speaker sound like she’s a villain out of a really bad Hollywood movie. These days, though, it seems more and more like mainstream Republican thinking is almost embracing all the classic caricatures of ultra-rich conservatives, and so far it doesn’t really seem to be working to their detriment. Maybe that’s why this donor’s comments didn’t make such a big splash, because for as ludicrous as her statement was, it’s really not that much removed from what mainstream Republicans and conservatives are pushing.

Popular concepts of education and knowledge often lump different kinds of knowledge together in a way that obfuscates their differences. For example, I think it’s safe to say that I’m book-smart, but I wouldn’t dare call myself street smart. The modern conservative movement lumps all those forms into two categories, though: The things they believe in and want everyone else to believe, and everything else. If you don’t “know” what they believe in — and the word really should be believe, not know — then no matter what other knowledge you possess, all the things you may be capable of doing, you are, to them, an idiot. Comments like the ones this Romney donor made just go to perpetuate this kind of thinking, and the conservative base loves this idea because the moment they hear anyone put forth an idea that doesn’t fall in line with their “knowledge” they feel like they can just close their ears, roll their eyes and say “What an idiot,” and that’s the end of that.

What makes the donor’s comment particularly galling is this idea that the “common people” — the ones who were most likely to lose jobs, and cars, and houses, and life savings during the economic collapse brought on by the ultra-rich recklessly gambling with other people’s money — don’t “get” what’s going on. By saying this, she’s basically trying to elevate her own experience, as someone who “understand[s] how the systems work,” above those of the people who have hurt the most from recent economic disasters, as if having to buy your daughter a BMW for her sweet sixteen instead of a Porsche is anything at all equivalent to a less privileged family losing its house. Conservatives co-opting the language of victimization to try to make their problems sound worse than those of the working class and minorities is one of the most shameful things they have ever done, and people, myself included, need to call them out on it more often.

This kind of leads to talking about the Texas Republican Party putting in its official party platform that they are opposed to the teaching of critical thinking skills because, in their words, critical thinking skills “have the purpose of challenging  the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.” Some would argue that focusing on this episode is putting too much emphasis on one state’s Republican Party, but if you remember back to the Texas textbook debate where the Republican-dominated Texas State Board of Education issued demands that schoolbooks in Texas teach a very conservative-slanted version of American history, Texas has the power, due to its large population,  to make textbook suppliers create textbooks to their liking. Smaller states don’t have that ability, so schools in other states may be forced to buy these textbooks and use them in their classes.  So, too, may this latest assault on education by Texas Republicans have ripples that are felt all across the country.

Again we’re seeing Republicans basically play up to their caricature. Before the Republican Party of Texas put this anti-critical thinking language into their party platform, it was kind of a parody to say that Republicans didn’t want people to be able to think for themselves, that they wanted people to be unable to question the authority they either held or at least laid claim to (in the person of Jesus Ronald Wilson Reagan Christ) and just accept whatever they’re told about how good unfettered and unchecked capitalism is or how Christ would have stoned the gays or what have you. Now they’re not only saying it in unambiguous language, but they’re putting it in print in their official party platform.

The value of questioning your assumptions has already been well-documented; Jonah Lehrer explains it, in really accessible language, in his book How We Decide (which you really should own at least one copy of). If your assumptions do not hold up to questioning — and it doesn’t matter if those assumptions are liberal or conservative, religious or philosophical, or what have you — then you need to change your assumptions. It is a humbling experience when it happens to you (yes, I speak from experience), but acting on false assumptions can cause incredible harm to yourself and, more importantly, the people around you. That is why self-reflection, and challenging your own beliefs, and putting yourself into positions where others will challenge your beliefs, should be a part of every person’s life regardless of politics or philosophy or religion.

Now Texas Republicans want to make it impossible to teach the skills necessary for that kind of contemplation. In fairly clear language they’re saying that they don’t want people to be able to learn how to think for themselves. Whatever “fixed beliefs” are inculcated in them by their parents and their church cannot, they say, ever be changed, no matter how harmful they are, and even no matter how factually incorrect they are. This would be a harmful practice regardless of the nature of the beliefs, but it’s pretty clear that Texas Republicans are doing this to try to preserve their own ideology and make it impossible for that ideology to be challenged, and they’re doing it because they’re aware that the ideology that they, and so many other far-right conservatives are putting forth, does not stand up to intellectual examination.

It’s very important, once again, to distinguish between the philosophical underpinnings of conservatism and the kind of conservatism that’s being presented by so much of the modern Republican party and its media surrogates. As much as I disagree with the principles of limited government and letting the market handle problems, there are rational ideas behind those principles. A debate on those principles is exactly what we need to be having right now, especially in a presidential election year. Instead we’re getting debates about whether or not President Obama is a “secret Muslim” or a socialist, because Republicans and Fox News and right-wing talk radio are making those the big issues. Anyone who has studied actual socialism for more than ten minutes knows that calling President Obama a socialist is absurd, but because the far right has worked so hard at labeling anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman a socialist, and they’ve created this “us versus them” mentality and the media outlets to help perpetuate and sensationalize it, there’s a large chunk of the population that simply accepts prima facie that President Obama must be a socialist. If Texas Republicans have their way, and people stop learning critical thinking skills, then there will be many more people who buy into that kind of thinking because they won’t even know how to question the beliefs that they’re inundated with.

It’s bad enough that we live in a country where, as Dennis Miller pointed out a long time ago (back when he was still funny), that we live in a culture where calling someone an “Einstein” is largely considered an insult. Now Republicans, at least in Texas, have made it clear that they want us all to be a nation of uncritical drones, untrained in the ability to question whatever we’re told. Anyone who engages in critical thinking, of any political persuasion, should be deeply troubled by this.