Doubling-Down on Dumb: The GOP War on Being Smart - Peter Smirniotopoulos

[swag]

http://govinthelab.com/doubling-down-on-dumb-the-gop-war-on-being-smart/

We’re supposed to be exploring every conceivable alternative for turning the domestic economy around. So why are Republicans, at state and federal levels, waging a rhetorical, legislative, and administrative War on Education?

At the state level, Republican governors like New Jersey’s Chris Christie, Florida’s Rick Scott, and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker have been cutting funding for public schools, community colleges, and/or state colleges and universities. Moreover, Christie and Walker have demonized teachers’ unions, often punishing them severely with budget cuts for teachers’ and administrators’ salaries and benefits.

At the federal level, House Republicans continue to pick on the U.S. Department of Education as a source of purported deficit-reducing budget cuts. Head Start and Early Head Start programs have been targeted for decades by Republicans for substantial cuts in funding or de-funding altogether. And on July 1st the interest rate on Stafford student loans will double, from 3.4% to 6.8%, on outstanding student loan balances.

But what’s most-striking is that — pretty much since the start of President Obama’s candidacy for the 2008 presidential election — there has been a consistent theme among conservatives, particularly on the far-right and those who identify themselves as Tea Party members that education, and being educated, are bad things.

Class and race provided a subtext to Obama’s campaign. Projecting an image of black middle-class respectability, Obama understood that displays of emotion, especially anger, put him at risk of being framed as a thug. (Note how the Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann has used this tactic, referring to his administration as “gangster government.”) Paradoxically, Obama’s opponents also used his Ivy League credentials, cerebral manner, and air of relaxed confidence to accuse him of being, in Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland’s words, “uppity”–a term historically used by whites to disparage African-Americans considered too smart or successful for their own good. “Race, Class, and Obama,” August 28, 2011

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[Icicle]

1. This has been going on at least since the 1970s

The Republicans need a bunch of people who believe propoganda, don't question authority, and can be talked into voting against their own interests.
The smarter the electorate is, the less votes the Republicans get.

[n2doc]

2. The 1960's convinced the Repubs that higher education is a liberal stronghold

And they decided to attack it, just like they have done with Unions, the media, and social help groups like Planned Parenthood. All part of the same plan. Destroy or subvert/take over.

[saras]

3. They were right, too. ALL CIVILIZATION is a liberal stronghold. Just sayin'

[Archae]

5. Even before that.

Isaac Asimov wrote an essay "The Cult Of Ignorance" that took attitudes especially from the entertainment media to task, for their disparagement of education.

Just look at the 1952 presidential election, Eisenhower was "One of the guys" against an "egghead," Adlai Stevenson.

[Bill USA]

4. I would call it the GOP war on common sense and logic.

recommended.

[Kablooie]

6. When people actually learn about things they tend to become liberal.

When they have no clue they are easily turned into right wing parrots.