This is an issue which the Right has to deal with. The liberals are fond of characterizing the Right as the “stupid party,” which means that the stupid believe that they have an open invitation to dog us.

Note that this does not assume any basic accuracy underlying that smear. We’re dealing with what could be called a “Kantian spiral:” the liberals insist that we’re “the stupid ones” publicly, and then say to their own dullards, “You’re not theoretical enough for the liberal movement, but the Right will give you a ‘good home’.” This we have to put up with in addition to the opportunist that just follows the gravy, or the glam.

The above chain of doubletalk implies that the liberals’ mere insistence that we’re “the stupid people” makes it plausible, simply by their insistence. A less Randian and more class- conscious person would say that the liberals have a cachet similar to that of a trust-fund boy’s independent means, and that they peel off “cachet coupons” every now and then to keep us underfoot.

Unfair this may be, but it implies that the vain sometimes find an opening here, just as the criminal type finds a home in the liberal movement. There was a certain satisfying sense of schadenfreude in seeing liberal luminaries being shoved around by the Black Panthers because it symbolized their own chickens coming home to roost. But this implies that right wingers being bossed around by a figure that is plain stupid makes us contemptible in a similar way. We have to draw defensive lines sometimes in order to keep our own pride.

I should begin by drawing an important line. It is common in this culture to associate “smart” with a high I.Q. score and “stupid” with a low I.Q. score. This, I would argue, is profoundly anti-conservative.

Conservatism values character above all. What makes this principle democratic is that people are not born with a good character and they can’t inherit it. The Irish maxim “no matter how tall you grandfather was, you still have to do your own growing” should qualify for the Conservative Book of Quotations. It’s a way of making Viereck’s observation that each generation brings forth little barbarians to be tamed into a moral injunction.

The primacy of character, as applied to the intellect, says that what should be respected is not SAT scores, or even grades, but learning. If a man or woman is well-read and thoughtful, they deserve respect, regardless of their credentials. The liberal or bureaucratic type can draw lines based upon what degree one has, or what school a person got into, but we can’t. Too many of our forebears were intelligent in the well-read earnèd way, and our homeschooling movement is busily telling the world how they got to that plateau.

This principle, which I would argue that we must uphold, does make us vulnerable, though, just as the liberal sort is vulnerable to the memorizer holding themselves up as a “great thinker” simply because they scraped through to the Ph. D. The type we’re vulnerable to is the book world’s analog to the frustrated would-be businessman dissected by Ludwig von Mises in The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality.

Mises observed that there is a certain type of man who believes he is destined for riches but who recoils from a market test of this desire. Whether he never starts, or starts and gives up after the gritty entrepreneurial world melts his grandiosity into fantasy, this kind of man finds it easy to believe that the only successful businessperson is either: a crook; a spoiled heir; a nefarious cutthroat; or is “owned.” Mises also notes that he finds solace for this point of view in detective novels.

This is quite clearly a disguised sulk. The United States is enough of a business society to know such excuses for what they are.

But the world of the intellect has such a creature too, and Mises’ analysis can spot them, by applying the typology above to a recoil from the “marketplace of ideas.” If someone believes that the only successful intellectual is: a goldbricker; a pampered darling; a “spaz”; or is “owned by the universities,” then you’ve found someone harboring an anti-capitalistic mentality in the marketplace of ideas. Just translate Mises’ model into the scholarship arena and you’ve got it pinned down.

Here’s a test for defensive purposes. Back in 1964, Ronald Reagan said that America was ridden by a “small group of intellectuals” which had too much power. This statement, though inspirational at the time, is obsolete for two reasons: the “small group” is now a much larger group, and a lot of them are on our side now. Reagan’s welcoming a rather large group of right- wing thinkers into the White House in the 1980s is plain evidence of this.

So this following two-stage diagnostic is appropriate for today: bring up the “small group of intellectuals” and look at the reaction. If you get one that suggests that the responder believes that all professional intellectuals are simply Paul Samuelson in disguise, then ask them their age.

If they’re over (say) fifty, then you’re dealing with an old duffer that’s savoring the good times in the past. Chances are, they’re still tinkering with their private first-strike plan for bombing the U.S.S.R. “back into the Stone Age.” Much like the guy who thinks that any Star Trek show or film made after 1969 is an utter travesty, these old timers are simply resting on laurels unwilted in their memories. Most probably, they want to go over the good old days.

But if they’re younger, what you’re dealing with is a hanger-on. I’d suggest taking appropriate steps to distance yourself from this type.

No-one said that being a conservative was easy, after all. The crow of delight we shoot to the sky when the next “criminal invasion” besets the limo-lib set has to be earned, for the love of Mike!