by flory
I generally leave discussion of wingnut philosophical debates to Thers -- mostly because he can make them entertaining. And humor is the only safe way to enter the conservative body politic. Sort of a wingnut condom.
But Noah MIllman has a very long post about the whole 'epistemic closure' fandangle over at The American Scene, and this part really struck me:
yet the common perception of those who worry about the “closing of the conservative mind” is that something has changed – certainly since the right’s intellectual heyday of the 1970s and 1980s. (emphasis mine)
I think what struck me was how this has become received wisdom -- on both the right and the left -- that there was some kind of intellectual golden age in conservative thought in the 70s and 80s. And that got me thinking about exactly how the right's political agenda was shaped by Reagan era thought. To wit:
1. Communists are bad. I think communists figured that one out on their own. Not sure how much conservative intelligentsia contributed.
2. Relatedly -- giant shiny missile shields will protect us from scary communists. How's that one working out?
3. Tax cuts for the rich are teh bomb!
4. Deregulation uber alles!
5. Going to war with brown people living in deserts will fix.......pretty much everything.
I'm sure I'm missing a few but that's my not-conservative memory of the intellectual output of movement conservatism from the Reagan-Bush era.
Maybe the fact that this is considered their golden age is the answer to what's wrong with wingnuttia?