I can’t begin to make sense of Red State’s offering in the “epistemic closure” debate. You give it a shot:
Of course, it is our fault, not theirs. As the New York Times notes, “[Epistemic closure] is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism’s proud intellectual history.” It is important to note that we wouldn’t even have this conversation about the left because the left is not really proud of and tries to ignore its intellectual history.
We conservatives are just not serious enough according to the vegetarian philosophers. Note too that a lot of the handwringing is by vegetarian philosophers that no conservative thinks is actually a conservative, but these vegetarian philosophers will fight to the death if you dare suggest they are something other than a conservative. Their friends and fellow travelers are all on the left, but with the ranks filled up there, they pose as conservatives, or at least right-of-center intellectuals who reject all the intellectual history of the right while perversely crying that those faithful to the history are ignorant of it.
If you would like to save yourself some time, “vegetarian philosophers” are people who can’t handle “red meat rhetoric.” If you really want to save some time, just watch this:
stevie314159
Ok..but what are “right-of-center intellectuals”?
Aha..stumped ya!
r€nato
This raises an interesting meta-issue: how on Earth do you convince someone who is utterly lacking in self-awareness, that that is the case?
NYTimes: “Conservatives are living in a closed feedback loop of Teh Stupid, and are out-of-touch with reality.”
Erickson: “Oh, you were finished. Well, allow me to retort: Liberals suck! San Francisco values! Birkenstocks! Feminazis!”
Chuck
“Vegetarian Philosophers” would make a great tag line.
dmsilev
Fellow-travelers, huh? Time for another purge of the impure from the ranks of the right, I guess. Who’s going to be the star witness in the show trials this time?
dms
r€nato
I read that 2nd paragraph five times. I still don’t understand what he’s trying to say.
…I think I kind of get it now, but Christ, if he had handed it in to an editor, it would have been ripped up, tossed on his desk with a command to start over and use half as many words.
WereBear
There’s slots for intellectuals, and when those are filled they move to slots on the right? Changing their minds as they go?
I guess?
I’m outraged that this “slot” thing was never explained to me before! I didn’t know it was like Pachinko.
Chuck
@r€nato:
That’s okay, I doubt Erik did either.
cleek
he’s saying that no true
Scotsmanconservative would think any of the things all those critics of True Conservatism think.all those people badmouthing conservatives are not True Conservatives, they only look that way to people who don’t know anything about True Conservatism.
i think he just added a dead-bolt to the epistemic closure.
Martin
Vegetarian philosopher is clearly the new DFH. I think we should embrace the label.
Chyron HR
This rhetoric sounds oddly familiar.
asiangrrlMN
Whew! That video was really a nice palate cleanser after reading the bullshit offered by Red State. Maybe I took acid and don’t remember because what Erick the son of Erick (I presume, not clicking to make sure) said makes absolutely no sense to me.
@r€nato: Since I never saw the original….
jayackroyd
The funniest part of all this is they think they have an intellectual history. They so often remind me of Kipling’s Bandar-log. Once again with this one.
I mean, there are academic works about subjects that ostensibly would interest these people, like Friedman and Schwartz Monetary History of the US or Anarchy State and Utopia. But I really doubt these guys can get through them.
Ayn Rand OTOH….
r€nato
I would just like to say that every time I see that Billy Madison clip, I cringe. That is one of the most god-awful deliveries ever, of a classic movie line. The scriptwriter who thought it up, must have drunk himself into a stupor after he saw that.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@stevie314159: Yes,
Or, if you reject history of yourself, do you really exist. Or, am I the chicken or the egghead. Anyways, the Great Rino hunt is proceeding in a series of right turns.
Annie
Loved the video…May use it in class.
gbear
Sounds like they should consider eating more broccoli.
scav
Are red meat philosophers those that think so long as one person had an idea once, there are no need for any others ever again? Because that actually sounds kind of green to me, all that recycling and re-use of that single thought.
Other odd thought. How come financial “innovation” is to be defended at all costs while social “innovation” is anathma? Must be one of those arugla philosophical things.
Oh, and I’m 100% sure red-meat Philosophers wear Krisphy Kreme headgear and are very serious while doing so.
matoko_chan
epistemic closure my fine ass.
what is going on is simple conservative bunker mentality convolved with the time-honored tradition of conservative elites pretending to share irrational and anti-scientific crap beliefs to scam the proles for their votes.
The only epistemic closure is that they can’t let the low-information base see the truth.
;)
BC
ahh yes…the ranks have already been filled. who knew unemployment had gotten so bad…its even hitting the blogosphere!
btw- long time reader, first time poster…hopefully ill become a more vocal member of this fine blog space
psycholinguist
The “big tent” party purges once again
“Meat? You want meat? You CAN’T HANDLE THE MEAT!”
skinny little vegetarian four-eyed intellectual poser-boy.
jayackroyd
Link was funnier than I expected. YOU’RE ALL
PUSSIES!VEGETARIANS!demimondian
Look, it’s simple. There are vegetarian philosophers, and then there are folks like Erik son of Erik, conservative vegetables. Obviously, Erik isn’t exactly interested in seeing any of the vegetarian philosophers eat him for lunch, as they surely would if he actually engaged with them on their own grounds.
WereBear
We are all Peter Singer now!
Zifnab
Yeah, I kinda puzzled that out. It’s still so jingoistic that it sounds batshit insane from even the most die hard political junkies.
If I’m to understand Erick’s “argument” correctly, the only reason conservatives are “suffering” epistemic cloture is because a bunch of fake conservative fifth columnist liberal flunkies tricked people into thinking that their brand of rhetoric was conservativism, when in fact it was just warmed over liberalism in disguise.
And, honestly, I think there’s a lot of truth to that. When you’ve got Arizona embracing Gestapo tactics to enforce immigration, anti-government protesters openly brandishing firearms on the White House lawn, and the moderate Republican Congressmen still asking when we’re going to Bomb Bomb Iran, all those supporting conservative intellectuals do look like liberal intellectuals that just flunked out of Academia.
Not sure if that’s the party you really want to keep. But I’m also not sure it’s the party you want to distance yourselves from on the grounds that they’re just too deep with the thinking.
fucen tarmal
fuck it, lets let the conservatives fight each other to the death over what it means to be a real conservative, ingroup after ingroup excluding and making “other” until there is only about ten of them left. then we can put them in a zoo, in a nice little habitat thingy, and people will pay to come look at them…
it would be all well and good if politics was an end to itself, but this whole schtick is supposed to have a point, right?
r€nato
If you would like to save yourself some time, “vegetarian philosophers” are people who can’t handle “red meat rhetoric.”
Oh, this is more of that right-wing secret decoder ring business like, ‘mm mm mm’ and ‘teleprompter!’.
Gotcha.
Citizen_X
Ouroborous tightens the loop.
I understand it perfectly. He’s telling the “vegetarian philosophers,” “YOU FAGG02TS! WE’RE GONNA DOUBLE DOWN! WOO!”
Mojotron
That reminds me, I need to pick up a new bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap.
someguy
I don’t know how this is apt. Exciteable Andy definitely eats meat and is pretty open about it, and we suspect Brooks and Douthat of at least being secret meat eaters.
Can’t believe he chose that term. I guess the whole double entendre thing is lost on the closeted conservative movement because despite their openness to furtive carnal experimentation, they’re epistemically closed.
The Grand Panjandrum
Hokeeee …..
cleek
@matoko_chan:
that is, in fact, RedState’s mission.
here is part of their original posting rules:
(their emphasis)
RS is there to keep the masses from having to experience outside information.
probably not by coincidence, the mission statement from Kelsey Grammar’s upcoming debacle is similar:
IOW: they’re going to tell you that what you already think is correct.
now that’s some closure!
Martin
@WereBear: I’m not sure I’m down with that. I’m fine skipping out on the Double Down, but I really don’t want to have sex with my dog, if that’s alright. That really seems like more of GOP thing.
J.W. Hamner
I think he means to call people like Frum, Douthat, Manzi, and Sanchez “vegetarian philosophers”. I’m not entirely sure, but he may be saying that “vegetarian philosophers” are DFHs in ascots.
But it’s kind of hard to tell since it’s so incoherently written.
psycholinguist
@Mojotron: That was funny – takes me back to halcyon days in Santa Cruz
JGabriel
Erickson:
Shorter Son of Erick:
.
FlipYrWhig
Oh, right, another one of these moments where some doughy fuckface play-acts like he’s a badass. If only we could all be as ruggedly engorged as Erick Erickson, Marc Thiessen, Andrew McCarthy, and Jonah Goldberg.
Sentient Puddle
Shorter Red State:
That’s how it read to me, at least.
licensed to kill time
__
He’s just saying that conservatism’s a faith based religion and the vegetarian philosopher poseurs are infidels. You cannot reason a person out of their faith, it simply does not compute.
Or, shorter Irk Irksome: “La la la la la la! I can’t/won’t hear you!”
Chuck
@Chyron HR:
Frank Chu?
xochi
If there’s a better example of the rhetoric of the right becoming a closed circle to everyone but their fan base than Erickson’s post, then I don’t know what it is. I imagine this post will hit the sweet spot for your average Red State poster, but the rest of us haven’t got an idea what the fuck he’s talking about. And as far as he’s concerned, that’s as it should be. Now who’s the elitist here?
Anoniminous
When Conservatives talk about “philosophers” they seem to be referring to third rate hacks, e.g., The Ayn & Only. People like (short listing) Charles Peirce, John Dewey, Q. V. Quine … ya know: Real Murkin Philosophers … don’t seem to make it on the list.
Erick Ericksson is, as usual, frothing mightily ’bout stuff he knoweth not of.
Again I ask, “WHO, exactly, is a first-rate Conservative Intellectual?” To what book do Conservatives point to with pride?
JM
The advent of the Wingularity™ is at hand!
Bray without end, amen.
JM
t is important to note that we wouldn’t even have this conversation about the left because the left is not really proud of and tries to ignore its intellectual history.
WTFITSFHTA? Jonah Goldberg?
We conservatives are just not serious enough according to the vegetarian philosophers.
Yep, definitely Jonahism. Hitler ate no meat and wore a silver shirt. He learned this from Harry Turtledove.
cleek
@JM:
i read “Jonahism” and “Jonahnism” – a.k.a. conservative pseudo-intellectual masturbation.
Betsy
But wait! In his world view,
Intellectual historians = professors
Professors = leftists
But intellectual historians /= leftists?
Fascinating. I will point that out to David Horowitz the next time he accuses anyone teaching John Stuart Mill, Simone de Beauvoir, or “Letter from Birmingham Jail” of being a leftist indoctrinator.
Mark S.
1. That is one trainwreck of a sentence.
2. Who the hell is he talking about? Manzi? Sanchez? Commenters at Gawker?
3. Do most hipsters really give a shit about any of this?
cleek
@Mark S.:
i’m gonna go with Conor Friedersdorf
Americanadian
@JM
D’you suppose there’s actually a teabagger out there named “Jake Featherston?”
russell
Erick Erickson is a candy-ass punk who spends his days looking for ways to suck at the conservative welfare teat instead of working for a living.
He can kiss my lefty ass.
I think I just kicked myself out of the vegetarian philosopher club.
jibeaux
These guys will never do anything, including chewing gum, as well as they do unintentional hilarity. I’m gonna even put unintentional hilarity above incoherence, that’s how good at it I think they are.
JSpencer
I love it when today’s conservatives use words like “intellectual”. It reminds me of little kids playing house.
Bnut
NY-DC-LA? He forgot Chicago, Miami, SF, Boston, Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, Philly, Pittsburg, St. Louis, Providence, Atlanta, San Jose, Denver, etc etc etc. I can’t wait till he gets fired by CNN so he can write even MORE insane BS.
Speaking of CNN, looks like Michael Ware has left the network to finish a book and treat his PTSD. With him and Armanpour gone, the mighty Turner news people are looking pretty empty these days. How long will Anderson Cooper stay?
JackieBinAZ
Isn’t it more evidence of epistemic closure that he expects readers to take “vegetarian” as a pejorative?
Short Bus Bully
Shorter Red State: “I don’t understand what ‘epistemic closure’ means. But you’re all pussy vegetarians! And you don’t like steak with ketchup! And you’re smart! And you’re… Pussies! Wait, I already said that… WOLVERINES!!”
JM
@Americanadian: in the wingularity, anything is possible.
TooManyJens
@scav:
You know, I never thought of it that way. I guess proceeding with caution, preserving what’s worked in the past, and being careful of unintended consequences are values that just aren’t relevant to the financial system that could bring down our entire economy.
de stijl
You know who else was a vegetarian philosopher?
Confucius, that’s who.
de stijl
@Short Bus Bully:
I’ve always likes Corky St. Clair’s “I just hate you and I hate your ass face.”
PS – I like your handle
cleek
@TooManyJens:
a) banks are private companies. they can do what they want.
b) they don’t think letting banks (or giant automakers) which deserve to fail die a natural death would really do much to our economy; and, besides any pain we did experience would be something like a necessary evil.
c) and ultimately, tampering with the market is like playing god.
lacp
Erick Erickson, the Downhome Pantload
matoko_chan
@FlipYrWhig:
whoa….do you know what ALL those guys have in common?
the multi-chin.
Could that be where they keep their hip-brain?
Americanadian
@JackieBinAZ:
How many vegetarian Republicans are out there? For that matter, does anyone know whether there’s been any polling on the partisan divide amongst our nation’s herbivores?
@JM
I heard Glenn Beck’s next book is going to be called “Over Open Sights.”
Jon H
It’s almost like a wingnut trope rebus. All you need to do is replace things like “vegetarian philosopher” with a graphic symbol.
Paris
Sometimes, you can’t know what you don’t know.
Short Bus Bully
@de stijl:
Well said. <3
Tonal Crow
Moar French Revolushun pleaz!
JM
@Americanadian: Because “Over Open Chafing-Dishes” was too on-the-nose.
Bubblegum Tate
@r€nato:
Beats me–I’ve been trying to do this with Mark Noonan for years. I’ve tried reasoning with him, debating him, shaming him, mocking him, forcing him to do line edits of his own material…nothing works.
Triassic Sands
The RedState intelligentsia are idiots. One thing that I’ve always found interesting is their willingness to lecture the world about what “liberals” do and don’t believe, feel, think, etc. It’s all made up and has nothing to do with reality. It’s as if they are reading from a primer co-authored by Frank Luntz and Karl Rove called “What Liberals Are and What They Believe.”
It always reminds me of anti-semites who’ve never met a Jew and racists who don’t know any African Americans. But they sure do hate them anyway.
monkeyboy
@matoko_chan:
I like how a lot of the right-wing pundits preach that the problem of America is all those people that the left serves that refuse to practice self control and take responsibility for their actions.
Meanwhile many of them do not seem to be able to control their appetites. I personally know one of 300+ lbs who’s idea of personal responsibility is not to eat less but to have a wingnut-welfare job with health benefits that pays for his diabetes treatments.
El Cid
Vegetarian philosophers can be eaten without violating one’s vegetarian oath.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@cleek:
Actually a lot of our present troubles can be traced back to when the banks stopped being private partnerships and became publically traded companies, which was how they raised enough capital to get on the first rung of the Too Big To Fail ladder. But aside from that nitpick, carry on.
Tonal Crow
Bind him tightly, wrap him in a pink burka, draw many different insults to Mohammed and Allah upon it, and airdrop him into South Waziristan with a can of Coke, a packet of pork rinds, and a Bible.
Catsy
@Americanadian: You know, there are maybe three people on this thread who have any idea what you’re talking about.
I’m one of them, and for some time I’ve been increasingly unnerved at how closely the Tea Party resembles the Freedom Party, and how much Beck reminds me of Featherston.
I really hope the similarities remain superficial. We’re in for some dark, dark times otherwise.
liberty60(Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression)
@TooManyJens:
The “conservative” tendency to be cautious and skeptical of radical changes or utopian thought, of a belief in the fallibility of humankind, is out of step with the glibertarians utopia of FreeMarketFuckYeah!
Barney
@JGabriel,
Yes, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Erik UnoriginalDadSon is still so elated at getting a TV gig, his one thought process is now “well, you don’t paid to be on TV, so who cares what you say?”
And this says a lot about the imminent decline of the USA. If CNN’s international viewers get a glimpse of the moron that CNN uses domestically as a ‘commentator’, they will piss themselves so much laughing that America’s “soft power” will collapse like a failed soufflé. Just when the presidency stopped being a global joke, the US media takes up the baton enthusiastically.
Alan
It’s the recent history, dipshit.
The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one. Because in light of recent history, tax cuts don’t pay for themselves. And an unregulated market won’t regulate itself without harming the whole damn economy.
meh
I’d like to post either that video or the transcript on redstate and see how long it stayed before it got banned. I’ve run through so many screen names there I’m running out anon email accts.
Joel
Erik Son of Erik bites an atrocious Slate column and tries to look sophisticated by indirectly citing Orwell’s criticism of George Bernard Shaw.
How erudite.
Svensker
@Mojotron:
Ha ha ha. Win.
Svensker
@FlipYrWhig:
Gives Chubby Rain a whole new meaning.
Robert Waldmann
I actually met a vegetarian philosopher over dinner once. I was a student. He was a professor dining with students at a special professors dine with students event. Now what was his name ? I think it was Robert Nozick.
Some now deceased libertarians really were vegetarian philosophers.
Joel
@Joel: BTW, this is the explanation for “vegetarian philosophers”, in case you’re wondering.
Erickson is still a moron.
Kyle
Which is right up there with “debasing Larry, Curly and Moe’s contribution to the field of theoretical physics.”
Stan of the Sawgrass
Jeebus…… so, Erik-the-Redstater is what we’re supposed to think of as a “conservative intellectual”?
Epistemic closure on the Right means that you never have to hear the obvious: that you’re a fucking moron. Couldn’t one of Ewwik’s family members take him aside and gently remind him that people outside the Wingnutosphere occaisionally read his crap (though not CNN, apparently), and that consequently he is embarrassing his family? The YouTube clip is incredibly apt.
mike
That looked to me like it was written by a 6-pack-of-bud-light philosopher.
ronathan richardson
I’m a big fan of the use of “note too,” which is about as good as also, too.