With her Creationism chops and folksy demeanor, Sarah Palin epitomizes the distrust of book learnin that Republicans have wedged with since Ronald Reagan.  McCain too, the rough and ready bomb now and ask questions later "maverick", pledging to kick ass and take names in Washington, stays true to the meme.  He holds the distinction of graduating fifth from the bottom of his class of 900, well qualifying himself as the creme of GOP leadership.  Like his vocabulary challenged predecessor, he could never be accused of over-intellectualizing a position.  

From Reagan the Actor through Bush the Cowboy Cheerleader to Palin the Mooseskinner, the GOP has made the argument over and over that intelligence is overrated and "elitist".  They have successfully engaged the "I coulda gone to college if I wanted to" vote with a distain for complex concerns and the necessary equally complex solutions.   Thus, global warming is a "theory", the Consitution an annoyance and issues in the Middle East can be solved with bombs and drills. Everything not black and white, cut and dried, is worthy at best of a smirk.

The most dangerous form of thought is -- if I don't know it it's not worth knowing -- code words: Common Sense.  There is a peculiar hickish hubris in assuming one can grasp the nuances of foreign policy in a month of cramming or decant the energy crisis down to "drill everywhere, drill now."  It is akin to the drunk at the corner of the bar who knows how to end the war in I rak if someone would only listen to him.

Such embrace of ignorance requires lies, distortions and over-simplications to fuel its engines. It demands a line be drawn through the nation and maintained, between the "smart kids" and those who would bully and denegrate them. It capitalizes on the marginilizations born in grade school of the kid who blew the curve for everyone else and always won at the science fair. It holds up our best and brightest as enemies of the state, impediments to progress and useless parasites on hard-working small town small minded society.

These folks really need a more than gentle reminder that the advancements of humankind have been made, not with kitchen table "wisdom", "love of country" or platitudes of any sort.  We have built and discovered and solved not with spunk alone, but through the intellectual accomplishments of the Einsteins and Edisons, and on the noggins of scientists, inventors, engineers, doctors, theorists and other eggheads before and since.  

"Common Sense"?  Why not just come out and say you don't trust book learnin and the world is better led on emotions, instincts, dogma and superficial rationale?  Why not just say "we don't trust books (except the Good Book)" and be done with it? Everytime a Republican says "common sense" I get the urge to round up every "elitist intellectual" somehow and herd them all to Canada, just for the pleasure of watching the rest of the country fumble with their light switch, moan over their plummeting stock values and scratch their pin heads over how things got so shitty all of a sudden over night.

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Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.
Abraham Lincoln --January 27, 1838