THE STUPID PARTY

Posted at 7:43 a.m. ET

John Stewart Mill famously called conservatives the stupid party.  Now, we know that isn't true...or is it?

Some of the great intellects of our time - Friedman, Hayek, William F. Buckley Jr. (but not the son), have been conservatives.  We can argue that conservative thought has been far more coherent, persuasive and powerful in the last 30 years than liberal thought.  And yet, conservatives periodically go out of their way to polish up the Mill label and make sure that it really sticks.

Consider one issue that will be decisive in the future of American politics - what the schools are actually teaching our children.

Some of you know that I used to work for Johnny Carson.  He taught me one of the fundamentals of good writing - "buy the premise, buy the bit."  In other words, if an audience accepts the premise of, say, a comedy sketch, it will accept the rest.  If it doesn't accept the premise, it won't.

If young people accept the premise of the United States of America, its exceptionalism, its greatness, and, despite its flaws, its fundamental goodness, they will be open to conservative ideas.  If they don't accept that premise, they won't.  Yet, for a generation, our schools have been dominated by leftist thinking that trashes the very idea of America.  But conservatives have done nothing about it, don't even show much interest in it, despite the fact that this trend can destroy the movement by making it seem strange, even alien. 

The stupid party ignores the substance of education at its peril.  We can erase the stupidity by being real "community organizers," to cite a trendy phrase, and working to involve parents more closely in the schools.  We will be accused of McCarthyism.  That's standard.  But unless we begin to control the damage done by a generation of educators inspired by the sixties, we will continue to be shocked by the voting habits of young people who don't buy into the greatness, but buy into the cynicism.  The schools, to throw a sixties line back at the educators, belong to the people.  We own them, we can influence them. 

It is very stupid to allow this to continue.  We must prove Mill wrong.

November 7, 2008.