Walker Leads the Field, Survey Finds

When asked to "grade" the candidates, Walker garners the most A's and B's from respondents.

Meanwhile, Howard Dean says, get this, that Walker shouldn't be president, because his lack of a college degree makes him "unknowledgeable."

Obviously I disagree, and I find it a kind of interesting the guy dropped out of college to get a job.

Unlike progressives, I kind of dig people who are different, and when I say "are different," I mean, "take chances when opportunities present themselves," unlike the typical potato which just sits in one place in the earth until it's fat and ready to be harvested.

There's a fight going on on twitter, among cons, about the same class-based nonsense argument that we've been having since Palin first floated the Strong Form version of it in 2011 0r so: whether or not college is mostly useless, and just a credential for entering a particular set of social classes (those classes chiefly distinguished by the possession of a college degree), or whether or not it is completely and unavoidably useless, such that people who have college degrees can be said to not be smarter than anyone (even as a statistical, weight-of-large-numbers matter), and may even said be actively dumber than anyone else.

I think we all kind of are in the same ballpark on the first part of that, which I'd call the Weak Form restatement of the position.

The second restatement, which I've obviously extremified so as to sound silly, is the Strong Form.

I don't think we need to endorse the Strong Form of the restatement in order to get the maximum bang for the buck out of it, which can be had just by the Weak Form.*

I think people begin to sound silly and very anti-intellectual when they start attempting to establish the Strong Form version of the proposition. They begin sounding like people stewing in class resentment, the sort of "You Think You're Better Than Me?" type which is alienating for most people. (Everyone has insecurities and resentments, and an important part of personal comportment is hiding those insecurities and resentments.)

So basically I agree that no, Scott Walker is not unqualified or "unknowlegeable" just because he only has, whatever, 80 of the credits he needs to graduate. And I agree that most people with college degrees are Fucking Dumb, in roughly but not exactly the same proportions as people without college degrees. (Because, let's face it, degree or not, most people are Fucking Dumb, which is why we're superior to them.)

I kind of don't get the endless whining about "elitism" because if people are being honest with themselves they'd acknowledge that everyone thinks they're kind of elite, and thinks that other people are Kind of Assholes.

I do get the Weak Form version of this: That I am tired of being yapped at by self-professed "elite" who are merely credentialed, not elite, and, oftentimes, not even well credentialed. (Frex, I just discovered that self-professed Wonk Wunderkind Ezra Klein only has a BA, and a BA in a degree that might as well be Communications -- Political Science.)

But note the weak form does not deny that there is an "elite" (at least in certain fields or virtues). It rather denies that those who posture as "the elite" actually are the elite.

I think pushing the idea that there is no elite, at all, in anything, including Medical Science, is just... it's so plainly false it's obviously a purely ideological claim.

As they say of some stupidities, "That's so dumb only an intellectual could believe it."

* AllahPundit observed the same basic point with respect to Obama's affiliation with Bill Ayers -- the weak form will get you 90% of what the strong form does, and it's barely controversial at all, whereas the strong form gets you only 10% more and will require you to argue until you're blue in the face, losing large numbers of potential converts along the way.

posted by Ace at 12:44 PM

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