at least right when he called him a dummy, relatively speaking of course. He didn't look forward and see what his presidency started would become if it continued.
This author doesn't point out, though, that the intellectual basis of traditional conservatism that Reaganism purged was only 30-40 years old. Before post WW2 attempts to build an intellectual philosophical basis for it, conservatism was mostly just a reaction, that feeling of resistance in the gut to change and differences from what is familiar. At most one generation grew up with the foundation he describes, and it wasn't in any grade school textbooks. Those reflected the liberal ideas our nation was founded on, which themselves arose from the Enlightenment era.
And when he wrote this in 2010, because of the acceleration of the corruption and insanity, this author had barely seen the half of it.
How Reagan ruined conservatism
Traditional conservatives disdain populism and respect knowledge. What went wrong?
And then I realised – the rot set in with Ronald Reagan.
This might seem an odd conclusion, since President Reagan is a conservative hero who won two presidential elections. But the ideas that are now known as “Reaganism” are, in fact, profoundly subversive of some of the most important conservative values. Traditional conservatives disdain populism and respect knowledge. They believe in balancing the government’s books. And they are pragmatists who are suspicious of ideology. Reagan debased all these ideas – and modern American conservatism is still suffering the consequences.
The most damaging idea propagated by the Reagan myth is the cult of the idiot-savant (the wise fool). You can see it in the very first line of Dinesh D’Souza’s admiring biography of Reagan, which proclaims: “Sometimes it really helps to be a dummy.” Mr D’Souza recounts numerous stories in which intellectuals – even conservative intellectuals – disdained Reagan. They scorned his tendency to spend cabinet meetings sorting jelly beans into different colours, and his taste for flaky anecdotes. But, Mr D’Souza concludes, the “dummy” was right and the pointy-heads were wrong.
A dangerous chain of reasoning flows from this popular version of history. Reagan was apparently stupid and often startlingly ignorant – but he was vindicated by history. Therefore, goes the theory, ignorance and stupidity are good signs. They show that a politician is in tune with the deeper wisdom of the people. Once you start thinking like that, it is but a short step to Sarah Palin.
https://www.ft.com/content/d640855c-256a-11df-9cdb-00144feab49a
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