by Paul Braterman
As Heather Cox Richardson and by now many others have pointed out, a coup d’état is taking place in the United States. Even the New York Times and the Washington Post now seem aware that things are not as they should be. The coup is conducted by the Administration itself, within which Vance occupies the second highest position. This regime, like all authoritarian regimes, recognizes the power attached to the control of information, and the ability to define the conventional wisdom. For that reason, it has embarked on an energetic program of purging unwelcome information from official sources, undermining independent research, and specifying which topics may or may not even be mentioned by sources that receive any Federal funding. What follows, a piece that I began to write on the eve of the coup, should be seen in this context.
A clip posted by National Conservatism on X shows Vance quoting Richard Nixon’s saying, “The Professors are the enemy.” This sent me to the full speech from which the clip came, which Vance, at that time a candidate for election to the Senate, gave to the November 2021 National Conservatism Conference, and which has since been seen on YouTube over a hundred thousand times. I was expecting some load of easily dismissed anti-intellectual drivel. What I found, instead, was a very carefully crafted speech, with some points that do hit home, others that are subtle signals to his audience of his own conservative credentials, and, throughout, a judo-like rhetoric that reverses the moral thrust of his opponents’ arguments.
The speech begins
So much of what we want to accomplish, so much of what we want to do in this movement, in this country, I think, are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions. Specifically the universities, which control the knowledge in our society, which control what we call truth and what we call falsity, that provide research that gives credibility to some of the most ridiculous ideas that exist in our country.
and concludes:
There is a season for everything in this country and I think in this movement of National Conservatism, what we need more than inspiration is, we need wisdom. And there is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately forty fifty years ago. He said, and I quote, “The Professors are the enemy.” [Applause]
What comes between deserves the closest attention, especially from those opposed to what Vance stands for.
The speech repeatedly alludes to what is perhaps the conservatives’ strongest selling point; that they are standing up for ordinary people against the dominant intellectual elite. Here, I fear, his opponents play into his hand. I would have thought that the fallout from Hillary’s reference to “a basket of deplorables” would have been lesson enough, but I still see unabated a continuous stream on social media, by people I consider my own allies, of references to Trump supporters as stupid, racist, or xenophobic.
Bad move. You do not convince those you need to win over by telling them that you consider yourself their moral superior.
From the outset, Vance expresses the issue in terms of control. The universities “are not exactly politically sympathetic” with conservatives but we have allowed them to define knowledge and truth, by accepting their claim that truth and knowledge is what they teach, and the further claim that they prepare us for an unforeseeable future by training their students to apply first principles to critical and difficult problems.
He then challenges such claims, and gives two examples. In the first, he accuses professors of groupthink, by misdescribing an explanation that he quotes as a retraction in the face of criticism, when in fact it is a refusal to give ground, and it does not help Vance’s case that he has clearly misunderstood the subject matter.1Vance describes the work in question as referring to use of AI to predict future research findings. But as is clear from the text of the explanation, which Vance read out in full, the work is actually about the use of AI for evaluations of past research performance. In his statement, the author regrets that his work has aroused anxieties among his fellow academics, whose salaries are strongly influenced by such evaluations, but so far from retracting, he reiterates the claim that his proposed methodology would be more objective, and fairer.
His second example is a paper regarding the treatment of gender dysphoria, which he accuses of making recommendations unsupported by its own data. He gives no identifying details and says that he cannot remember the exact date, but asserts that the universities “held this up as gospel truth,” this being an example of “all of the ways in which our universities transmit not knowledge and not truth but deceit and lies.” It seems that Vance does not choose to be aware of the intense debate within universities on this and other matters. I should also mention that in the last few days the Administration of which Vance is now part has forbidden federal agencies to even mention the topic.
In between these two examples, he digresses to deplore how “our entire society was destabilized for a generation” by the protests that followed the death of George Floyd, which he belittles by calling it “a terrible tragedy” when in fact it was a horrible and highly symbolic crime. He also claims that the 1200 public health authorities that issued stay-at-home orders during the Covid crisis were lenient regarding the George Floyd protests, but described protests against the economic effects of lockdown as rooted in white nationalism. I never actually heard this argument, but this is the first of many occasions in this speech where Vance claims persecution. It is also part of Vance’s general strategy of undermining confidence in public institutions.
After further obfuscation, Vance tells his audience that
Of course I imagine that I don’t have to convince any of you that this is preposterous; that the universities in our country are fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to deceit and lies, not to the truth. But ask ourselves why is this true, why is it that our universities are so committed to some of the most preposterous dishonesties in the world instead of committed to the truth? And my argument here is that it’s about power.
What power? Specifically the power to persuade people that in order to get a good job they need to go to university, and acquire, according to him, up to $100,000 of student debt in the process.
Indeed, he is raising some very interesting questions Why do so many people feel they have to go to university? And what does this tell us about the standard of US secondary education? Why does it cost the student so much compared with other countries, and why has Vance’s own party been opposed to student loan forgiveness? But these do not seem to be the questions that Vance wants us to be discussing.
Next he tells us that it is a fundamental lie by American feminism that it is liberating for a woman to go to work. The irony that he, as a man, is taking it on himself to tell women what is or is not liberating for them is totally lost on him and those like him.
He then attacks the concept of environmental justice, on the grounds that it simply causes jobs to be shipped off to India and China, which are more polluting than the US, at the expense of US workers. It is indeed true that countries that operate looser standards thereby gain a competitive advantage, but Vance’s own party is opposed to the kind of international agreements that could prevent this.
Next, to applause, Critical Race Theory. Here the attack starts by criticizing the appointment of a Black graduate of Harvard Business School to the board of Morgan Stanley. Vance, for some reason, seems certain that the appointment is not based on merit. And then there is talk about heating and grocery bills. This is also a Critical Race Theory issue, because
Ladies and gentlemen, don’t dare complain about it, because didn’t you know, the person who has implemented these policies is the first female Treasury Secretary of the United States. She’s a great trailblazer! Who cares that you can’t afford basic necessities for your family? The universities tell us that so long as we’re trailblazing on diversity equity inclusion it doesn’t matter if normal people get screwed. All that matters is progressive orthodoxy, and whether our society reinforces it. This is the world that we live in and, I hate to say, this is the world created by universities that care more about fake culture wars, they care more about identity politics, they care more about diversity equity and inclusion than they do about their own society and the people who live in it.
A lot to unpack here. The female Treasury Secretary being referred to is Janet Yellen. She does indeed, as suggested, have university connections. She has a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Brown University, and a PhD from Yale, where her supervisor, James Tobin, later received the Nobel Memorial prize in Economics, as did one of her professors, Joseph Stiglitz, who described her as among his brightest and most memorable students.
I’m afraid there’s more. Yellen’s career includes teaching at Harvard, London School of Economics, and UC Berkely. As well as having been Secretary of the Treasury, she has served on the Federal Reserve, in turn as member of the Board of Governors, Vice-Chair, and Chair, under four US presidents, including Donald Trump. I am spelling this out in order to show how clearly her appointment is a matter of identity politics, progressive orthodoxy and fake culture wars, and the search for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
But back to Vance’s speech. Regarding the 2020 election, he recalls being certain that Trump had won, but “it turned out that there was some toilet problems in the late night counting.” And so, you see, Vance does not actually assert that Trump really won, but if that’s what you think you and he are on the same side.
Next, the school curriculum. Here he asks why millions of schoolchildren are learning about “America’s racist past 180 years ago,” as if American racism had come to an end some time around, by my arithmetic, 1840, while asserting without evidence that a major American company that he names is, right now, employing slaves in China. Not only has the one thing nothing to do with the other, but he is glossing over the Jim Crow era, the resistance to desegregation, the uneven distribution of GI Bill benefits after World War II, district redlining by developers and bankers, and the resulting inherited disparities that persist to this day.
Progressive politics, he infers, is not about uplifting minorities, or healing our planet, or looking after the poor, but a language used by the academic oligarchy to rob the people blind, and to tell them to shut up if they complain. This is what is reinforced, taught in America’s universities, and passed on to America’s schoolteachers.
We have created a system where our elites tell our young people that they need to go to university, which tells them to look down on working with hands, that America is fundamentally racist, and that “this country built by our fathers and grandfathers is an evil and terrible place,” so that “we are giving our children over to our enemies.”
Next he turns to Anthony Fauci, his advice that people should wear masks at extended family gatherings, and the 1200 public health authorities who endorsed this advice. Where do they get the authority to do this? From a piece of paper that hangs in their office, another example of abuse of university-derived power. (I would mention here that Fauci served as adviser to every US president since Ronald Reagan, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W Bush, and has developed improved treatments for numerous diseases. But Vance is no more interested in this than he is in the actual qualifications of Janet Yellen.)
The purpose of National Conservatism is to stand up for “the people in this country, who have been screwed over the past 30 or 40 years.” (40 years takes us back to the first year of the Reagan presidency, but as we have seen, Vance is not very good at historical chronology.)
A passage on immigration policy is worth examining in full:
…three people in the state of Ohio who, I think you know, they might not read the same books that we read and they might not speak the same language that a lot of you speak, about politics and political theology.
But they’re good people, and they want to live a good country, in this place that their fathers and grandfathers built.
This is the second time that Vance refers to the US as having been built by its people’s “fathers and grandfathers,” as opposed to immigrants. That is no accident. In this passage, Vance also manages to have it both ways. He bonds with his audience as fellow-intellectuals, while at the same time showing solidarity with the less sophisticated, who are “good people,” thus implying a contrast between his fellow conservatives and the condescending leftist elites.
So one is a woman who cares a whole lot about the immigration issue. I met her in Southwestern Ohio, probably three months ago, and she really cares about the southern border, because she’s probably 55 or so years old and she’s caring for a young grandbaby, just like as any of you who have read my book [Hillbilly Elegy] know, my grandparents cared and cared for and raised me.
She is raising a grandbaby that she didn’t anticipate to raise, because the opioid epidemic that is spread all across this country took her daughter from her, and she did the incredibly honorable thing of taking her own grandchild, even though she didn’t have a whole lot of money lying around into her home to raise and support that child.
Now the left tells the story that the reason this woman cares about our ridiculous and porous southern border is that she’s a racist, she’s a xenophobe, she doesn’t like Mexicans. That’s why she doesn’t want a criminal gang controlling the US southern border. But what if I told you that the fentanyl that’s currently pouring across our southern border destroyed and killed her child, what if I told you that that same fentanyl is currently running rampant in the community that she calls her home, and what if I told you that the reason she wants to close the southern border is not because she hates Mexicans but because she loves her grandbaby, and she wants that grandbaby to grow up in a community where safety and security and community run wild. not fentanyl overdose?
Take this story at face value. The grandmother is heroic, as Vance is particularly qualified to say. Her concern about the southern border is justified in the strongest possible way by the tragedy that has hit her own family. And despite all this the left accuses her of racism, xenophobia, and hating Mexicans. How dare they!
I do not pretend to know why the United States has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths of any advanced country, but I do know that Mexican immigrants have nothing to do with it. A study by the right-wing Cato Institute finds that most fentanyl entering the US is smuggled in by US citizens. If the grandmother believes otherwise, it is because she has been told otherwise by people like Vance. And is she to be blamed for xenophobia? I know some people who would say so, but this shows a profound misunderstanding of human nature. For what I suspect are excellent evolutionary reasons, it is easy for us to think well of those with whom we identify, and to regard outsiders as villains. In this sense, I fear that we are all xenophobic, although different people tend to be xenophobic about different things. And so the grandmother finds it easy to blame her daughter’s death on villainous immigrants, rather than on deep-seated problems within American society itself.
The US has no call to blame immigrants, or Mexico itself, for its opiate crisis. The massive American demand for illicit drugs, and the highly lucrative criminality that inevitably results from this, undermines and destabilizes law enforcement in its southern neighbor. This is not a matter for which the US should be blaming Mexico. Quite the reverse.
(For more on fentanyl, and why current US approaches to the problem will not work, see here.)
Vance follows the grandmother story with a highly dubious anecdote about an 11-y-o girl being withdrawn by her father from school, because she was in tears after being told by her teacher that her white skin meant that she was an oppressor. To strengthen the anecdote, the girl is particularly upset because her own best friend is Black. With a comment that the left will tell you that critical race theory, here represented by a bumper sticker parody, isn’t taught in schools, but as his audience all knows this denial is ridiculous. At this point he casually mentions that he is a Christian, and that as such he regards teaching that divides people from each other as Satanic.
This final anecdote serves multiple purposes. It bundles together any teaching of American history that might make white children (or, more probably, their parents) uncomfortable, with a fringe version of critical race theory, thus paving the way for government censorship of teaching materials (this censorship we now have). It accuses anyone who questions him of promoting a ridiculous lie. And finally, leading into the speech’s peroration, it presents Conservative Nationalism as unifying and caring.
And those who would challenge this claim are the enemy.
***
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Footnotes
- 1Vance describes the work in question as referring to use of AI to predict future research findings. But as is clear from the text of the explanation, which Vance read out in full, the work is actually about the use of AI for evaluations of past research performance. In his statement, the author regrets that his work has aroused anxieties among his fellow academics, whose salaries are strongly influenced by such evaluations, but so far from retracting, he reiterates the claim that his proposed methodology would be more objective, and fairer.