The second letter from Santa Monica supports our theory that the reason for the popularity of yoga on the Westside is so the city’s liberals can pat themselves on the back. A Maxwell Epstein writes to the Los Angeles Times:

Marvin and Peter Olasky comment on why, according to political analyst Larry Sabato, Supreme Court justices evolve toward liberal positions. Missing from the article is the real reason for this shift. Throughout American history, conservatives have been on the losing side. They opposed Social Security (and apparently still do), opposed civil rights and most other government efforts to protect Americans from unfettered market forces.

It is no accident that the majority of intellectuals are liberal — they are more thoughtful and open-minded, so they understand the importance of that protection. And most Supreme Court justices are intellectuals, so they come to understand. The purpose of conservatives is to prevent liberals from moving too fast toward social justice.

Epstein — a retired Dean at UCLA — may mean “the majority of academics are liberal,” which is likely true. But if you replace “intellectuals” with smart people and use education as a proxy, Epstein’s thesis does not hold up outside the Santa Monica - Westwood liberal preserve. The most well-educated people are conservative. Professor Jim Lindgren of Northwestern’s law school wrote after a similar dustup in early 2004 that

… Republicans in the general public tend to be better educated than Democrats. In the 1994-2002 General Social Surveys (GSS), Republicans have over 6/10ths of a year more education on average than Democrats. Republicans also have a higher final mean educational degree. Further, Republicans scored better than Democrats on two word tests in the GSS–a short vocabulary test and a modified analogies test.

If one breaks down the data by party affiliation and political orientation, the most highly educated group is conservative Republicans, who also score highest on the vocabulary and analogical reasoning tests. Liberal Democrats score only insignificantly lower than conservative Republicans. The least educated subgroups are moderate and conservative Democrats, who also score at the bottom (or very near the bottom) on vocabulary and analogy tests.

(in response to a Duke professor’s claim that there are no conservatives in academia because they’re “stupid” — shades of Epstein’s thesis): The irony here is that if there were substantial numbers of Republican political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists at Duke and other elite schools, Professor Brandon might already know that in the United States, the two most similar groups in educational attainment and verbal proficiency are liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans–and that ordinary, non-liberal Democrats are among the least educated political groups.

As to Epstein’s final point, “The purpose of conservatives is to prevent liberals from moving too fast toward social justice,” we prefer “The purpose of conservatives is to ensure that we live in a sustainable society that maximizes long-term wealth for all.” Epstein … is likely opposed to that.

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The letter writer, Maxwell Epstein, (short bio here) was UCLA’s Dean of International Students and Scholars. He still teaches a “long running UCLA Extension class which keeps the community informed on world affairs” titled “Beyond the Headlines: The World Today” (offered this fall as Political Science course #747)

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 7th, 2005 at 2:09 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under California Schemin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.