Fred goes somewhat astray in diagnosing Commentator’s Disease:
Liberal commentators want everyone to go to college, when about a fifth of people have the brains. Conservatives think that people can rise by hard work and sacrifice as certainly many people have. Thing is, most people can’t. Commentators only see those who made it…. The tendency of the Beltway 99th to live in an imaginary world, of conservatives to think that everybody can be a Horatio Alger, of liberals to believe that inequality arises from discrimination, guarantees wretched policy. Those who can do almost anything need to recognize the existence of those who can do almost nothing. Few of the latter are parasites. The waitress has worked all her life, as has the truck driver. They ended up with nothing.
First, Fred is mistaken in thinking that most of the commentariat possesses IQs over 140. Speaking as someone who actually does have an IQ over 140 and has suffered through numerous interactions with many members of the commentariat, most of them are barely Mensa material, if that. While Pat Buchanan and Charles Krauthammer are both highly intelligent, they are actually somewhat unusual; there is a reason that media figures seldom write more than two books that are little more than collections of their past columns. Furthermore, many of the books “written” by big name media figures are actually ghostwritten. For example, Rush Limbaugh’s second book was actually written by Joseph Farah.
Second, while Fred is correct about the liberal misapprehension regarding the utility of college education, there are few, if any, conservatives who think that everyone can be Horatio Alger. Fred, being somewhat soft-hearted, doesn’t understand that both libertarians and conservatives accept failure and have little desire to try to rescue people from themselves or the natural consequences of their bad decisions. This isn’t because they don’t know that life is hard, but because they understand the futility of fostering dependency.
Finally, abstract theory matters because its application has great effect on the lives of the elite and the great unwashed alike. And Keynesianism, in particular, matters because the long run has finally arrived.