Liberal condescension - Clive Crook
I second this. I am often disdainful of people I share air with. Don’t worry, having been raised a Catholic, I feel guilty for my feelings of disdain.
As for praising someone for their “bedrock common sense,” it sounds like a cheap way of making people feel like they have done something qualitatively worthy of praise, when they clearly have not.
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Which is more condescending,” asks Kinsley, “to tell citizens they are behaving like children or fools, or to praise them for their ‘bedrock common sense’?”To condescend is to patronize. You do not patronize somebody when you call him an idiot, whether it is true or false. That is not condescension. It is, on the other hand, disdain. Alexander used that word too, and probably should have stuck to it. In the main, liberals are not condescending to middle America. But they are very often disdainful.
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