Ross Douthat's statistical illiteracy

Ross Douthat is reputed to be a pretty smart guy. He blogged for the Atlantic before being given Bill Safire's old op-ed column at the New York Times. Safire, despite being wrong in may ways, was a sharp observer with good sources in DC, an analytical eye, and a sparkling intellect. Safire was briefly replaced by Bill Kristol, whose uneasy relationship with the truth, sloppy writing, and tendency to bash his own paper led to a brief tenure. Douthat has risen above Kristol's sad mark, but not by much.

Consider his defense of Sarah Palin:

In a recent Pew poll, 44 percent of Americans regarded Palin unfavorably. But slightly more had a favorable impression of her. That number included 46 percent of independents, and 48 percent of Americans without a college education.

That last statistic is a crucial one. Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology.

How does that statistic tell us anything about class? The poll shows 45% of Americans with a favorable view of Palin, statistically identical to the rates among both independents and those without any college experience. To the extent this tells us anything about class in America, it says that class is not a factor in Palin's unpopularity.

If you want to see the effects of class on popularity, look elsewhere in that poll, at Mitt Romney's stats. He's favored by only 33% of those without any college education, and the same number of people earning less than $30,000/year. Those with at least a little college education favor him by 13 more percentage points, a trend also seen in his ratings by income levels, with 41% approval in the $30,000-75,000 group and 48% among those earning more that $75,000. That's class division. Sarah Palin is disliked by rich and poor alike (AFAICT). Her base is not among poorer Americans, or less educated Americans. Her base is among evangelicals. Pew writes:

positive views of Palin have slipped among non-evangelical Republicans…, they remain overwhelmingly positive among white evangelical Republicans.

Which brings us back to Douthat. Douthat contrasts Palin with Obama, claiming:

Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

Except she doesn't. She represents some sort of fringe ideal among evangelical Christians. This is a group notable for its anti-intellectualism, with observer (and evangelical Christian) Mark Noll explaining the title of book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." Evangelicals have not built the equivalents of Harvard or Columbia. They have not created their own Georgetown or Notre Dame. They created Liberty University, Patrick Henry College, and Bob Jones University: political props for the freakshow that is Republican politics.

Sarah Palin's success reflects that culture. It doesn't reflect any grand democratic ideal or any class division. It barely reflects a strain between intellectuals and anti-intellectuals (many of the latter are college-educated, but still, Palin's ratings among college-educated and college-uneducated are statistically indistinguishable). It reflects evangelical Christianity: a white, female, rural phenomenon with a new white, female, rural standardbearer.

Categories

More like this

To your assertion that evangelicals haven't accomplished much by way of building reputable educational institutions, I'll see your Liberty, Patrick Henry, and Bob Jones, and raise you Wheaton College (Mark Noll's alma mater), Calvin College, Baylor University, and Grove City College.

Marcus: A fair point, but even Noll acknowledges that Wheaton doesn't match the academic heft of secular colleges, or of Jesuit institutions. Calvin College has some good people, and produces good work, too, but hardly measures up to the secular or Jesuit schools. Both are solid liberal arts colleges, but not major intellectual centers of the Harvard/Georgetown vein, or even major SLACs like Williams. They may well get there soon. Baylor is more of a research university, and good work comes out of it, but it also hosts Bill Dembski's version of the evangelical freakshow. Similarly, Grove City was a bit too eager to take on Guillermo Gonzalez, a man who privileges the religious apologetics of Reasons to Believe over actual astronomical research. Maybe they do other solid work, but again, not serving to organize a broader culture.

Check out Steve Matheson's description of the tension associated with being a scientist at Calvin, supporting evolution, and attempting to teach kids about evolution straightforwardly: http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com/2008/06/teaching-evolution-at-calvi… So long as these schools must fight rear-guard actions, how can they be advancing a distinctive and forward-looking perspective?

Noll quotes Robert Wuthnow approvingly: "To pit even the strong intellectual aspirations of a Wheaton College or a Calvin College, or the massive fund-raising network of a Liberty University, against the multibillion dollar endowments of a Princeton or a Harvard reveals the vast extent of this deficit in resources." Noll adds: "Small institutions with modest budgets can still exert a life-changing influence on their students. But by their nature they are not designed for the kinds of patient, creative study that alters the way we think about the world and ourselves." But the real problem, Noll notes, is "created by the generations-long failure of the evangelical community to nurture the life of the mind. That failure has created what William Hull, provost of Samford University, has called 'the tragic imbalance which now exists according to which the dominant religion in America is almost destitute of intellectual firepower.'"

As Palin ably demonstrates.

Bob Jones University is not a political prop for the Republicans. It is a Christian institution seeking to inculcate a Christian worldview into its students, equipping them for service to Christ's kingdom.

I don't deny that conservative evangelical Christians have often been allied with--and co-opted by--the Republican party. That is to our shame. But check out the last paragraph of the Wikipedia article on the current president of BJU:

"When, in 2005, he was asked by Newsweek if he wished to play a political role as had his predecessors at BJU, Jones replied, "It would not be my choice." Further, when asked if he felt ideologically closer to his father's engagement with politics or to other evangelicals who have tried to avoid civic involvement, he answered, "The gospel is for individuals. The main message we have is to individuals. We're not here to save the culture."[4] In a 2005 Washington Post interview, Jones dodged political questions and even admitted that he was embarrassed by "some of the more vitriolic comments" made by his predecessors. "I don't want to get specific," he said, "But there were things said back then that I wouldn't say today."[5] In October 2007 when Bob Jones III, as "a private citizen," endorsed Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination for president, Stephen Jones made it clear that he wished "to stay out of politics" and that neither he nor the University had endorsed anyone.[6] In April 2008 he told a reporter, "I don't think I have a political bone in my body."[7]"

By Mark L Ward Jr (not verified) on 08 Jul 2009 #permalink

Have you considered the fact that universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth etc., were all founded to promote the gospel and train pastors? The problem with analysis like yours is that you treat evangelical Christians as something new. This country was founded by people committed to spreading the gospel and promoting Christian principles. It is true however that if you want a solid education these days, your best bet would probably be a Catholic institution such as Rockhurst, or a Jesuit school. Just my two cents worth.

Exile: I don't think you can claim that Mark Noll's analysis treats evangelical Christianity as a modern force. He argues that Jonathan Edwards was very much an intellectual force, but that evangelical thought stagnated after his death. It's worth noting, though, that Harvard was established in 1636, a century before Edwards' work. The others you mentioned are hardly evangelical schools today, and I don't know that any were at their founding.

See George Marsden's "Soul of the American University" for the background on how secular commercial America captured the church-planted colleges and universities and grew its own as the Protestant establishment declined.

http://www.amazon.com/Soul-American-University-Establishment-Establishe…

The encouraging point is that what has been established (state-subsidized disbelief) can be un-established. Given the shambles of current establishment policies, that is an open possibility.

By Ridge Runner (not verified) on 23 Nov 2009 #permalink