Conservative "Research," Or The Art Of Attaching Footnotes To Fear

This Slate article about Jason Richwine is particularly relevant now, because of its connection to the current national debate over comprehensive immigration reform.  But, in another sense, it would be relevant at any time in the past 35 to 40 years, as so-called conservative "think tanks" have come to dominate the national political debate over almost everything.

Organizations like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the rest of their ilk exist not to conduct independent research, without concern about its outcome.  They exist to attach the form of such research to the pre-conceived biases of their well-heeled funders.  It is a foregone conclusion that any studies they have conducted producing anything that even looks like it might be a "liberal" result has never, and will never, see the light of day.

The problem, of course, is that reality isn't relentlessly conservative, any more than it is relentlessly liberal.  And, in the case of the point that Richwine was trying to make--and, believe me, he was trying very, very hard to make it--no amount of empirical study can produce a result to justify a "fact" that is merely the manifestation of a feeling.  In this case--indeed, with modern conservatives, in almost all cases--that feeling is, purely and simply, hate.

Why do organizations like Heritage get funded in the first place, in that case?  For reasons that reflect both the modest extent to which intellectualism has triumphed in our culture, and the extent to which intellectualism has its primary weakness.  Richard Hofstadter was correct in documented the extent to which anti-intellectualism in American life, but that hasn't stopped our society from becoming more educated and, in the process, more willing to rely on empirical data.  At the same time, intellectuals pride themselves on the open-mindedness to anything that appears to be supported by such data, and conservatives know it.  So they go out of their way to create "research" that appears to be statistically rigorous solely for the purpose of turning it into a political club--one with which they can beat up liberals while they shout "Why aren't you open-minded enough to accept our research?"

The short, simple and direct answer should always be, "Because it isn't real research."  However, explaining why is not a bumper-sticker process that can easily be conducted in a sixty-second culture.  And that's the only reason these so-called "think tanks" appear to win any of their arguments with their counterparts on the left.  It does not matter that their science is shoddy because, as long as they continue to master the art of attaching footnotes to hate, they can triumph in a what-happened-lately culture that, by definition, exults form over substance.

I pray that this pseudo-research does not get it the way of comprehensive immigration reform.  And I also pray for the day (soon) when it completely loses its foothold in our nation's political debate.