BY RANDY GOLDSTEIN

In print | Published November 11, 2004

If you are an American citizen, George W. Bush is your president. It does not matter that you have been indoctrinated by the liberal bastion that is Swarthmore College. John Kerry lost and will likely fade into political obscurity.

Swarthmore students, it seems, cannot come to grips with this fact. The recent buzz around campus has been a supposed study linking blue states with high IQs and red states with low IQs. Taking this as fact, Swarthmore students find solace in their belief that President Bush was reelected by the relatively unintelligent portion of America’s population.

If you really believe this study’s claim that Connecticut has an average IQ of 113 and Mississippi has an average IQ of 85, perhaps it is not the red states’ intelligence you should be questioning. I have scoured the Internet for the source of these data, but have yet to find one. Further, sizeable populations voted for Bush and Kerry in many blue and red states, respectively. It is thus illogical and divisive to claim that the United States exhibits such geographically polarized levels of intelligence.

Perhaps more egregious than ranking states by intelligence is that fact that the same chart also gives a breakdown of purported average incomes, suggesting that Republican voters tend not only to be stupid, but also poor. While I am certain that these data are incorrect, it may indeed be the case that much American wealth is concentrated in the Northeast and West Coast, which obviously went to Kerry in this election. If wealth and education are correlated, then many Bush states, assuming they have lower levels of income, are also relatively uneducated compared to Kerry states.

But what does one gain by accusing Mississippi of going to Bush because it is poorer and less educated than Connecticut? Does the social status of Mississippi residents make them less adept at deciding whom they want to sit in the Oval Office? This is especially intriguing because Swarthmore students spent months attempting to enfranchise Chester’s poor, uneducated population in the name of non-partisan social justice. The primary difference between residents of Chester and their economically similar counterparts in the Midwest and South that Chester residents are black and tend to vote for Democrats.

This fact gets at the very core of Swarthmore’s brand of liberal elitism. Students here want to give underprivileged Americans the opportunity to vote, but those Americans better be minorities and vote for Swarthmore’s candidate of choice.

The difference really boils down to the fact that many Bush supporters do indeed place high priority on their own, different set of “moral values.” Whether you like it or not, it is their constitutional right to do so. Rather than acknowledge this fact, it seems that Swarthmore students would rather convince themselves that these people are simply ignorant.

This is again indicative of Swarthmore’s gross elitism. Politics here is not a question so much as a set of undeniable truisms: This country needs to enact gay rights, nationalize health care, legalize marijuana, pay reparations for slavery and apologize to the world for inciting global jihad. Each of these issues, however, is highly debatable. Swatties may view their positions as logical and rational, but the “logical” voter and “moral” voter each cast an equally weighted ballot on Election Day. Perhaps students’ efforts to affect national elections would be well served to recognize that Swarthmore logic is not, in fact, universal.

If you wish to accuse red states of having misaligned values, it is your right to do so. To accuse them of intrinsic ignorance, however satisfying it may be, merely exposes your own lack of understanding. Fortunately for your sake, you have four years to realize the futility of this attitude and recognize the need to engage, not alienate, the majority of this country.

Randy Goldstein is a senior. You can reach him at rgoldst1@swarthmore.edu.

« RETURN TO OPINIONS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »