"The rot set in with Ronald Reagan"

The best articulation, yet, that I have come across of the state of Conservatism in America:

Traditional conservatives disdain populism and respect knowledge. They believe in balancing the government’s books. And they are pragmatists who are suspicious of ideology. Reagan debased all these ideas – and modern American conservatism is still suffering the consequences.

Rachman writes how this Reaganism has led to Sarah Palin:

The most damaging idea propagated by the Reagan myth is the cult of the idiot-savant (the wise fool). You can see it in the very first line of Dinesh D’Souza’s admiring biography of Reagan, which proclaims: “Sometimes it really helps to be a dummy.” Mr D’Souza recounts numerous stories in which intellectuals – even conservative intellectuals – disdained Reagan. They scorned his tendency to spend cabinet meetings sorting jelly beans into different colours, and his taste for flaky anecdotes. But, Mr D’Souza concludes, the “dummy” was right and the pointy-heads were wrong.
A dangerous chain of reasoning flows from this popular version of history. Reagan was apparently stupid and often startlingly ignorant – but he was vindicated by history. Therefore, goes the theory, ignorance and stupidity are good signs. They show that a politician is in tune with the deeper wisdom of the people. Once you start thinking like that, it is but a short step to Sarah Palin.

Meanwhile, within the storehouses of knowledge--in academia--postmodernism, in a way, legitimized such bizarre descent into stupidity by championing an argument that every interpretation is equally valid.  The idiot savant of Reagan-Bush-Palin is similarly reflected in the challenge in the public domain of how old the universe is, or natural selection and evolution, and even in the fantastic growth of the conspiracy theory industry.  The joke is not on Reagan or Palin, but on us in academia :(

Hmmm.... that was a digression :)  Rachman concludes:

The real Reagan was, in fact, rather more pragmatic than the “Reagan myth” that sprang up after he left office. Real Reagan was willing to raise taxes in extremis, and became a firm believer in arms-reduction talks. Today’s American conservatives, who claim the mantle of Reagan, would regard these ideas as treachery and weakness. Reagan was ultimately a successful president. But he left behind a poisonous legacy for the conservative movement.