Jeff Goldstein goes to town (in the way that only Jeff Goldstein can–and if you don’t know what that means: beware) on an essay by one William Savage, Ph.D., a Lecturer in English at Northwestern.

The premise of Savage’s piece starts with the fact that Blue Staters (and, by extension, liberal Democrats) are not breeding at the same rate as Red Staters, but that despite his own voluntary childlessness that he can use his position as a Lecturer in English (and part-time tour guide, it would seem) to shape generation next.

(BTW, I am ignoring the radical oversimplification of the dichotomization of the country into Red and Blue for the moment).

The set-up:

In a New York Times Magazine article [”Fertile Red States,” Dec 12, 2024], published right around the last semester break, Noam Scheiber pointed out President Bush’s successes in the states with the highest fertility rates. As if Urban Archipelago dwellers don’t have enough to worry about. The message: Red states are outbreeding blue states, and the recent Great Leap Rightward is just the beginning.

As an atypical Irish-Catholic American, this hits close to home. I’m a 43-year-old man without children (and none on the way, thanks to surgical intervention) and this news suggests I should feel complicit in my own political marginalization. If I had bred with the precocity and frequency of my parents, I’d have had three adult children voting in the last election, Chicago Democrats one and all.

Well, he found me out: my wife and I had three children precisely so I could propagate more vote-clones into the system. Even better: one was born in Texas (gasp!) and two were born in (wait for it): ALABAMA! The Red States are on the march, no doubt.

I must confess, Dr. Savage comes across as a stereotypical self-absorbed type whose self-absorption has been radically reinforced by his lack of children.

But, it gets better–Savage’s self-importance drips from every word he writes, especially when he describes how reading the literature is his classes so broadens the minds of his students (so that they wil become, of course, Blue Staters in political persuasion). The best stuff, is his description of the life-lesson he conveys on the tours of the city he take his classes on:

The class also includes a tour of Chicago, conducted on foot and public transportation

[…]

someone always interrupts me as I’m talking about a particular writer or public space and adds his or her own two cents. Mostly, it’s misinformed bullshit. But sometimes some passing stranger or street mope has an interesting insight, and I get out my notebook and write down what I’ve just learned. I’m not much on the theory of role models-if people just did what they saw people around them doing, the world would be in even worse shape. But when students see their middle-aged professor heeding a homeless guy who hangs out at a public fountain dedicated to a particular author, it stretches their brains, whether they’re from a red state or a blue one.

Can the guy be any more self-important? One Professor to another: Savage, your main function is to teach your student literature and writing–not to model social behavior for them.

In reading the whole piece, the most remarkable part is that Savage assumes that if his students are better educated that they will start to think as he does about the world. This is one of the more arrogant and self-important things I have read in some time.

And while I agree with him that students (of all ideological persuasions, by the way) need to learn to be critical thinkers, they aren’t poor thinkers because children of conservative parents are uniquely prone to parroting. I hate to break it to him: but children of liberal parents parrot their parents, too. Lack of critical thinking skill amongst most 18-22 year-olds isn’t an ideologically based problem. However, one gets the clear impression that Savage doesn’t see liberal-parroting to be a big problem.

His conclusion is remarkable in its arrogance:

And so whatever the demographic models suggest, I’m not worried about the red staters outbreeding blue staters. As long as their kids need a college education, they’ll come to a blue town, county, or city, and there they will learn a thing or two about the world in which they live-and vote.

Because, of course, Red Staters are ignorant, and all it takes is a little education to make them see the error of their ways. My word. Could we work a tad harder to reinfore tired stereotype of academics and the university?

The whole thing is filled with condescension and fallacious argumentation, so read the whole thing if you like. If you want a point-by-point translation, click over to Jeff’s place.