Comedian Louis CK has taken to Twitter to vent his frustrations with Common Core, the recently introduced national education standards that are driving parents across the country up the wall. Check out his Twitter feed for his whole thing; among his complaints are that his daughters used to love doing math but now it "makes them cry." He also notes that parents and teachers alike in New York are opposed to the new standards.
I mention this because it reminded me of a rather annoying piece from a couple of weeks back in Slate by Jamelle Bouie, the thesis of which is that conservatives are opposed to things like Common Core solely because liberals like them. Sheer "tribalism" leads to opposition to the president's policies—these conservative rubes, we are led to believe, would be totes fine with the policies if they were urged by conservatives. But the "culture war" demands total opposition to everything and anything, even super-duper pragmatic policies, all of which happen to be those proposed by the left, naturally.
One presumes that Louis CK and the other parents in his New York City school hate Common Core because of their tribal conservatism, amirite?
Bouie's piece is annoying because he simply presumes those who disagree with him and those who resist his preferred policy prescriptions are acting wholly in bad faith. Never mind that large swatches of the conservative community were vocally opposed to No Child Left Behind, George W. Bush's massive national education effort: This is different because "Obama!" The small-government right has long argued for the privatization of Amtrak and against the expansion of rail-based-boondoggles, but the opposition to the ridiculous idea of putting high-speed trains in California and Florida is different because "Obama!" Take light bulbs. Bouie writes that conservatives are just now getting worked up about new light bulb standards, which were designed to get rid of (far superior) incandescent bulbs that people really liked. These changes were signed into law by George W. Bush years ago! Why are people complaining just now? Anti-Obama tribalism, undoubtedly. Except, of course, that conservatives were complaining. Here's Andrew Ferguson, writing in the Weekly Standard in 2007 (!):
Some people really like the new bulbs, of course. Not all of them are professional environmentalists, though all of them are cheapskates. CFLs produce the same amount of light (lumens) as an incandescent bulb while using only about a quarter of the watts. With proper care and moderate use, they can last as much as six times longer than a typical incandescent. Even if you consider their higher purchase price--six or seven times the price of a traditional bulb--CFLs can lower your monthly lighting bill by as much as 20 percent. And because they're deemed environmentally sensitive, switching them on can give you the same hard-to-define feeling of exaltation you get shopping for organic vegetables at Whole Foods. Then you can donate the money you've saved on your electric bill to the Natural Resources Defense Council or the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
Other people, however, perhaps a very large number, will prefer the old, pre-Bush bulbs. Their reasons have less to do with the wonderfulness of the incandescent and their disdain for environmentalists than with the inconveniences of the CFL. The new bulbs are particularly vulnerable to extremes of temperature, for example; you won't want to use them in your garage in winter. CFLs are also 25 percent longer in size than the average incandescent. This makes them unsuitable for all kinds of lighting fixtures--particularly chandeliers and other ceiling lights--which will have to be either discarded or reconfigured, at considerable expense, after the Bush ban goes into effect. You can't use most CFLs with dimmer switches, either; ditto timers. Newer models that can be dimmed and are adaptable to timers will require you to buy new CFL-compatible dimmers and timers.
But the complaints are different now because "Obama!"
Now, I have no doubt that the intensity of the anti-light bulb brigade is higher now than it was in late-2007. And I have no doubt that many conservatives (along with many liberals!) are being especially noisy about Common Core at the moment. Allow me to suggest there might be a different reason for the increased angst: The standards are just now taking effect so the average American is only just now noticing them! Weirdly, once an absurdity starts impacting a person's day-to-day life, they tend to get a bit more vocal about it.
Then again, it's easier to assume that conservatives have neither legitimate points to make nor consistently held positions. They're just a pack of mentally lazy tribalists resisting the efforts of their progressive betters. Because "Obama!"