{"id":1317162,"date":"2019-12-07T23:48:01","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T06:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/micek-column-republicans-promote-know-nothingness-during-impeachment-hearings\/"},"modified":"2019-12-07T23:48:01","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T06:48:01","slug":"micek-column-republicans-promote-know-nothingness-during-impeachment-hearings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/micek-column-republicans-promote-know-nothingness-during-impeachment-hearings\/","title":{"rendered":"Micek column: Republicans promote know-nothingness during impeachment hearings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s not often that you get to watch what conservative author Tom Nichols has called \u201cthe death of expertise\u201d unfold in real time.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s exactly what happened Wednesday as Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sneeringly grilled a panel of law school professors as the academics \u2014 using facts, precedent and history \u2014 justified the case for President Donald Trump\u2019s impeachment.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo offense to our professors. But please. Really? We\u2019re bringing you in here today to testify on stuff \u2026 that we already know, out of the classrooms that maybe you\u2019re getting ready for finals in, to discuss things that you probably haven\u2019t even had a chance to [read or watch],\u201d Georgia Rep. Doug Collins scoffed during his opening statement.<\/p>\n

The target of Collins\u2019 criticism, Stanford University Law School professor Pamela Karlan, forcefully hit back at the Southerner\u2019s attempt at mansplaining.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere Mr. Collins I would like to say to you, sir, that I read transcripts of every one of the witnesses who appeared in the live hearing because I would not speak about these things without reviewing the facts,\u201d she clapped back. \u201cSo I\u2019m insulted by the suggestion that as a law professor I don\u2019t care about those facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that was the M.O. for the panel\u2019s GOP lawmakers who, in the absence of an actual defense of Trump\u2019s impeachment-worthy attempt to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, resulted to the time-honored tactic of trying to tear down the witnesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I got to say is, if you love America, mamas, don\u2019t let your babies grow up to Harvard or Stanford law school.\u201d Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert quipped, apparently unaware of how hard it is to walk 10 feet on Capitol Hill without running into someone who holds a degree from either of those institutions.<\/p>\n

That included Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Stanford law grad who groused how much he disliked his time there.<\/p>\n

Gaetz also heaped scorn on Karlan, telling her that, from \u201cthe ivory towers of [her] law school,\u201d that she could not see that she was condescending to \u201cthe actual people of this country.\u201d By which, I suppose, Gaetz meant Trump voters. But no matter. The fight over who qualifies as an \u201cActual American\u201d could fill an entire column.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s always been an ugly strain of know-nothingness at the heart of American life. And it\u2019s one of the great contradictions in our national character. As much as we urge our children to work hard, to go to school, push them to achieve, and to make a better life for themselves, there\u2019s still an unalloyed disdain for those who actually make it there.<\/p>\n

In Trump\u2019s America, this tendency has been weaponized and deployed for political ends.<\/p>\n

Thus, American heroes such as Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, Russia expert Fiona Hill and former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch are assailed as emissaries of the \u201cdeep state\u201d instead of being celebrated for their service and hailed as the very best that our nation has to offer.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written before of Nichols, a former U.S. Senate staffer and Naval War College professor, whose slender 2017 volume \u201cThe Death of Expertise,\u201d should be required reading for every American.<\/p>\n

In it, Nichols makes a clear and compelling case for the damage done to our culture by the unsupportable insistence that everyone is as smart as everyone else \u2014 that expert opinion is meaningless and that any attempt to dismiss such an argument claims is just \u201celitism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bigger problem is we\u2019re proud of not knowing things,\u201d Nichols writes. \u201cAmericans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of any public policy issue, is an actual virtue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to Gohmert gratuitously dumping on Harvard and Stanford, which used to be held up as aspirational places that would help our children reach that golden future we exhorted them to stretch their arms out toward.<\/p>\n

But experts do punch themselves in the face a few times. From the fatally false arguments about weapons of mass destruction that led us to war in Iraq to Karlan\u2019s own ill-chosen remarks Wednesday about Trump\u2019s youngest child, Barron Trump, this habit is undoubtedly bipartisan.<\/p>\n

The real shame is, though, that America needs more of the kind of sober and well-informed discussion that unfolded before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The hours-long session was a free master class on American political history and the Constitution. Instead of shouting at the academics, GOP lawmakers should have listened for a few minutes. Who knows? They might even have learned something.<\/p>\n

John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pa. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com<\/a> and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not often that you get to watch what conservative author Tom Nichols has called \u201cthe death of expertise\u201d unfold in real time. But that\u2019s exactly what happened Wednesday as Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sneeringly grilled a panel of law school professors as the academics \u2014 using facts, precedent and history \u2014 justified […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1317162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 10:10:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}