While the corndogs thing is… strange (perhaps it hints that he has sympathies for those evil corn-growing Iowans to the southeast of SD), the point seems to be that Varilek is a left-wing environmentalist (but I repeat myself). His higher education is in a dubious major, while his global travel involves socialist causes and the UN. South Dakota and the region are in the midst of a huge crude oil and tar sands boom, plus the Keystone XL pipeline was supposed to be going through there before Obama held it up. Being perceived as an environmentalist is a significant negative in South Dakota right now. If Varilek is successfully painted as one, he has about as much chance as an anti-gambling crusader would have in Nevada.

As to “intelligent”, I’m reminded of William F. Buckley’s comment about how he’d rather entrust the country to people picked at random out of the telephone book than to the faculty at Harvard. Whether Varilek is smart isn’t the point, it’s that he seems the type of person (judging by his cap-and-trade advocacy) who thinks that being smart entitles him to take decisions out of the hands of other people. Thomas Sowell covers this attitude pretty thoroughly in “The Vision of the Anointed.”

Yes, those two guys. Sowell goes to great lengths to distinguish intelligence vs. being an intellectual (someone working primarily with ideas divorced from implementation) vs. the attitudes such persons frequently take — a hostility to the free market and other decentralized decision-making mechanisms, and the belief that being knowledgeable entitles one to override a less-knowledgeable person’s priorities. Sowell and Buckley are examples of people who work with ideas but don’t adopt that attitude. Speaking of Rand, some things in Atlas Shrugged come pretty close to what Buckley said: with the exception of Galt, Francisco, and Ragnar, almost everyone mentioned as having a college education is a shyster, has a grossly-inflated sense of their own intelligence, or came out of school stupider than when they went in. It’s only after the “Wet Nurse” discards what he was taught in college that he starts becoming competent and sympathetic, and in the scene where the guy dies, Rearden compares his mother being too trusting about his professors with having fed him poison. Fountainhead starts with Roarke telling his college professors to go screw themselves (with the presumed exception of his engineering (non-”squishy” major) teacher, who spoke in support of him), and Ellsworth Toohey is among the most prominent evil intellectuals in fiction.

And I have to disagree with you about the “deeper issues” aspect. There is no religious counterpart to the EPA. You’re not going to be told you have to leave your land undeveloped because it might offend Jehovah, but woe unto you if it’s determined that building might offend Gaia by disturbing some endangered rats. There are no religious equivalents of Solyndra from the President dumping billions of dollars in subsidies to encourage “Christian Jobs.” There are no Al Armendariz-es favorably citing Roman crucifixion practices during lectures about “making examples” of companies who don’t comply with government religious policy. I could go on and on. In case I’m being overly subtle (ha), I despise the environmental movement with the heat of a thousand… nuclear power plants operating at full capacity. The same pattern goes for capitalism, health, and many other issues. Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech was not about giving thanks to God, it was about giving thanks to Government. I’m much more concerned about the government doing bad things at the behest of secular meddlers than religious ones, because the secular ones are meddlesome in more instances and also have far more influence, leading them to be more successful on any given issue. About the only important religiously-influenced Federal decision I can think of is the Bush 2.0 restriction on Federally-funded fetal stem cell research, but since I don’t want the government funding research except as it pertains to its legitimate functions, that was neither here nor there for me.

Now, about the video itself.

What we’re basically disagreeing about is what things in the video are meant to cause voters to dislike/distrust Varilek. You seem to think the voters are meant to react negatively to “Gets a degree. Starts teaching. Masters Degree at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. Authors a document. Attends Cambridge University in England. Goes to Marakesh. In Milan Italy.” I think the video authors are expecting them to react to “Environmental studies. Radical environmental ideas. Greenhouse gas broker. Cap and trade energy taxes. Advocating global cap and trade scheme. Additional environmental study. Promoting a global cap and trade plan at a United Nations global warming summit. Speaking at another UN global warming summit. Washington DC political staffer. Radical ideas.”
Since neither of us lives in South Dakota (I live in Vegas, and I seem to recall that you live somewhere in Indiana), neither of us is an authority on this. Let me pose an ad for an alternate universe Matt Varilek, changing just his profession, and we can consider what the expected reaction might be.

“1997, Arizona. Matt Varilek gets a degree in surgery, and starts teaching at Cardiosphere II, known as an incubator for radical heart bypass ideas. 1999, Matt Varilek earns a Master’s Degree at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and is appointed an arterial stent designer by Medsource, a company that manufactures medical devices. 2000, Matt Varilek authors a document advocating the early use of blood thinners during suspected heart attacks. 2001, Varilek attends Cambridge University in England for additional surgical study. Varilek goes to Marakesh, Morocco, promoting artificial valve implantation at a global heart surgeon summit. 2003, Matt Varilek is in Milan, Italy, speaking at another heart surgeon summit. 2004, Matt Varilek leaves his job as design director for Medsource to become a professor of advanced cardiac surgery at John Hopkins University.”

I don’t think the Noem campaign would create something like that to discourage South Dakotans from voting for Varilek. In fact, to me it sounds like something the Varilek campaign might put out to promote him. Yet, all I’ve changed is his profession. I could use any number of professions requiring high intelligence — aerospace engineer, nuclear physicist, immunologist — and have a similar effect.

Lastly, I don’t think “smart people is dumb” (I’d like to think I’m rather intelligent, myself), nor do I expect most South Dakotans think that, but it does remind me of a relevant Orwell quote: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

I’m only a couple years younger than you, so I understand. No problem.

a) I see where you’re coming from, but a socialist probably thinks the same thing when libertarians distinguish between “capitalist” and “businessman”, or “capitalism” and “mercantilism.” I tend to use Sowell’s definition of the noun “intellectual”, since I find it hews pretty closely to everyday usage: a person who deals in ideas in the absence of effective feedback as to the validity of those ideas. I don’t mean that people explicitly hold to that definition, but that who they call “intellectuals” fits that definition. We don’t generally refer to, say, engineers as intellectuals, even though their work is mentally-rigorous. I’d wager that Robert Goddard’s brain power was at least on par with that of Herbert Marcuse, yet most people would classify Marcuse as an intellectual and not Goddard. Indeed, it’s largely the lack of rigor that marks a field of study as “intellectual.” If a rocket scientist screws up, his rocket explodes — you cannae change the laws o’ physics, Captain — and people will cease giving him money unless he can explain what he’s going to do differently. But the laws o’ Marxist philosophy are whatever Marxist philosophers say they are, and a healthy cadre of Marxists are happily ensconced in the universities over two decades after their experiment imploded for all the world to see. The latter are called intellectuals, the former is not.

b) I don’t think the only threat comes from the secular left, but I think the scale is tilted very, very far in that direction in the scope, number, and importance of threats. The dangers posed by the followers of Gaia, Keynes, Marx, and Dewey are of vastly more concern to me than those from the followers of Jesus, Moses, Buddha, and Vishnu. (Yes, I’m deliberately excluding the followers of Mohammed here, but funnily enough, they’re the ones whom the left is most likely to give deference and apologies to and make excuses for).

b-1) Abortion isn’t high on my list of issues, but in any case the debate about abortion itself seems more or less settled. Yes, there will be people demanding a ban on it. They’re not going to get anywhere. I don’t see any major federal restrictions of abortion coming along. Public opinion wouldn’t allow it. The debate now centers on abortion-related issues: parental permission/notification for minors (this is a rights-of-minors issue, not an abortion one; it should be treated the same as any comparable medical procedure); federal funding for abortions (not constitutionally-mandated); abortions once the fetus would be viable outside the womb (at which point the question changes from “does the woman have the right to evict the fetus from her womb, even if that will result in its death?” (clearly yes, from a property-rights view) to “does the woman have the right as such to kill the fetus by virtue of it being in her womb?”, which I find dubious at best).

b-2) Government religious displays are even lower on my list of issues, because IMHO a lot of people who get upset about this have chips on their shoulders. I don’t want the government funding churches, or forcing students to pray in school, or stopping police patrols on Sunday, etc., but at some point you have to accept that as long as government institutions exist, they will to some degree reflect the society they’re in. Being considerate of minorities and protecting their rights against violation by the majority are one thing. Demanding that the majority bend over backwards to shield a minority from the mere reminder that they are a minority is asking too much. Public schools will sell milk in the cafeterias and have dances, however much vegans and Baptists are offended. The women at the DMV will not be forced to wear hijabs, angry though Muslims will be at that. Military PXs will sell condoms over the objections of Catholics. In the end you have to shrug and say “you live in a country of predominantly semi-observant Protestants. Deal with it.” I have no more sympathy for atheists trying to close down a nativity scene at City Hall than I do for funnydementedalists trying to stop public school students from wearing their Halloween costumes to class. As for the funding aspect, I’m certainly not a pacifist, but when one of them complains about his tax dollars going to the military, at least he’s talking about a non-symbolic amount of money. Short of anarchocapitalism — which I’m all for, in the same way that I’m all for human colonies on Mars, i.e. it’s desirable and eventually feasable but I’ll never see it — there is no solution to the overall problem. In the meantime, I look at outrage at the word “God” in a graduation speech the same as I looked upon the furor at the sight of Janet Jackson’s nipple: “Stop that! It’s silly.”

c) I find that people are a lot more compartmentalized in their thinking than you give them credit for. I doubt that your average Young Earther is going to brandish a crucifix at his doctor for saying “I need to prescribe you a stronger antibiotic, your infection might be a drug-resistant strain”, even though the concept of a drug-resistant bacteria strain makes no sense without Darwinian evolution. He’ll happily use his car’s GPS system without caring that the satellites that make it work were put there using science that contradicts parts of the Old Testament (I don’t recall which one(s), it’s been a while, but I think they involved Joshua and the sun standing still). The influence of his beliefs on his real-world decisions are quite minimal, and impact other people even less. It’s nothing compared to a believing environmentalist, especially those of the “deep ecology” variety. For example, in California they’ve got a proposition on the ballot mandating warning labels on genetically-modified food, even though repeated studies have shown no health risk. To me this is the equivalent of a proposition that produce from non-Christian farmers bear a label saying “Warning, touched by heathens!”

d) I agree that such a system would be a good thing if we were talking about something objectively-proven to cause harm — sulfur dioxide, say. I don’t consider anthropogenic warming sufficiently-proven, though, to warrant such a system yet. Further, for much of the environmental movement, the objective is not (to my eyes) to reduce harm, but to enforce the policies that they claim will reduce harm. They’re not making the kid take the yucky medicine so he’ll get better — they get off on forcing the kid to take the medicine, and would want to make him take it whether or not he was sick, maybe even if it made him sicker. (For example, the environmentalist push to reduce carbon emissions, juxtaposed with their opposition to non-carbon-emitting nuclear power). Restricting economic freedom is not merely the preferred means but largely the actual goal of the “watermelon” (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) contingent.

What I find ironic about this subject is that there is a strong, pervasive, intrusive Christian-inspired movement, but most people don’t think about it in those terms, especially the ones who belong to it. A large part of the original “progressive” movement was what was called the Social Gospel — essentially, “take the charitable principles Jesus told His followers to live by as individuals, and turn them into tax-funded government policy.” While there are some echoes of this on the Right — Bush 1.0 and 2.0′s “kinder gentler nation” and “compassionate conservatism” respectively — this is almost-entirely a thing of the secular Left now.

Actually, that’s not entirely correct, now that I think more about it. The religious rhetoric of the Social Gospel is not quite dead on the Left. You hear advocates of campaign finance restrictions comparing it to Jesus casting the moneylenders out of the temple (shades of government-as-god again). “Brother’s keeper” still comes up. Back in the 2008 campaign, quite a few progressives were saying “Jesus was a community organizer!” in response to criticism of Obama. Granted, a lot of leftists who do this are probably just trying to turn Christians’ beliefs back at them, rather than holding those beliefs themselves, but the rhetoric fits the lineage of their ideas. And of course there are actual leftist clergy like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Jeramiah Wright, whose beliefs trace back to the Social Gospel without having been secularized.

By the way, I hope I’m not giving offense here. I know this is something you feel quite strongly about. Err, probably a bit late to ask that at this point, huh?