Responding to Sarah Palin

The Chronicle for Higher Education features an article which quotes Sarah Palin’s book America by Heart : Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag as saying

Most of those who write for the mainstream media and teach at universities and law schools don’t share the religious faith of their fellow Americans. They seem to regard people who believe in God and regularly attend their church or synagogue as alien beings, people who are ‘largely poor, uneducated and easy to command,’ as the Washington Post once famously put it.

The article goes on to show that the available evidence suggests Palin’s caricature of the university professor is wrong.

And so I think it is appropriate, as a university professor who happens to be a Christian, to say that there is indeed something that we university professors as a group object to, and it isn’t religion per se. We object to oversimplifications, caricatures, stereotypes, generalizations, unsubstantiated claims, claims that have been debunked and yet continue to be made, and everything else that evidences a lack of critical thinking and a failure to ensure that one’s views and assertions are compatible with available evidence.

The irony, of course, is that lack of critical thinking skills are what make someone “easy to command” and not the presence or absence of religious beliefs per se. And of course, that very lack of critical thinking skills seems to be evidenced by Palin, or if not, it is assumed to be present in those she hopes to command through the writing of her book.