Bruce Thornton of the Hoover Institute reviews Fred Siegel's Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class which uncovers the deep historical roots of the left's disdain for ordinary Americans. Siegel writes of H.G. Wells, Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, Philip Roth, Arthur Schlesinger and others. Thornton has this to say of the famous Scopes trial:
The 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial, a “contrivance from the start,” as Siegel writes, and immortalized in the historically challenged 1955 Broadway hit Inherit the Wind, established the meme of the brave and noble man of “science” battling slack-jawed, oppressive Christian fundamentalists. This cliché predictably surfaces in liberal commentary on issues ranging from teaching Darwinian evolution, to the validity of global warming. In the 1930s idolizing the Soviet Union and communism, a reflex of liberal disdain for capitalism and its déclassé obsession with getting and spending, began its long march through American culture and education.
There's much more. . . all of it enlightening.