Thomas Sowell Takes on ‘Intellectuals’
What separates intellectuals from the brilliant is the standard of verification. Physicians, engineers, rocket scientists, and other such folk bursting with gray matter submit themselves to the harsh judge of reality. Prescribe a patient the wrong pill and he craps out; screw in the wrong bolt and the bridge collapses. The mistake-prone in these fields aren’t awarded lucrative book contracts or chairs at universities.
But an intellectual can agitate for minimum-wage laws, and then ignore the reality of increased unemployment rates. He will say he is appalled that so many are imprisoned, yet the subsequent decrease in crime “baffles” him. On Tuesday, he shouts “Free Mumia!” — and by Friday he is penning an op-ed condemning excessive force by the police:
The utterly un-self-critical attitude of many intellectuals has survived many demonstrably vast, and even grotesque, contrasts between their notions and the realities of the world. For example … [intellectuals] were throughout the 1930s holding up the Soviet Union as a favorable contrast to American capitalism, at a time when people were literally starving to death by the millions … and many others were being shipped off to slave labor camps.
For the self-anointed, what counts is not fact but esteem. Intellectuals look to the mirror and to the soothing cooing of their coterie for confirmation of their convictions. “Does my position make me feel good?” is their driving question. “Does it work?” or “Could it cause harm?” are never asked.
The glow from their halos blinds. To cushion the inevitable blows caused by stumbling into unseen reality, the intellectual wraps himself with the warm blanket of self-righteousness. But this suffocates and creates fever and hallucination; it causes the intellectual to imagine he is soaring.
The “ruthlessness with which the anointed assail others” is astonishing. Those who oppose them are condemned as immoral, thieving, baby-seal-clubbing, rapacious, toxic-chemical-spill-loving, war-mongering, hate-filled maniacs.
The arguments used against them are irrelevant: it is the act of dissent which enrages. Intellectual shibboleths are anyway not constant and have undergone, as Paul Johnson tells us, a “shift in emphasis from utopianism to hedonism.”
We know this because a century ago intellectuals were telling us that the white race was the most eugenically pure; now they insist it is the least among equals. As Wilsonians we were assured that war and conquest were noble and just; now it is evil and motivated by filthy lucre. Once dissent was the highest form of patriotism; now it is one step shy of open rebellion.
Just as a physical body can continue to live, despite containing a certain amount of microorganisms whose prevalence would destroy it, so a society can survive a certain amount of forces of disintegration within it.
But there are limits beyond which the infestation becomes a menace. So if you see an intellectual in the wild, do not approach him! Do not attend his lectures, or read his books; neither subscribe you to his paper nor comment on his blog. Intellectuals feed on attention: the only way to eradicate them is to starve them of it.
Thanks for the review. This is one book I’ll buy. God bless Dr. Sowell. His clarity and intellectual [oops!] insight give me hope. Now if we can only survive 31 more months.
George Orwell said that there were ideas so wrong that only intellectuals could believe them.
This analysis is precisely why I discouraged my sons from opting for the Ivies-the incubators of said ‘intellectuals’, an oxymoron of the highest magnitude-instead, encouraging them to head to Caltech and MIT to garner real educations. Institutions where real intellectual heft is measured, hard work is admired and rewarded, and standards are upheld.
No matter how many fawning letters, offers of scholarships, or any other incentive packages they received, I refused to change my position. Friends thought I was out of my mind, choosing to pay full freight for the above schools, yet refusing to accept money from the Ivies.
After much due diligence (parents ARE consumers of their child’s education) I realized that the Ivies, as well as other so called intellectual liberal arts schools, mainly produced empty headed graduates, taught to ‘think’ in relative terms instead of real terms. Where down can be up, where right can be wrong, where revisionism is history, and where PC trumps true inquiring minds.
Exhibit Number One of the above TRUTH is glaringly obvious under the Obama administration. Almost to a man or woman, each and every advisor to Obama is a product of the Ivies, schools where intellectual heft is held in the highest esteem, where few have held real jobs, instead gaining their ‘experience’ through clone-like think tanks and teaching gigs.
Obama’s intellectual gang is rife with men and women who are CLUELESS about American history and western civilization. They earned their intellectual stripes at places where eubonics, gender studies, queer studies and every other non academic discipline is considered on par with hard core sciences.
As far as I am concerned, the term intellectual is not a badge of honor. In fact, it only raises my suspicion that all is not as it seems, therefore, more due diligence, not less, is required.
My My, what about those dinosaurs, extinct by exclusion of the sun, the light of facts, reality. Obscured by the ash of the “liberalism” cloud of “fairness and equality”/socialism. To aid other animals against the dragons: animals requiring ever more “benefits” from the world. Obtained by reproducing themselves with ensuing power to “keep the peace”. Weep for the dinosaurs, those social conservatives, not always intellectuals, who “told you so”. Dinosaurs with personal and public restraint, and self-respect, dinosaurs who understood the necessity of keeping their words, and respect of oaths freely taken in exchange for benefits. AND the recognition that the world was NOT theirs as playground without respect for that world and its facts, e.g.social ecology. The European Union/the Socialist (Christian or otherwise) model is openly imploding economically and socially despite attempts to obscure the facts in the past decade. American electors have enthroned a group which requires, forcibly if necessary by institutionalising into Law measures that must ensure the same results. The DICTAT that Americans emulate this failed model of social organisation. Despite the warnings of those dinosaurs.
Mr. Briggs, the question to us is, “Why, then, do we suffer the intellectuals in our society?” I think the answer is that a kind society always coddles the insane because they (the insane) are helpless. An insane man is full of information, but no clue how to use it. My Dad’s saying is, “Those that can, do, and those who cannot, teach”. The “intellectual” is simply someone who cannot and desires to be able, but is too proud to ask for help, so tries to make/teach everyone to be also incapable. It is the way with all the insane.
We have the obligation to help those who cannot help themselves, but not to become like them.
Thank you for your book
Ah J.D., your Dad either forgot or didn’t know the most important part of the saying: Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach and THOSE WHO CANNOT TEACH, TEACH TEACHERS! Now, any questions how we got here?
Sometimes I wonder if there is some kind of connection between the sorry state of American education and the vast number of Americans who regard teaching as a disreputable occupation and teachers as a kind of “untouchable” caste.
This was not originally the case. Not too many years ago, teachers were held in the highest regard.
It’s only been in recent years, when the teaching profession was taken over by those who felt indoctrination was more important than education, that teaching has fallen in such ill repute.
I take exception to the “Those that can’t do…teach.” I am a college writing instructor. I have also worked for many years outside of academia, including owning my own business. I was damn good at all those jobs. But teaching is my first love.
I’ve seen plenty of people who come to teach a college course, thinking that teaching is easy, and their subject matter knowledge will make them successful teachers. Yet they go down in flames. Their students flame out, too, because teaching and learning do not occur by mere proximity.
The crappy teachers spend more time studying minutiae and bragging about their intellectualism than actually teaching. They don’t teach, nor do they profess–they dictate. And woe betide the student with the temerity to question them!
The REAL teachers are the ones who quietly educate their students, without indoctrination or politics or fanfare. I am one of those, and there are thousands like me. We’re too busy doing what we love to care about making headlines.
You are so right! I remember my great professors. Now I see what my children are required to take for graduation and hear how little effort many of their professors put forth. Very sad.
Just go ahead and say it.
This article was about Paul Krugman.
“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false”? It’s fine for sci-fi writers, playwrights, scientists or philosophers to play around with these ideas but when the historians, politicians and teachers start acting as if this were literally true, we’re in trouble. Pinter’s quote is typical in how postmodernists conflate two ideas, one having some vague scientific merit and one which is not only blatantly stupid but dangerously totalitarian in its Orwellian doublespeak. Yet they really see no problem with this sentence. Chomsky could no doubt talk for a week on its validity. I hate the “intellectuals” of postmodernism. Might as well talk to a dumbwaiter.
And don’t think they postmodernists have gone away. Yale is sponsoring a major conference to reassess antisemitism through the ages, using Foucault and the postmodernists to blast the Enlightenment yet again. They are really worried about “the crisis of modernity.” I tell all here: http://clarespark.com/2010/05/15/foucault-follies-redux/.
Foucault was a complex character — while his amoralist and nihilistic writings resonate with the intellectually misguided, he matured to become a more responsible thinker: Though siding with communist revolutionaries in the 60s, and with the Iranian revolution in the ’70s, he then wizened up, and in his last few years consistently encouraged people to read von Mises and Hayek. He was always a staunch defender of Israel, despite its unpopularity. And he spoke out in favor of helping Vietnamese refugees, while other lefties disdained them.
The British writer, Paul Johnson, wrote a scathing book Intellectuals more than 20 years ago, published in 1988, which should be more widely read and is a good companion piece to Sowell’s work.
A factor which Mr. Eliot overlooked is that “intellectuals” (or as I prefer to think of them, the “enlightened elite’”), like to perceive themselves as being pure of morals, and above all petty human foibles. Even when indulging their emotions at levels rarely seen outside of an Elizabethan tragedy. (“Othello” or “Titus Andronicus”, take your pick.)
One effect of this is their pet hatreds. They deny that they hate, but they are no more immune to that state than anyone else. Their method of dealing with this is to declare certain groups to be inherently “unclean” and beyond the pale. Gun owners, conservatives, “climate skeptics”, whoever- if you are part of a group which does not agree with them 100%, on everything, you are automatically defined as somehow sub-human.
And they can hate you with a clear conscience, because in their worldview, since you are “evil” (the only evil they acknowledge the existence of), not hating you would be immoral.
Thus, they can indulge the most basic, ugly animal instincts that all humans have- and continue to feel good about themselves while doing so. Because it’s “the right thing to do.”
In this mode, contrary to Mr. Eliot’s assumptions, they can do harm deliberately, calculatingly, and with malice aforethought, and enjoy the misery they inflict on others. Because they are doing it in pursuit of a higher and more noble end. And those being harmed “deserve it” and “have it coming”. In their own minds, the elitists aren’t being vindictive, petty, or cruel; they are simply punishing the immoral- for not thinking the right way.
(And of course, the “enlightened ones” get to define all the terms in use.)
Seen in this light, much otherwise inexplicable behavior on the part of our “best and brightest” makes perfect sense, even when it seems to be in direct contradiction of their “philosophy”. All you have to do is break the code.
clear ether
eon
Thanx for the review. I am an unabashed Sowell fan and will attest that all of his books need to be read in snatches, for like the telephone book, there is meat in every line. Best of all, his wisdom has demonstrated durability. My favorite quote is from an early work, Vision of the Anointed. His profound statement is “It is easy to be wrong, and to persist in being wrong, when the cost of being wrong is being borne by others.” Progressivism in a sentence.
I agree – I love Sowell’s works. His latest book and Visions of the Anointed should be read by anyone who is disgusted by the arrogant “elite” who think that they are smarter and more deserving than anyone else. I’ll put my Engineering education up against any of theirs any day of the week and twice on Sundays – these are NOT intelligent people; they just think that they are….
After reading Mr. Sowell’s latest book, I finally understood the difference between those who are “intelligent” and those who are “intellectual” – God save us from the self-absorbed intellectuals of the world!
Well done – I sometimes refer to these blame-based intellectuals as being in the, ‘coulda, woulda, shoulda’, school of philosophy. What they see right in front of them means nothing when it comes to their political world view.
One can see this expressed in the way so very many Americans now wear helmets to ride a bicycle. I’m 55 and when I was a kid nobody wore a helmet just to ride a bike.
One could argue it is simply the result of increased awareness. I argue that it is the increasing propensity of Americans to worry about what can go wrong with the most harmless activities; they see themselves crashing rather than riding unharmed. Positive thinking can do a lot.
Agreed. It is always amazing to me that socialists respond to the failures of socialism by arguing that the problem lay in the lack of socialism. The solution is always just more socialism.
Yes, another brilliant book by Thomas Sowell.
My wife and I bought it and have been studying it since it first appeared at Amazon.com
Dr Sowell’s books are not only straightforwardness in their language and impeccable in their scholarship, they provide practical thinking METHODS.
Not many books do that.
Thanks to William M. Briggs for his review.
Best Wishes,
PRODOS
Melbourne, Australia
#5:IBWRight: Krugman certainly meets the liberal requirement(s) to be an “intellectual” although he isn’t, but there are others who could fill the bill as well: OwlGore, Obammy, Holder (who hadn’t even read the AZ immigration enforcement bill, but nonetheless passed judgment on it, from what he had heard from others, no doubtedly, the NYT, LATimes, Time, MSNBC, CNN et al). The intellectual playbook: 1. Propagandize problems where there are none. 2. Propagandize fear about the problems. 3. Propagandize a “solution”. 4. Propagandize the reason your solution didn’t work. 5. Be elsewhere when others have to clean up the mess of your “solution.”
“an intellectual is . . . in thrall to beautiful theories”
Hardly. They purposely dream up falsely attractive theories to mask their own unwholesome personal precepts.
Thanks for the review. I’ve read the book, and you’ve done it good service.
Intelectuals in Society is Sowell’s sequel to his Vision of the Annointed.
I read everything he writes, especially his syndicated column.
God save us when he’s gone. Hayek, Rand, von Mises, Friedman, Sowell.
There is no Libertarian next in line.
Excellent and accurate piece of work. It explains why they hate Sarah Palin with all the venom they can muster. She embodies the vocal reality of the fallacy of many of their basic teachings, especially with regard to women’s equality, abortion, and feminism. Notice I list equality and feminism separately – to progressives they are the same – to conservatives like Palin – not so. She makes the distinction glaringly. They will never forgive her for it.
An excellent article.
The absurdity of postmodernism continues to be a source of facination and wonder in its’ contradictions: it is insanity codified.
Somewhere on this interwebs thingy is a quote that I’d love to be able to accurately attribute, but I can’t recall its author to do so. It goes like this: “People prefer to believe what they wish to be true, instead of what is true”.
Actually I think the way to rid ourselves of these persons is to shut off the tit from which they feed: Higher education.
Our nation is broke, yet we shovel money down the unprofitable hole of student loans for those seeking liberal arts degrees. Yes, federal and state grant money is going to persons getting degrees in things like post colonial studies. Go to any college town, speak with a perpetual grad student and find out what their thesis is actually on. Sometimes it’s funny, but most of the time it’s insulting. If it wasn’t being done with your money you might find a way to justify it, but the fact that it is being done with your money makes it vomit provoking.
The solution is simple:Austerity. No more money for liberal arts. No, we don’t need any more lawyers or alternative history performance artists.
They may pay for these stupidities and societal cancers with their own money.
I always loved Thomas Sowell because he speaks to the truth. Years ago, before it became so obvious that public education was now an abysmal failure, Sowell was taking the heat for condemning the “intellectual elite” for monkeying with a proven curriculum and concentrating on self esteem for all students.
I was reading about my own local public education system the other day, a school system that only forty years ago was the envy of many. It was determined that only 7% of the entering freshman who graduated from state schools were capable of “passing” college courses upon entry without remedial education – not excelling, but passing a course with a “C” average.
If you want to see the end result of intellectual progressive thought, look no further than public education and a bankrupt federal government. That’s the future of America if we continue down Obama & Co.’s path.
Post modern rationale aka as progressive thought, mixed with mandated “social justice”, is now synonymous with failure.
This is why home schooling is becoming so popular, and why the education “elites” hate it so much.
Sorry, I’d expect an expert statistician to be more careful about the population he examines. He’s actually referring to a specific sub-category of “Intellectuals”, but instead of clearly defining those who belong to this sub-category, he’s using the general denomination.
This is intellectually dishonest, if only because it’s stigmatizing all and every intellectual, including the author and the reviewer. In other words, is the whole pie rotten or just a part of it?
…”is the whole pie rotten, or just part of it?” No Bern just the part with you in it! LOL!
Can’t see the forest for the trees eh? It would be funny if not so sad! Point, set, match for uncommon, common sense! Unbelievable how you stepped right in to that one!
The point is not about believing but about thinking.
Try it.
The point is not about believing but about thinking.
The second can have very beneficial effects, I recommend practicing it as often as possible.
Perhaps if you’d actually read the article, you would have realized the author did no such thing.
As to your comments about thinking, perhaps a heaping helping of your own medicine is in order.
Spot on, Doctor Sowell.
i’ve slept with two “intellectuals” in my life, one with a masters in eng.lit. from barnard, the other a ph.d., i never bothered to ask in what, or from where. both were o.k. in bed, but totally clueless anywhere else. the ph.d. once told me, in all seriousness, that “one could not be a ‘true intellectual’ without being a marxist.” i did not make that mistake later, when i married, i found a lovely woman, intelligent, with a sound fund of good common sense and we’ve stuck together through thick and thin. “intellectual” females are fun for a romp, but they don’t hold up well for the long haul.
I’m surprised you got out of those women’s bedrooms with your harbles intact!
My personal description of “intellectuals” are people who believe that not only do they know all the answers, but they even know all the questions.
Which is why these intellectuals are always mugged by life and a population rich in individual achievers still trying to find interesting new questions to ask and attempt to answer.
Being constantly mugged by reality, might explain why most intellectuals are so bitter, and also why they seek to isolate themselves into places where reality doesn’t matter.
Thomas Sowell has written many good books, which I have read, and I look forward to reading this one. When I was in college, many years ago, we called the people described as “intellectuals” “pseudo-intellectuals.” Thomas Sowell, as one comment above says, is a true intellectual, using reason.
I have been reading Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism” which makes similar points.
#8 eon – “And they can hate you with a clear conscience, because in their worldview, since you are “evil” (the only evil they acknowledge the existence of), not hating you would be immoral.” Sounds strikingly familiar…
“By God’s leave, we call on every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God’s command to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and whenever he can. Likewise we call on the Muslim ulema and leaders and youth and soldiers to launch attacks against the armies of the American devils and against those who are allied with them from among the helpers of Satan.”
“Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders” signed by Osama bin Ladin and published in an Arabic newspaper in London in 1998.
I don’t know about you, but to me, it sounds like “they” (read progressives and radical muslims)want to fight about it… one overtly, one covertly.
I think that a lot of the critique of “intellectuals” is generally valid, but the sad part is that the equivalent “other side,” is just as bad in their shoot from the hip reflexive generalizations and stereotypes. Once we have figured out that the intellectuals are screwed up, and the anti-intellectuals are screwed up, we try to make the best choice about who to muddle along with. It’s not as if there are good guys and bad guys, but flawed guys, who often don’t like each other very much. Fortunately, we end up with relatively centrist muddlers as President, who at least are decently balanced in this very imperfect world. Socialism doesn’t work alone, capitalism doesn’t work alone, so we smush them together and muddle along.
This pains me to say, but Dwight your comment is a perfect example of “muddled” and invalid thinking. As brutal as it may sound, Capitalism does work if left to its own devices. It was the left’s rushed attempt at “fixing” it in early 1930 that interfered with and derailed a recovery. Roosevelt’s New Deal just made it worse and extended the misery for several more years. Since then politicians continue to make the same mistake hoping for a different result. But we know what that symptom implies, don’t we?
Your muddled thinking shows in that you claim to consider President Obama as “decently balanced in this very imperfect world.”
Actually, capitalism does work alone. Socialism always fails, even in small doses.
The only time capitalism fails, is when you try to mix it with socialism.
I think it’s the whole process of becoming a PhD and an Academic that twists people. By the time they get to grad school, PhD candidates know that they have been “selected” and are somehow “special.” If they become tenured, they know that they have been “annointed” and “appointed.” No one else can get into their special club without that PhD. This is not true in business where people without degrees can rise to prominence on their own talent and effort. The girl working as a grunt behind the tv camera can become an Oprah Winfrey. The grunt on the staff at a University can never become a Noam Chomsky, Robert Reich or Larry Summers. They know this, and it gives them a sense of power and importance that most people never experience. A tenured PhD with a weak ego and burning need to feel important is likely to become a major tyrant.
I’ve come to think of intellectuals simply as “artists of ideas.” They manipulate ideas, concepts, beliefs, pushing them here and there, arranging them into satisfying patterns. Sometimes the patterns – like realist art – bear a resemblance to the world you and I live in. Often, however, the patterns are less about depicting reality than about expressing the intellectual’s subjective feelings about reality. And going further, sometimes they’re self-reflexive – patterns that depict some aspect of the theory or practice of making patterns. Ultimately, it’s not about practicality or making sense. Not even about sanity. Art today is all about the artists. Intellectualism is all about the intellectuals.
Recently passing my 53rd birthday, I’m learning that’s it’s far better to strive for wisdom than to be an intellectual. An intellectual strives to acquire knowledge, to know facts and to act dispassionately (or so they believe).
Looking at a dictionary definition of intellectual, I see it defined as:
1 a : of or relating to the intellect or its use b : developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience : rational c : requiring use of the intellect
2 a : given to study, reflection, and speculation b : engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect
where intellect is defined as:
1 a : the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will : the capacity for knowledge b : the capacity for rational or intelligent thought especially when highly developed
2 : a person with great intellectual powers
Wisdom, on the other hand, is defined as:
1 a : accumulated philosophic or scientific learning : knowledge b : ability to discern inner qualities and relationships : insight c : good sense : judgment d : generally accepted belief
2 : a wise attitude, belief, or course of action
3 : the teachings of the ancient wise men
It is helpful to be intelligent, to know things. However, without judgment, you can not have wisdom. Intellectuals strive for intelligence but all too often lack good judgment, therefore they can’t be wise.
I have a brother-in-law that I respect a great deal. He’s a practical man, a retired pipefitter and rancher, who has a lot of life experience. Over the years, I’ve learned to appreciate his practical wisdom on many facets of life. For the record, I don’t know if he has a high school diploma, but I’d put more crediance in him than with many Ph.Ds I know. Wisdom is more important than intelligence.
It must be an ego thing.
The intellectual is so invested in the “truth” of his view (in his case, truth = his preferred narrative) that any and all facts or real world events contradicting his take must be ignored, explained away or have excuses made about them.
He will still insist his narrative is correct even when unfolding events show that his preferred or favored explanation was wrong.
Thus when the black female dancer in the Duke case was revealed to be lying, Evan Thomas of Newsweek could utter his infamous phrase:
The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong.
(of course, that particular narrative revolved around black female oppression by rich white boys, so it had to continue to be true for people like Evan Thomas)
Obviously, the Left is the same as its intellectual fellow travelers in being heavily invested in the truth of their preferred narratives.
I don’t know whether or not Eric Holder considers himself an intellectual (well, he lectured Americans on their cowardice over “racism”, so the signs are there) but he (and his former law firm) are heavily invested in denying the truth that Radical Islamists are seriously interested in destroying America and her economic system.
Or that they’re working in tandem with George Soros and “globalists” everywhere.
That’s my narrative, and I’m sticking to it.
I would love to be proven wrong, so I guess I don’t qualify as an intellecktewal.
I think Briggs does a disservice to Sowell and his book. His review gives one the impression that Sowell lambasts all intellectuals, but, if I know anything about Sowell, he would not make such a gross error as to condemn all intellectuals. After all, he is one himself, and one of the few first-rate ones in this culture. I haven’t read the book, but plan to order it. I am an intellectual myself, and certainly not “a self-inflated, self-congratulatory, lover of self; a person so in thrall to beautiful theories that he is incapable of correction and impervious to evidence.” The Founders were mostly intellectuals, and we all owe a debt of gratitutde for their perorations and thoughtful delvings. Their “beautiful theories” are responsible for the well-being of anyone reading this or any other review. It is the intellectuals of the left who are sabotaging the applied theory that was this republic.
He actually makes a very plain distinction between people who are intelligent and people who are considered “intellectual”. Once he did that, everything else fell into place. Far better to be intelligent than intellectual….
I’m not sure I’d really the founding fathers as intellectuals – at least not as the term is used today. Many of them were college graduates, some of them were amateur philosophers, but as far as I know none of them were full-time “professional thinkers.” Even Thomas Jefferson, possibly the best-known brainiac among them, was a wealthy gentleman farmer first and an explorer of big ideas second. He understood money, business, politics and warfare through direct experience. This gave him a perspective on his own theories that many of today’s purely academic thinkers lack. I think the kind of intellectuals Sowell writes about are completely unlike Jefferson. They are manipulators of ideas only, with no connection to the “real world.”
Or that they’re working in tandem with George Soros and “globalists” everywhere.
I’m not claiming they’re working together (necessarily). Just that there is some convergence of goals.
Islamists are looking to the worldwide caliphate, progressives to the worldwide government.
Since the Islamic council is now the largest voting bloc at the UN and member states are directing the “human rights” council, I will throw “the UN” into the mix of individuals and organizations actively working within the United States to subvert the country.
The grunt on the staff at a University can never become a Noam Chomsky, Robert Reich or Larry Summers.
That’s one lucky grunt
Noam should have stuck to linguistics, Bobby’s latest (when I was paying attention) was that no “white construction worker” should find employment through Barack’s Porkulus (I don’t think construction workers of any coloUr have found such employment, just mainly government workers/bureaucrats).
Summers made very bad investment decisions while at Harvard & is likely continuing same in the Obama administration.
“That’s one lucky grunt.” Indeed.
While finding cases of extreme intellectual incompetence is as difficult as finding a first gear on a moped, you would think this is not the case to listen to some of our gilded luminaries pronounce their judgements on Western society. Case in point: I live in Germany which gave up a strong currency in favour of the Euro without holding a vote on the matter. The Euro was designed by Europe’s most enlightened, and around a decade later, the same stock is fighting desperately to keep the currency alive. Despite serious misgivings on the part of European citizens, the currency was imposed on them from above with a simple post-it note attached reading “We know better than you. Your unenlightenedness is too dangerous to put our brilliant ideas on the democratic chopping block by holding a referendum.” The unfortunate result is that the unwashed masses will be the ones who ultimately suffer from their luminosity. This is a common theme. Chomsky can support the Hizbullah because he isn’t living anywhere near their target practice zones. Reich can add racial favouritism into stimulus funds for the construction industry because he will never be effected by them. Intellectuals can manage to crash a fully functioning system in less time than I can go through a pack of Pringles, but they always just eject from the catastrophe in their little Goldfinger mini-plane and live to scold us again another day. Trust me on this one. Germany, the birthplace of self-righteous smug intellectual clucking, never ceases to attempt to “educate” inferior America by not living up to their standard of intellectual vision. We are the scapegoat for all that ails. The economic crisis is apparently all America’s fault, high-unemployment is America’s fault, the utter failure to integrate immigrants into the system in Germany is also our fault. When intellectuals are finally held accountable for the views the push on us, then they’ll be a little more careful. Until then, that’s what ipods are for.
Jacob WAG,
I was in Europe during the pre-birth and birth of the euro although I lived in The Hague at the time. The German’s were a much more skeptical lot than the Dutch who had much less to lose since the Guilder was less a symbol of economic prowess and national identity, and the practical benefits of the single currency would be more immediately apparent in such a small country. Little did any of them foresee, that they would be bailing out the Greek social welfare state only 10 years hence. It appears that their grand experiment in economic and political union may be more vexing than the elites are able to manage. What was hailed as the great unifying strategy may give cause to some bitter member state acrimony.
The root of the problem is narcissism. It is the preeminent mythical archetype of Western civilization, the hubris associated with Lucifer.
In this mode, contrary to Mr. Eliot’s assumptions, they can do harm deliberately, calculatingly, and with malice aforethought, and enjoy the misery they inflict on others. Because they are doing it in pursuit of a higher and more noble end. And those being harmed “deserve it” and “have it coming”. In their own minds, the elitists aren’t being vindictive, petty, or cruel; they are simply punishing the immoral- for not thinking the right way.
That’s a good description of the impetus for Bill Ayers in the 60′s & 70′s. Alinsky inspired, the central tenet is “the end justifies the means” and it is all of these self-anointed higher thinkers who determine what those (noble) ends are.
In the case of Ayers & his brothers today, currently running amok in DC, the end is the destruction of evil capitalism and the equally evil bourgeoisie it spawns.
If you have to die in service to their end, no big deal. In fact, inside their constructs, you not being around to thwart their version of heaven on Earth is even a good idea.
If there was even a hint that you were against the regime, Mao considered it his duty to dispatch you. Today’s Islamist wants to kill you unless you submit to Allah. John Holdren and Zeke Emanuel think you being around at all or after a certain age is something of a burden to planet Earth.
Other “thinkers” and advisors in the Obama administration are equally suspect…Cass Sunstein, Robert Creamer, Obama’s “spiritual advisor” Jim Wallis. The President himself, hellbent on “fundamentally transforming America” according to his own lacking-any-real-world-experience vision.
Hide the children.
An interesting point, which I hadn’t thought of in this context.
It takes a conscious effort to build a bomb, and to place it somewhere it will cause casualties. The bomb-maker can call it “political consciousness-raising”, as Abbie Hoffman did, and justify it by saying “sacrifices must be made in the name of the Cause” (examples too numerous to quote here), but even if the bomb-maker thinks to himself “it’s the timer that set it off, not me” and “it’s their (the victims’) fault for being in that place”, this still doesn’t change the fact that as the artificer, he has committed at least assault with a deadly weapon, if not murder.
But the elite’ don’t consider this wrong. In fact, in their minds, it doesn’t even enter into the equation. They have a Cause; all else is irrelevant. The fact that our present political and academic leadership “don’t have a problem” with Ayers (except that he “failed” to bring down our government by his methods) speaks volumes- about our “leadership”, that is.
After all, many of these self-styled “superior ones” believe that they are the only “real” people in existence, anyway. (Theodore Kasczynski is a case in point.) To them, the rest of us are simply “intellectual constructs”, possibly useful in certain ways, but otherwise not worthy of consideration.
By the way, if anyone cares, the reason I refer to this lot as the “enlightened elite’” is that they exhibit all the markers of a cult leadership whose beliefs are based primarily on mystical constructions. Since they show little or no evidence of actual thought based on facts, I refuse to cede the term “intellectual” to them. That requires an intellect, i.e. the exercise of actual thought through the possession of actual intelligence. I see no credible evidence that they either possess this attribute, nor do they permit its use by others within their sphere of influence.
clear ether
eon
Ayers has been quoted as saying that it may be necessary to kill 10′s of millions of people in order to finish converting the country to his idea of utopia.
Thanks for this review and I’ll definitely read this book. For most of my early life I was surrounded by intellectuals and groomed to be one. Then one day the belief system just fell apart for me – I had just learned too much about history, economics, politics, science, etc not to realize that these failed policies were hurting the very people they were supposedly trying to help. If you ever get the chance, read David Mamet’s “Why I am not a brain dead liberal”, he describes a similar epiphany.
I only made it thru part of the review…it got way too depressing. I’ve known these people. It is not a pretty sight.
I sometimes watch these TV shows that show modern manufacturing from different points of view. The amount of robotics and high speed assembly (or QC) is awesome. As is these huge machines that help humanity run.
Interestingly, in Ag they produce so much, so cheaply that large amounts go overseas to feed people.
Libs/Lefies barely know where electricity comes from, yet want to run the world. Very, very scary…not good for our future.
I teach in a Liberal Arts department at a well-thought of private Liberal Arts College. The Humanities are generally toxic (though we do teach foreign languages very well), the Social Sciences range from the honest and useful to the poisonous, while mathematics and the physical sciences are generally sound. If anything, the situation at my college is better than most. While I think that the Liberal Arts properly understood are vital to an intelligent, virtuous citizenry, as they are currently debased in our academies they are a must to avoid. There is still sound, even brilliant teaching going on in the technical disciplines, but those which deal with human memory and the wisdom traditions are positively diseased.
I don’t know if sanity (which does not mean a stampede to the far right) will be more closely approximated in the future. I can say with confidence that it would take a sharp struggle and at least two or three generations to undo the damage that has been inflicted in the name of progress in our schools. In the academy, thanks to tenure, bad ideas clone themselves and take over the organism. The Muses are very ill. It will take strong medicine and a few miracles to give them some new vitality. I am not optimistic. As a Christian I have eschatological hope. Those of you who are not theists may not wish to wait that long.
Best,
Richard
God bless you Mr. Sowell you are a sage.
Describes what I’ve been thinking for several years now. Is it safe to say that intellectuals suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder? I think so.
In one sense the intellectuals were correct and Reagan was wrong. Where Reagan won was SDI. And in another sense Reagan was correct: a military buildup (numbers) is meaningless in and of itself; where a buildup makes any difference is the implementation of a game changer. Gulf War I showed that the US game changer was the use of technology (stealth, smart bombs, AWACS, etc.) Without the game changer the intellectuals would have been correct. Insofar as I know there have been only a handful of intellectuals who realised what the game changer was; e.g. Stephan Possony.
Regarding the opening point, experts in medieval Polish thimbles are like other experts in that their research (that which made them expert) covered such vast swaths of history and multiple disciplines to the point that they do have reasonable points to make. Chomsky’s studies included brain development, evolution, and a fairly wide range of other disciplines requiring a great deal of expertise. His politics reflect this. It doesn’t make him right, but it does mean that we ought to listen to what he says because some of it is correct — even if we don’t want it to be, and even if it sounds utterly counter-intuitive or even wrong. Reality has a funny way of not working as we would prefer it should.
Does this imply that Chomsky et al are “better” than the guy who pours concrete and has a beer in front of the TV after a long day? No. But unlike any number of posters here, I’m willing to listen to what he says with a bit more attention.
Chomsky may believe that his studies may include brain development, etc. But like most everything else he believes, he’s wrong.
As to Reagan being partly right, you are wrong. SDI may have been the straw that broke the camels back, but it was the entirety of the buildup that broke the Soviet Union. Their leaders realized that the only way they could match the buildup was by reving up their economy. They also realized that the only way to do that would be to break down the strict marxist structures that had been used to “run” the economy up to that point. They started adding small doses of capitalism to their economy. It was these small doses of freedom which doomed the soviet union.
Experts in mideval polish thimbles may believe that there study of history gives them insights into modern politics, but usually they are wrong.
“Reality has a funny way of not working as we would prefer it should.”
…or as intellectuals think it does.
No. But unlike any number of posters here, I’m willing to listen to what he says with a bit more attention.
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YOur willing to listen to a guy who has been proven wrong over and over and over again.
Hmm. Probably because he says what you want to hear. Unlike the people here.
“Regarding the opening point, experts in medieval Polish thimbles are like other experts in that their research (that which made them expert) covered such vast swaths of history and multiple disciplines to the point that they do have reasonable points to make.”
Quite clearly you have not read the book. Further, it is precisely this point which leads those who’ve studied medieval Polish thimbles to opine on areas in which they have no expertise while believing that their limited area of study provides the necessary bona fides in which to display their intellectual superiority. This is the primary point of the entire book. They engage in the fanciful delusion that they have something important to say in areas in which they are largely ignorant and yet, if they are wrong, it costs them nothing.
But it is not the downside that concerns them because frankly it is so limited, it is their self righteous preening which attracts them to this behavior like the moth to the flame.
just shun em baby
Wouldn’t a new word be better? How about “intefectuals.”