Bonfire of the Intellectuals
Paul Berman’s outraged attack on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s attackers.

Comment by Alan Lothian…

I am not a “public intellectual”, so forgive me if I use a foreign language to describe the behaviour of most of those who are: La Trahison des Clercs. Cowardly, sucking up to power or cringing exquisitely to gangsterdom: es war immer so, from Plato on down.

Fortunately, there are more than a few of us non-public intellectuals willing to stand up and be counted, and, yes, to fight if necessary, same as our fathers — and by God, our mothers — did, too.

Note that I deeply resent having to use some teenybopper login device in order to make this comment. I don’t Digg things, I don’t Tweet things, and if I Face a Book it’s one with pages that I turn. This sort of thing is in itself a betrayal, you know: kiddyNet, the domain of the nymskull.

But it’s ill-tempered old buggers like me who will hold out against Islamists and their lickspittles. Thank the Lord we are not yet an endangered species. “Enlightenment fundamentalism”: oh, dear. Count me a fundie. Oh, an aside to Mr Rosenbaum: good piece, many thanks.