How many people still remember The Opium of the Intellectuals, the French philosopher Raymond Aron’s masterpiece? First published in France in 1955, at the height of the Cold War, L’Opium des intellectuels was an immediate sensation. It caused something of a sensation in the United States, too, when an English translation was published in 1957. Writing in The New York Times, the historian Crane Brinton spoke for many when he said that the book was “a kind of running commentary on the Western world today.”
Unaccountably the book was been out of print for many years. It was therefore welcome news indeed that Transaction Publishers brought out a new edition of Opium in 2001. The deformations that Aron analyzed are still very much with us, even if the figures that represent them have changed.
Aron’s subject is the bewitchment — the moral and intellectual disordering — that comes with adherence to certain ideologies. Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines”?
Aron’s title is an inversion of Marx’s contemptuous remark that religion is “the opium of the people.” He quotes the French writer Simone Weil’s sly reversal of Marx: “Marxism is undoubtedly a religion, in the lowest sense of the word. . . . [I]t has been continually used . . . as an opiate for the people.”
In fact, Weil got it only partly right.
Marxism and kindred forms of thought never really became the people’s narcotic. But they certainly became — and in essentials they still are — the drug of choice for the group that Aron anatomized: the intellectuals. The Opium of the Intellectuals is a seminal book of the twentieth century, an indispensable contribution to the literature of intellectual disabusement.
Aron, who died in 1983 in his late seventies, is a half-forgotten colossus of twentieth-century intellectual life. Part philosopher, part sociologist, part journalist, he was above all a spokesman for that rarest form of idealism, the idealism of common sense. Aron was, Allan Bloom wrote shortly after the philosopher’s death, “the man who for fifty years . . . had been right about the political alternatives actually available to us. . . . [H]e was right about Hitler, right about Stalin, and right that our Western regimes, with all their flaws, are the best and only hope of mankind.”
From the 1950s through the early 1970s, Aron was regularly calumniated by the radical Left — by his erstwhile friends Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, for starters, but also by their many epigoni and intellectual heirs. In 1963, for example, Susan Sontag dismissed Aron as “a man deranged by German philosophy belatedly converting to Anglo-Saxon empiricism and common sense under the name of `Mediterranean’ virtue.”
In fact, it would be difficult to find anyone at once more knowledgeable about and less “deranged” by German philosophy than Raymond Aron. His was a sober and penetrating intelligence, sufficiently curious to take on Hegel, sufficiently robust to escape uncorrupted by the encounter. The fact that Aron was hated by the Left does not mean that he was a partisan of the Right. On the contrary, he always to some extent considered himself a man of the Left, but (in later years anyway) it was the pre-Marxist Left of high liberalism.
As the sociologist Edward Shils noted in an affectionate memoir of his friend, Aron moved from being a declared socialist in his youth to becoming “the most persistent, the most severe, and the most learned critic of Marxism and of the socialist — or more precisely Communist — order of society” in the twentieth century. Shils spoke of Aron’s “discriminating devotion to the ideals of the Enlightenment.”
The ideals in question prominently featured faith in the power of reason. Aron’s discrimination showed itself in his recognition that reason’s power is always limited. That is to say, if Aron was a faithful child of the Enlightenment — its secularism, its humanism, its opposition of reason to superstition — he also in many respects remained a faithful grandchild of the traditional society that many Enlightenment thinkers professed to despise.
Raymond Aron–I hadn’t thought about him in years. I remember reading “L’Opium. . .” in 1970 or so –was it the 10/18 series? Roger, you seem to be able to move effortlessly and authoritatively around the worlds of art, literature, philosophy and political theory. I envy that range. Anyway, you’ve inspired me to look up that old paperback of Aron.
Now that I think of it, didn’t Joseph Epstein write an essay about RA some years back?
Roger Kimball is probably too modest to advertise this very loudly, but he also wrote an extended essay on Aron in the book Lives of the Mind, which is excellent throughout.
For one the incarnation of the good…incarceration for the other (that would be Roger Kimball inter alia). Malignant hatred is a neglected element among the motives of the left-lurching intellectuals. It is proper to give it top billing for the Nazis. why not for the marxists and marxisants as well?
I don’t think that it is hatred that motivates Left-leaning intellectuals, but a certain view of human nature that sees it as infinitely malleable, and subject to social engineering. There is a strong critique of this position emanating from veterans of “the dark side.” I wrote about them here and in my last two blogs on Cormac McCarthy. Start here:http://clarespark.com/2009/09/07/melancholia-as-a-way-of-life/. Then check out the last two blogs, especially the one that quotes Benjamin Franklin on human nature.http://clarespark.com/2011/11/21/cormac-mccarthy-vs-herman-melville/.
I think you have really hit on the heart of the matter. We (the West) are undergoing a crisis of thought that swapping a few seats in the upper or lower house of whatever jurisdiction you deem responsible cannot cure.
How does one explain the British Labour Party’s clandestine and largely successful plan to overwhelm England’s native Anglo-Saxon population with 3rd worlders believed to be more malleable to the directorate of the political class? What kind of thinking monsters willfully destroy their own culture in an attempt to keep their seats at the head of the table, any table?
I cannot see how this ends but badly for just about everybody.
Great Britain doesn’t have a Constitution but if they did it would amount to a suicide pact, just like ours.
Wonderful. Thank you.
Finally I have a word to describe certain leftists I have encountered: “communisants,” … “those fellow travelers for whom the West is always wrong and who believe that people can “be divided into two camps, one the incarnation of good and the other of evil.”
When I was teaching in the Peoples Republic of China in the 1980s, I kept running into Americans, Canadians, and Europeans who were visiting China in order to study how the Chinese had implemented communism, so they could take the strategies for implementation back to their own countries. While touring communes, etc., these communisants kept saying, “This isn’t REAL communism.” To one French woman, I said, “How could you know what real communism is; I don’t believe you live communism in France?” Of course, she turned away from me in scorn.
I repeatedly encountered communisants in academia and could never understand how they could be more communist than the communists I met in China. Now I understand. I wish I had read Aron’s book 30 years ago.
I think you are spot on and the last paragraph true. Attacking a world view that touts itself as intellectualism because it promotes itself as a vaunted perceptual system that can always see through the cracks to the “real truth” is not anti-intellectualism.
In fact, Marx and his politically correct ancestors such as the Critical Pedagogues are the ones that reside deep in a perceptual trap.
Simply inverting success and failure is being contrary for contrary’s sake no matter how you dress it up with words. Automatically dispensing morality according to lack of success is a child’s game without an ounce of nuance.
Marx and the Left are in effect excuse makers for failure and in such a system, naturally any one who is successful is attacked. Communism denies the human condition and is to be ignored and despised. Certainly reality has conspicuously done so as Mother Nature cannot be looked to to support a perception that is nothing more than a distorted form of politeness to those who don’t measure up.
Reality is keeping score no matter how you try and deal from the bottom of the deck. America’s Leftist elite deny reality and not in the positive dreaming way but in a way that makes success and failure enemies in some weird, pedantic intellectual sense.
Aron’s subject is the bewitchment–the moral and intellectual disordering–that comes with adherence to certain ideologies. Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines”?
Intellectuals live in an abstract world. In Marxism, they believe in a perfectable society inhabited by “New Soviet Men” with perfect human nature. They compare this never-realized utopia to the messy reality of representative republics inhabited by real, flawed human beings. Naturally, the utopia is more attractive.
Unfortunately, the reality of socialist/communist countries never lives up to their utopian ideal. Instead of admitting that Marx was wrong, the intellectuals suggest that it would work “if only the ‘right people’ are in charge” (meaning themselves, of course).
Georgo Orwell got it right on many things, including this statement: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
“Unfortunately, the reality of socialist/communist countries never lives up to their utopian ideal. Instead of admitting that Marx was wrong, the intellectuals suggest that it would work “if only the ‘right people’ are in charge” (meaning themselves, of course).”
And there you placed your finger on the real motivator.
The pseudo-intellectual “progressive” is utterly convinced of his or her innate superiority to everyone and everything else. So much so that they believe that they can utterly destroy our society, our culture, our civilization, and us, in pursuit of their idealized “Utopia”, and yet they will not only survive the destruction, but be able to rise above it like the Phoenix from its own ashes to “make the world new”.
Their romance with Marxism is based on the above-stated principle. Put simply, they see all societal systems as ones in which a small clique’ rules everything and everybody. (This is why “conspiracy theories” abound on the progressive side to an even greater extent than they do on the far right.) In Marxism, they see a society ruled by the “smart, sophisticated” people, like their own perception of themselves, and on a level not seen since the city-states of the Italian Renaissance, which were for the most part absolute states ruled by “princes” who were little more than well-born thugs exercising dictatorial powers. Each of them sees himself as a Lorenzo the Magnificent, an enlightened and “benevolent” autocrat.
And of course, in such an autocracy of the “best and brightest”, they get all the perks. Including getting to decide who lives, and who dies.
It really isn’t any more complex than that. The fact that most people think it’s not a good idea is, in the progressive mind, simply proof that most people are not as intelligent or “enlightened” as they imagine themselves to be.
Myself, whenever I hear a progressive spouting off about how wonderful the world will be once it is all Run The Right Way By The Right People, I think back to Ricardo Montalban as Khan Noonian Singh in the original “Star Trek” episode “Space Seed”. When confronted by Kirk about his and the other “eugenics supermens’” track record of atrocities, dictatorship, and destruction during the Eugenics War, he slams the edge of his hand down on the briefing-room table and snaps, “We offered the world ORDER!”
The modern-day “progressives” are no more enlightened, or insightful, than the fictional Khan. And also like him, they consider the harm they do in their quest for perfection to be either irrelevant- or the price everyone else must pay for entry into their Perfect World.
Whether “everyone else” wants to go there- or not.
clear ether
eon
I’d like to add that I believe there’s another factor at work that drives so many self-proclaimed “intellectuals” towards Marxism and that is envy. They see people who they consider their inferiors being more successful in life and it frustrates them. After all, someone who creates a business and becomes wealthy is a mere businessman. In most cases, he doesn’t have advanced degrees like the “intellectuals” so obviously he’s their inferior. Why then does the businessman become wealthy and the intellectuals don’t? Under Marxism, the “intellectuals” believe they’ll rise to their true place in society and those awful businessmen will be put in their place, be it a forced labor camp or in front of a firing squad.
What galls the “intellectuals” the most is likely the realization that society doesn’t put much value on their knowledge and in fact considers most of it worthless. They clump in government and academia through their connections but know deep down that if they had to make a living in the real world, they’d fail miserably.
I have read for awhile on here, but this is the first time I have been prompted to post. Spot on Larry and you have cut to the heart of the matter. I enjoy watching the intellectuals look around on college campuses and throw absolute fits over the salary of a coach. They neither understand the economics of it nor the intelligence required to be a good coach. After all, the coach can’t quote global warming stats!! You know, important things! Why, if only they could get things the way they SHOULD be!!
Great summary of the hate from that side.
Larry, you are spot on with your analysis of ‘frustration and envy’ by those among us with the collectivist mentality. This is a perfect description of the Occupy Wall Street crowd and helps explain their inarticulate rage.
Even those who majored in something that should have provided useful career skills is likely to come up empty-handed in the job market. “Higher education” (and to a great extent, education in general) is basically indoctrination these days; in other words, a scam in every sense of the word.
See: The Occubaggers, the Education Bubble, and You
“And of course, in such an autocracy of the “best and brightest”, they get all the perks. Including getting to decide who lives, and who dies.”
A perfect example of intellectualism gone out of control is Maximilien Robespierre who preached and brought the Reign of Terror to the French Revolution. Off with their heads, for the good of future generations and the purity of the Revolution! Always justified, of course, for they are the light upon the world.
Yes, and in the end Robespierre ended up getting the chop himself.
Similarly, his main enabler and cheerleader, Marat, got stabbed in his bath by a young woman who decided that he, himself, was a threat to the Revolution. Marat had maintained that the Revolution would only be “secure” when enough of its potential enemies were dead; he found out the hard way what happens when somebody else decides that the one making the most noise falls into that category.
The moral being, that those who start revolutions are almost never the ones who get to sit in the center seat when all the dust has settled. And those who do sit there are rarely as “enlightened” as the original revolutionaries actually are, let alone as perfect as they imagine themselves to be.
In fact, most of them are just in it for the money. After all, armed robbery works so much better when you “own” the police.
cheers
eon
As they say, the revolution always devours its children, but never soon enough.
Wonderful column, thank you.
His works will remain, the rubbish by the totalitarians will be forgotten (and their crimes will be remembered.)
I agree that is what SHOULD happen but I have grave doubts that this is what WILL happen. Aron is almost forgotten less than 30 years after his death so it’s hard to believe that he will be well-remembered in 50 or 100 or 200 years….
If Aron’s ideas are needed they will be remembered or re-invented.
A lovely piece, Roger.
But, I believe the analogy has to be moved to the modern age.
The Angel Dust of Pseudo-Intellectuals is more appropriate, I believe.
Intellectualism ends when dogma wrapped in pedagogy begins. There is nothing intellectual about sealing off debate and dissent and demanding absolute fealty to lockstep, incurious, yes-man existence.
And Angel Dust (of the PCP variety, not fairey sprinkles)does more damage than mere opium. It harbors rage behind the mask of do-gooderism.
Marxism, is oppression by killing obedience to liberty. It is totalitarianism through surrender of freedom. It is anomie designed by iron fisted fiat.
It is the manner by and through which democracy commits suicide.
Marxism first picks a fight with God, then with His believers, and finds a way to let them fight it out while it sips tea with the Devil…waiting for them to pick up the shattered pieces.
Europe is at the end of this game.
America…in the middle of it.
Marxism appeals to the murderous coldness that seems to lay deep in the breast of almost every left-wing intellectual. Many might remember the interview the BBC did with Eric Hobsbawm, the eminent Marxist historian in the late 1990′s. As one can imagine Hobsbawm was pretty bummed about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the general of rejection communist theory in Europe. He was asked “If the Soviets had been successful in bringing about the radiant tomorrow of communism would the sacrifice of ten or twenty million people have been justified.” Dr. Hobsbawm immediately answered “Yes.”
“Progressive” academics love Marxism because it promises to put supreme power in their hands – Power that will enable them to “reshape” society with an almost mad-scientist precision. We all know what happens to the eggs when you make an omelette
Unforunately, the communist takeover of the US Academy has enabled them to make leftist and intellectual into synonyms. Semi-literate children with “communication” or “angry people studies” degrees who couldn’t speak in complete English sentences if their lives depended on it are morally certain that they are “intellectuals.” The colleges, especially, but the K-12 schools too, have turned education into mastering the spells and incantations of the Left. If you know the arcana, you don’t need to know anything else and you’re an intellectual.
Great piece! I’ll admit I’d never heard of Aron. I can count on PJM as the one place on the ‘net with writers that can send me to the dictionary and to the bookstore. Amazon is really proud of this book, $29.95, and no Kindle version available.
“Why is it that certain intellectuals are merciless toward the failings of the democracies, but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines?”
Because they are degenerate Commie Scumbags, working in a sick academic and media environment with other degenerate Commie scumbags. They reinforce each other.
It’s not just “Commie.”
In the 1930s, many French intellectuals were admirers of Fascism. And many Germans with advanced degrees joined the Nazi SS.
This idea that dictatorships can “get the right things done” more efficiently than those slow, clumsy democracies has always been appealing to certain intellectuals who don’t see the point in waiting, once the way forward is sufficiently clear to them.
You’re even seeing some of that now, with Thomas Friedman writing op-eds in the New York Times admiring the Chinese government for how it just pushes forward: “When the Chinese government decides to build a railroad or an airport, they don’t have to worry about NIMBY! They don’t have to worry about environmentalism! They don’t have to worry about other Chinese with different priorities! They just do it–and any citizens who don’t like it get pushed out of the way! Too bad we’re not like that!”
The “educated” professionals were the true bulwark of the NSDAP. The leftist image is of the bully boys with the SA, but the Nazis would have never gotten the support of virtually the entire German res publica with thugs and bully boys. They got the lawyers first! Nazi control of the legal system really led to Nazi control of the whole polity.
I’m a government creature and I know how damnably frustrating it is when the res publica doesn’t see it the way you do; when you just can’t push the rope. But you either have to be one of those people who’ll say, “the people have spoken” and go along with it, while maybe still trying to change their minds, or you’re one of those people who finds a “workaround” like Comrade Obama does. Inside most everyone of those lank-haired, bespectacled boys singing songs and carrying signs with OWS is a wannabe Strelnikov striding the Countryside in his armored train with his brigade of Cossacks killing the bitter clingers.
Least we forget, many leftists (‘progressives’) in the USA were enamored with fascism in the 1930s. Their fascination with Hitler and Mussolini ended when Germany invaded the USSR in 1941.
No, the Left was never enamored of Fascism. Remember the “American Lincoln Brigade,” which included Ernest Hemingway amongst its members?
But those who drifted toward the Communist Party took direction from Moscow. And as soon as the USSR signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, the new party line that they echoed was that this was a good thing. The switches and twitches from America’s Left were coming directly from the switches and twitches of Stalin’s foreign policy.
They were “enamored” enough that the communist trade unions in France and Britain were sabotageing military production right up until June 22, 1941, when they began loudly shouting “Second Front Now!”
You have to wonder whether the Lincoln Brigade would have existed had the USSR not intervened on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. You also have to wonder how the US Left would have reacted should we have been forced into a long, bloody slog in Japan and Japanese holdings in Asia had the USSR opposed our actions, particularly on the Asian mainland. There’s a good argument that the Nagasaki bomn was dropped on Moscow.
Communism and Fascism are two sides of the same evil, totalitarian, murdering coin. The differences between them are minor while the similarities are huge.
1. Both created secret police organizations to spy on the people, make extra-legal arrests and exectute those deemed unworthy of life, enemies of the state or simply in the way.
2. Both set up concentration camps that enslaved and killed millions of people
3. Both depended on a cult of personality
4. Both stole the wealth of individuals for the state and corrupt cronies
As pointed out above, Stalin and Mao were even more profilic mass murderers than Hitler. However, both were in power longer so they had more time to do their dirty work. Had Hitler’s Reich lasted as long as Stalin’s or Mao’s rule, his death toll may have been higher.
“Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines”?”
Because if they had the guts to do it they would do exactly what the Dictators do. Scratch a liberal intellectual find a potential Stalin or Pol Pot.
“Scratch a liberal intellectual find a potential Stalin or Pol Pot.”
Yes, this is absolutely true.
Liberal logic
>Support abortion but hate the death penality
>Support criminal rights but overlook the victims rights
>Support OWS even though they are the 1%
>Support higher taxes publically yet pay attorneys to minimize taxes
>Support global warming causes yet fly private jets
>Supports GE (0 taxes) and hate XOM (35% taxes)
>Supports Muslims rights turning a blind eye to womens rights
>Support Castro and Chavez yet HATE President Bush
Aron’s book should, of course, be read alongside Juline Benda’s quarter-century or so earlier The Treason of the Intellectuals.
Aron’s sense he was more a man of the pre-communist left than of the “Right” needs to be understood in the European context, where the right at that period tended to be ultramontane and authoritarian, bearing absolutely no resemblance to the sort of conservative semi-Burkean classical liberal Whiggery that passes for most of the Right in the US.
Good point. And would you say American intellectuals tend to conflate the traditional American Right with the traditional European Right?
An interesting question. Certainly, European intellectuals don’t understand the American right at all, because they associate the right with Catholicism and remnants of the old upper class (to the extent they’re not monarchists) and the haut bourgeoisie. They really don’t have any native experience with the sort of classical liberalism that animates most of the traditional American right.
To the extent American intellectuals want to be taken seriously in the thought modes of the Europeans, they undoubtedly conflate the American right with the strawman of the European old right. And, of course, they want to hang that label on them.
Before Roe v. Wade, and the Catholic lurch to the Republicans in its wake, there was virtually nothing of the illiberal European right in the American right. There is now more, but it’s not the mainstream.
Intellectuals and scientists tend to be impatient with the messy, slow meanderings of democracy, and with its egalitarian vesting of sovereignty in citizens of all walks of life. Because that’s not how they do their own jobs.
They are accustomed to academia–where you get an idea, you publish a paper, it is reviewed by your peers (not a bunch of “average” folks), and they decide if your ideas are worth anything or not. Only those with the proper qualifications can play. Joe The Plumber can’t decide which papers get published in a journal.
So intellectuals have a bias in favor of technocracy, in which experts determine how people should live for their own good. From there it’s just a small step toward at least grudging admiration for dictatorships.
And it’s a small step toward contempt for democracy, in which Joe The Plumber and his wife can outvote a prestigious scientist with a Ph.D.
Intellect is as easily undone by arrogance as opium. Some intellectuals are drawn totalitarianism because they cannot imagine themselves as anywhere but the top of the heap.
Why do “intellectuals” tend to fall victim to opium? Perhaps because they tend to think about things rather than actually do them. It’s conecptually easy to dig a hole, but it’s much harder in actual practice. The dirt is heavier than you thought, you drop the shovel and get blisters on your hand, you hit tree roots and rocks which impede your progress, etc. These are pitfalls the reality of digging reveals which merely thinking about digging probably will leave undiscovered. Similar to Marxism – it sounds easy, fair, the solution to every problem, until you actually do it and find the tree roots and the rocks. And the dirt is all but impossible to move.
Marxists don’t dig holes.
They dig graves.
“There are two kinds of people in life, my friend: Those with guns and those who dig.” – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
But how does a country get back to esteeming common sense and the common man who so often embodies it when its elite ruling class is more and more a caste which rarely sees, almost never rubs shoulders with and in fact holds in contempt the great broad back of that country?
I agree that opium is a good symbol. The world is ugly and complicated. Marxism seems to offer a more pleasant alternative – a glorious dream you can really live in. It’s as easy to be a Marxist as it is to be an opium addict. Problem comes when you try to construct your stately pleasure domes in concrete and steel. Xanadu was built by slaves.
i can’t believe people think an affirmative action (aa) education is a sign of higher intelligence. i submit into evidence our current dumbo obarry. who could forget in college all the passing grades repeatedly GIVEN to the aa handout crowd. i also remember standing in line to buy books (with real $$) and being the only one in line to actually have to pay $$ for them. the really smart folks were studying for hard science degrees while the far left moroons were out partying.
and taxdollarbill, since when has there ever been any air between dem’s and feminists fighting for women’s rights (privilege)? obarry still has his t-shirt ‘this is what a feminist looks like’. it is women who put the sorry sob into office.
And here is the opiate itself of the intellectual class – that there is a best course and it is always available, and must be taken no matter the cost in mere lives. It is this strange end that the intellectual seeks, which is the perfection of society not by man but by government. Indeed it is the writers that are given voice to by politicians, and the politicians seek that power which is denied them by representative democracy: the power to do as they will to their fellow man. Intellectuals see an end and describe a means beyond them, politicians have a restricted means they wish to make unrestricted and latch on to the perfect end to justify their power.
The pure folly of this is that if government could perfect man via society it would have done so ages past. The basic and self-evident truth is that we do not get government because we are perfectable but because we are imperfect, fallen from paradise from which we take the shattered ruins and build this ugly thing called government so as to restrict the ill we can do each other. Government to the intellectual is a place where good can be done, not merely evil restricted, and when it takes that good making liberty from man to create perfect society they believe it becomes a best and most perfect good means to that end. Politicians pick up that credo so that government must provide every good thing, every service, and, indeed, dictate to man what is good in that effort to remold society.
Yet society is created by man, not by government, as it is that second place where we exercise our positive liberties in concert with our fellow man, second only to our creation of our families. From the creation of family we create Nation, from the discourse and intercourse with our fellow man we get society, and to that society we must find means to restrict our negative liberties from harming each other and our own families, so we create this organ called government to perform these tasks. As an organ government does not reside in the head of society, but serves as the point to take out the harmful things given to the body and excrete them in safety… when it is elevated to the place of providing all good, it then loses track of the necessary function it had and then fails the body in that.
It is such great opium to elevate the digestive tract of society to the place of the brain… and yet it is merely a provide of the good of securing those bad things from society so that only the good may be taken up by society. It is the inversion of what is plain to see that always and ever attracts the flaccid intellectual, the ones who don’t like a belief system that elevates the common man as the heart and soul of society and that organ which senses and processes all around it. If that is recognized then intellectualism comes to be seen as a mere are of cogitation in which ideas are mulled over before they are dismembered for any good parts they may have. That is most painful of all: to see lesser people take good ideas and discard ill ones that sound so very good, and yet that common sense tells us are asinine. Thus the marriage of intellectuals with politicians take place to put common man in his place and allow a cancerous digest tract to flourish… until all is killed in the name of perfection of man. Including man, himself. For the dead are perfect, their course known and it is to dust we return. Man is expendable because of that perfect state, and it is to that state that those seeking perfection of man must send him for his own good, of course.
Pseudo-intellectuals tend to be true narcissists. They mistake their reflected image for reality; and even when they have learned of their mistake, they are so psychologically and spiritually paralyzed, they cannot extract themselves from their egotism.
Most intellectuals are foremost anti-Christian. Modern intellectualism is less an embracement and more a rejection. Christianity, with the message of fallen man who can only be redeemed through the grace of God, is Kryptonite to the secular humanist. Also, few intellectuals can bear the pointlessness and nihilism of man as beast, and therefore invented the fiction of the prefectability of man.
Communism, idealized, is the government of the perfected man. With a benevolent ruling elite, truly the best of the best. Great people looking out for the welfare of humanity. That’s why so many are looking for modern-day King Arthurs to fill the court. Christianity scoffs at the notion of man as his own master, so cleverly devised by the humanists of lore, and so in turn has received eternal intellectual damnation
Granted, Communism might work once man is perfected, if such a thing were possible. But it is always doomed to failure in this reality by relying on people to do the right thing. So, not only do Communists deny man’s nature, they also get the cart before the horse, so to speak. Still, it is anathema to Christianity, and that’s enough to be privy to all pardons from the intellectual elite.
The notion of the perfectibility of man is not a concept uniquely associated with communism; it has deep roots in Christian thinking and in Enlightenment thinking. Tocquefille writes of it as a driving force in American democracy. It is evidenced in Christian thinking as the controversy over “salvation by works” vs. “salvation by Grace.”
The NSDAP and the Communists both adopted a notion of a “Superman” produced by their societies, a notion that is very different from the Christian notion of the perfectibility of man. The Superman idea is best articulated by Neitzsche and his progeny. The modern “intellectual” has been immersed in Neitzsche and his post-modernist progeny such as Foucault and Derrida. When you mix an overweening sense of self-esteem with a denial of any absolute right or wrong, only what’s “right for me,” you have the makings of monsters.
The Christian notion of perfectibility might make one preachy and meddlesome. The post-modernist version makes one want to cruise the countryside in an armored train accompanied by a brigade of Cossacks seeking to extirpate the unenlightened.
The underlying problem is the fundamental flaw of “The Enlightenment” – scientism. Scientism holds that everything can eventually be explained by science. Thus “Scientific Socialism” and all of the studies and ologies that claim that mantle are equally flawed.
The flaw only became glaringly apparent with the advent of the digital computer. Prior to computers scientists and mathematicians knew of many problems that were too difficult to solve with pencil and paper and thus were consigned to the attic of “someday we’ll know the answers”. When computers became available the problems were brought down, dusted off and examined anew. Yup, some of them yielded quickly to the new genie. Others merely required bigger, faster machines. But a vast number proved to be, in the words of Roger Penrose, “non-computable”. In mathematical terms they are the form np-complete. Another words (Pogo reference) they can not be solved by any conceivable computer in any amount of time.
Examples: people, weather, the economy, stock markets, water circling the drain. The popular terminology is “chaotic”.
Thus the fundamental flaw is hubris – the Demon we have been warned about since time immemorial.
“Scientism holds that everything can eventually be explained by science.”
An offshoot of that belief is that science will eventually solve all of our problems. A good example is environmentalism’s obsession with throwing money at “renewable” energy such as wind and solar power, in the belief that eventually scientific and engineering breakthroughs will make these technologies more preferable and affordable than the demon carbon- and nuclear-powered energies. And politicians take advantage by subsidizing new start-up renewable energy “enterprises”, such as Solyndra, to pay off their supporters.
I am not a Marxist.
Barack is not one too.
Call us socialists if you will
Labels do not matter
To those who care
Or to those who care to think.
To a good Christian or Muslim
Charity is a necessity.
Fairness, not charity, is what we seek
Putting the needy before the greedy
Is our program and our creed
Doing right for the many
Not right for the Right few
It is time to put our differences
To the side and be done
The Founding Fathers gave us more than they received
Let us emulate their vision and their wisdom
We can/must advance the cause of freedom and equality
Both here and abroad
Let us lead by example
Not by force and bluster
We can make the US number one again
In the hearts of all mankind.
Wait, whatever YOU want to do is fine in regards to charity. Heck we could care less if you gave all of YOUR disposible income to some welfare group.
However, you socialists (communists, fascists, presbyterians, whatever) want to force everyone else to “donate” as well, in the form of higher taxes. Is that so different than the “legislating morality” concept you liberals hate so much?
As far as Christianity is concerned, I don’t think anywhere does the Bible say anything to the effect of “make Peter to give to Paul, as Paul is needy and Peter is just too greedy.” Basically, the Bible is a guide to your own behavior. I don’t recall much about forcing other people to do things against their will.
And who decides
Who is greedy
Or who is needy
Or who to give to
Or how much
Or when?
Would it be Obama and his czars, the same “intellectuals” under discussion?
Mr. Walt, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
One cannot attack an ill until one can define what it is.
I am heartened that many people seem to be coming to a realization at the same time of what it is that afflicts American culture. Being able to express the twin dangers of Marxist Pedagogy and Political Correctness is a step in the right direction. Next comes a solution but at least we are starting to get on the same page in identifying what it is that has taken apart America at the seams.
We are talking about an ideology, albeit an informal and almost accidental one, that disdains success and champions failure; indeed, within this mode of thought, there is no success or failure, merely the exploited innocents and the racist, colonialist, imperialist exploiters.
If you’re the wrong skin color, you are automatically guilty of everything from the fall of the Aztecs to Jim Crow. Of course, use this skin connection on the wrong skin color, connecting it to crime in the exact same fashion, and you are a racist. It is an argument one cannot win; a two-headed coin we are made to flip.
“It is an argument one cannot win; a two-headed coin we are made to flip.”
That’s because it is the leftist who flips the coin, just after declaring “Heads I win, tails you lose”….
The Left, and a large part of the Right are motivated primarily by greed. Greed for money, status, power. Those who have learned to be industrious move to the right as entrepreneurs. Powerseekers move left toward Government.Statusseekers toward the left field in entertainment. Moneyseekers go left in search of globalistic adventures in which they can finance whichever adversaries in whatever conflicts. They finance both sides so they always emerge triumphant.
The cure is to substitute Love for Greed, which cannot coexist with loving concern for the welfare of others. The New Testament, largely ignored by the various denominations, contains explicit instructions for successful, happy living.And it also condemns immoral behavior. Those fond of the latter therefore despise the former, thereby identifying themselves as the Greedy.
First David Stoves’s “What’s Wrong With Benevolence?” and, right on its heels, Raymond Aron’s “The Opium of the Intellectuals.” What’s next? Karl Popper? Or have you already done that? You seeming to be digging into the origins of your attraction to philosophers of Common Sense. Thank you for introducing me to two books i had never learned of. I have long puzzled over thy today’s “intellectuals”, and the pontificating pundits of popular programming, have such a low regard for the place of Common Sense in good governance, the purported province of politics. (Sorry. I suffered a spasm of alliteration, another of my afflictions.)
I recently said to my heavily indoctrinated, oh excuse me, “educated” relative that we should remember that half the people out there are above average. It is a little math joke, because as long as there is a normal or at least symetrical distribution about the mean, or average, then that must be true just because of the definition of “average.” I was just hoping to lighten the mood and get a laugh from him, because the idea is usually expressed as “half the people are below average.”
He not only didn’t get the joke, but immediately responded that he did not think that half the people are above average, that most are well below average. I ended up threatening his world view. This person, a self-described socialist, will freely rant and rage about literally exterminating the rubes, the hicks, the narrow-minded bigots that are in the way and just don’t get it about socialism and the utopia that history will arrive at if only the intellectuals can have their way. At other times he professes to be the champion of the oppressed worker.
Okay, so which is it, is the common man fit for extermination because he just doesn’t get it, or is he the underdog that you are struggling to liberate? Socialists are miserable because of their own internal inconsistencies. Stalin was known for his utter and thorough hatred for the “common man.”
So, not only is your “educated” relative ignorant of basic mathematics, he’s advocating mass murder in the name of his political ideals. Next time he says something like that, ask him how that makes him any different from the Nazis or the even more polific mass murderers, the communists. Then throw him out of your house.
Quick story: Where I work, the union thugs are constantly shouting about “the contract.” Whenever a non-union management person touches a piece of equipment the thugs shout, “Hey! You can’t move that! I’ll file a grievance!” Now, do those thugs REALLY believe in the sanctity of rules? Did they wait till they were 21 before they had their first beer? Did they drive 60 or under to get to work? Are they actually sick when they call in sick? No, no, no, and hell no.
The left only like rules as a thing to throw in the faces of “the stupid people who believe in rules,” so they can call you a hypocrite.
Take, for instance, political scandals. When a Republican is caught, the left is “horrified.” What the left is saying is “YOU [the so-called virtuous people] should be offended.” The Right has a long list of “thou shalt nots”; the Left has no such list. That’s why they tell you that “the worst thing a person can be is a hypocrite.”
When it comes to the slaughter of millions, they want 2 things: 1.) for you to be horrified at the idea, and 2.) for them to pretend to be horrified by it.
I’ve always thought Rush Limbaugh’s comment about intellectuals thinking that the problem isn’t that Communism has failed, but that the right people (namely them) weren’t in charge, because they would do a better job…I’ve always thought that comment very instructive. There’s a certain seductiveness about totalitarian government, when you’re a certain sort of intellectual and imagine yourself incredibly superior to most of the rest of humanity. Your superiority essentially blinds you to how stupid you are or can be in certain ways, and if you ever did get into control of a government, it would also lead to your rationalizing a better lifestyle for yourself and your cronies, followed by the massive corruption that typically pervades totalitarian governments, wherever they exist.
“Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines”?’
Very simple, it’s because they are stupid and stupid can’t be fixed.
It is very refreshing to be reminded of Aron’s courage and decency. I believe Robert Skidelsky in the 80′s answered Aron’s question about the intellectuals by showing that they only became enthusiastic about politicians who used power in the cause of cruelty and evil. It was not the ideas. It was not even the rebellion against the status quo. It was the combination of power and evil.
Moi? Je suis marxiste—tendance Groucho!
For the sake of those who don’t speak French, W. J. J. Hoge is declaring that he is a Marxist of the Groucho tendency. (Marxists sometimes distinguish amongst themselves by declaring themselves to belong to the Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist, etc. “tendency”, meaning that they intend to find such-and-such a variant of Marxism to be the most correct.)
Anything can be rationalized.
It’s not about ideas or intellectualism. It’s about power and money. Always was, always will be.
At the very least,we should arm ourselves.
Why are they attracted to this drivel? Because they seek to be gods.
They look around the world and see flaws, not understanding the whole thing, the vast complexity. So, in simplistic fashion, they think they have a better way. “If we just do this, then everything will be fine.”
In seeking to be gods, they refuse to submit to God. They thus cast aside all His moral code, because one cannot partially reject God. If one thinks God world is flawed, one rejects the whole. One thinks to replace Him with one’s self. “If God is perfect, then why is His creation, this world, so flawed? I can do it better!” (The flaw is not in the world. The flaw is in them.)
Thus rejecting His moral authority, they cast it all aside and make themselves the arbiters of morality, of virtue. They declare themselves gods… and they feel gooooddd. They then are perfect. How could they be less than perfect? Do not THEY determine who and what is right? Their way is what is right.
So, such things as mass-murder become acceptable, because they are pursuing right things, and they are not constrained by some outworn, moral code, created in the name of some “Sky Fairy”. They, thus, cast off all restraint… and become monsters.
Intellectualism which is not subordinated to God’s Laws creates monsters. it is the Fall of Lucifer all over again, the most beautiful of Angels, turned into the most hideous of monsters. Intellectuals should be seeking knowledge for greater understanding of God, thus gaining wisdom. Intellectuals without God suffer from hubris. Lucifer is a Fool, and so are these “intellectuals”. Like Him, the intellectuals will burn in Hell for the terrible evil they do.
Was Aron the origin of the priceless phrase: “The herd of ‘independent minds’ that can alway be counted on to bellow on cue?’”
There are the Communist Party members, the socialists, their allies, their dupes, the pinkos, the fellow travelers, the liberals etc. The Party members write the music and call the tune. The rest are ignorant of the real goals that they are working toward. Crony capitalists pay the bills, in order to gain what they want, and don’t care about the politics until it is too late. Societies must be educated how all this works before we are locked into socialism worldwide.
Marc Malone(#38), you have cracked the code to this mental disease. Once an intellectual buys into this conceit, decides to become a god and join the many like-minded, then, over time, he/she develops and nurtures an abiding hatred of and separation from the true God. He/she also despises and scorns the Church/Temple and all believers. while not irreversable, this allegiance to marxism/athieism is powerful as evil itself. I would love to hear from those who have broken free from this spell and learn how we can recover and redeem the lost. CS Lewis, JR Tolkien,and Whittaker Chambers are outstanding exemplars of this possibility.
The intellectual wanders the desert of profundity unbounded by common sense.