#Puffed-up Leftwingers Should NOT read this post
Kurt Nicklas
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/thomas-sowell-takes-on-intellectuals/?singlepage=true
Sowell's Intellectuals and Society examines those troubling folks with
an allergy to fact and an addiction to preening.
May 15, 2010- by William M. BriggsShare | Says brother T.S. Eliot:
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to
feel important. They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not
interest them. Or they do not see it; or they justify it because they
are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
Thomas Sowell produces this apt quotation, a neat summary of
Intellectuals and Society, his important new book. And what a
frustrating book it is! It can be read only in snatches, absorbing
two, at the most three examples of the insufferable arrogance and
unteachable ignorance of those who “exalt themselves by denigrating
the society in which they live and turning its members against each
other.”
What is an intellectual? It is a person who thinks that because he
knows the precise dimensions (in millimeters) of thimbles used in
medieval Poland, or can translate Mayan hieroglyphs into Hattic, that
this qualifies him as the ideal spokesman for the poor and
downtrodden.
An intellectual acts:
… as if [his] ignorance of why some people earn unusually high incomes
is a reason why those incomes are suspect or ought not to be
permitted.
An intellectual is the kind of person who can say with a straight face
what dead playwright Harold Pinter said — “There are no hard
distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what
is true and what is false” — and be perfectly oblivious of that
statement’s logical contradictions. Its farcical impenetrability,
which should bar its utterance in polite company, instead induces the
same emotion as when a kindergartner is awarded a gold star for
scissors work.
An intellectual is a person who substitutes what could have happened,
but did not, for what did happen, when what did happen was at variance
with his desire. And he does this not just once, but repeatedly — and
then uses this pseudo-history as confirmation that his deepest beliefs
are justified.
For example, Ronald Reagan was excoriated routinely by intellectuals
because they assumed that his policies would cause a nuclear
confrontation with Russia:
That assumption was demonstrated to be false when President Reagan’s
military buildup in the 1980s proved to be more than the Soviet
Union’s economy could match — as Reagan knew. The fact that the actual
consequence of Reagan’s policy was the direct opposite of what the
“arms race” argument had predicted — that is, the consequence was the
end of the Cold War, rather than the beginning of a nuclear war — has
had as little effect on the prevailing [intellectual] vision as other
facts which directly contradict other premises of that vision.
In short: an intellectual is 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. Superman had
kryptonite, but an intellectual’s shield of self-assurance cannot be
breached by any known substance, especially fact.
Exceptions exist. Or, rather, it is the term “intellectual” which is
the problem. There are always among us the brilliant, but the
proportion of these immortals is always far smaller than recognized —
or desired. The void in desire we fill with pesky, unqualified
volunteers whom we label “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.
Ray Fischer
>Thomas Sowell Takes on �Intellectuals�
>http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/thomas-sowell-takes-on-intellectuals/?singlepage=true
>What is an intellectual? It is a person who thinks that because he
>knows the precise dimensions (in millimeters) of thimbles used in
>medieval Poland, or can translate Mayan hieroglyphs into Hattic, that
>this qualifies him as the ideal spokesman for the poor and
>downtrodden.
That's the very thinking that Pol Pot used in killing 1,500,000
"intellectuals" in order to force everybody to be farmers.
--
Ray Fischer
rfis...@sonic.net
Agent Smith
Mister Dickless, welcome back.
--
Agent Smith
5457 Dead, 590 since 1/20/09
> Kurt Dickless
>
>
> Mister Dickless, welcome back.
Judging from the subject header, I'm guessing our Knickers is a little
desperate for attention.
Wexford
> Thomas Sowell Takes on ‘Intellectuals’
>
>
> Sowell's Intellectuals and Society examines those troubling folks with
> an allergy to fact and an addiction to preening.
>
> May 15, 2010- by William M. BriggsShare | Says brother T.S. Eliot:
>
> Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to
> feel important. They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not
> interest them. Or they do not see it; or they justify it because they
> are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
>
> Thomas Sowell produces this apt quotation, a neat summary of
> Intellectuals and Society, his important new book. And what a
> frustrating book it is! It can be read only in snatches, absorbing
> two, at the most three examples of the insufferable arrogance and
> unteachable ignorance of those who “exalt themselves by denigrating
> the society in which they live and turning its members against each
> other.”
>
> What is an intellectual? It is a person who thinks that because he
> knows the precise dimensions (in millimeters) of thimbles used in
> medieval Poland, or can translate Mayan hieroglyphs into Hattic, that
> this qualifies him as the ideal spokesman for the poor and
> downtrodden.
This article is just too, too precious. Who wrote it, Mao's wife??
Isn't this the logic that Mao used in murdering millions during the
"Cultural Revolution?" And of course there's the ever popular Pol Pot,
and don't forget the oldies but Baddies, Stalin and Hitler -- they
utterly despised intellectuals, rounded them up and imprisoned,
tortured and killed them by the gross. Of course there were the little
tyrants, too, the Guatamalan Death squads who murdered teachers and
the other old friend of all Republicans, Pinochet. Today, of course,
virtually the entire Moslem world is suspicious of intellectuals, at
least those with a broad cultural perspective, and the Taliban just
loves to shoot them. Ever hear of the murder of Shiite Doctors in
Pakistan? Great fun for people who hate intellectuals. I'll tell you
there are no intellectuals in a Madrass, and the the folks in Al Qaida
eat them for lunch.
Sowell hates intellectuals because he's a whore who sells himself to
the Right. He's never had a single, independent idea, but he does
publish. He'd better watch himself. If the black-hating anti-
intellectuals, the Teabaggers and other wingnuts, ever do get into
power, Sowel will be just another uppity black to them. It'll be back
to the cotton fields or it's strange fruit in the orchard.l
Wexford
>
For got to change the subject. There, that's better: Thomas Sowell
Shows his Maoist Roots -- Hates Intellectuals