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The Danger Of Overrating 'Intellectuals'
INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY ^ | November 11, 2008 | THOMAS SOWELL

Posted on 11/12/2008 5:27:44 AM PST by expat_panama

Among the many wonders to be expected from an Obama administration, if Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times is to be believed, is ending "the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life."

He cited Adlai Stevenson, the suave and debonair governor of Illinois, who twice ran for president against Eisenhower in the 1950s, as an example of an intellectual in politics.

Intellectuals, according to Mr. Kristof, are people who are "interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity," people who "read the classics."

It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.

Stevenson the    Stevenson the "intellectual," left, could happily go years without picking up a book. Truman the bumpkin devoured Thucydides and read Cicero in the original Latin.

Adlai Stevenson was certainly regarded as an intellectual by intellectuals in the 1950s. But half a century later, facts paint a very different picture.

Historian Michael Beschloss, among others, has noted that Stevenson "could go quite happily for months or years without picking up a book." But Stevenson had the airs of an intellectual — the form, rather than the substance.

What is more telling, form was enough to impress the intellectuals, not only then but even now, years after the facts have been revealed, though apparently not to Mr. Kristof.

That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves.

[snip]

(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: elites; intelletuals
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1 posted on 11/12/2008 5:27:45 AM PST by expat_panama
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To: expat_panama

Those who proclaim themselves to be “intellectuals” aren’t. Einstein, Schweitzer, Bonhoeffer never applied that description to themselves.


2 posted on 11/12/2008 5:32:38 AM PST by kittymyrib
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To: expat_panama
Pretty much the case. Stevenson certainly isn't considered an "intellectual" today by anyone.

Most of those who thought of him as an "intellectual" aren't even remembered.

So much for the hollow and pretentious false intellectualism of the 1950s.

3 posted on 11/12/2008 5:32:41 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: expat_panama
The left sees Cornel West as an intellectual of great substance.
The left sees Thomas Sowell as an obscure crank and a sell-out.

The Left is all about emotion, not ideas.

4 posted on 11/12/2008 5:33:51 AM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: Vision; definitelynotaliberal; Mother Mary; FoxInSocks; 300magnum; NonValueAdded; sauropod; ...

This is a great article, worthy of a ping.


5 posted on 11/12/2008 5:35:05 AM PST by Loud Mime (CHANGE: Palin 2012)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Have you also noticed when listening to libs, how INTELLIGENT anyone is who happens to have the same ideology (yet says the most ignorant things),

yet anyone who actually IS intelligent, and isn’t a flaming socialist, is “dumb”?


6 posted on 11/12/2008 5:35:54 AM PST by MrB (The 0bamanation: Marxism, Infanticide, Appeasement, Depression, and Thuggery)
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To: expat_panama
Intellectuals, experts, pundits.......bought and enslaved by special interest.
7 posted on 11/12/2008 5:36:51 AM PST by wolfcreek (I see miles and miles of Texas....let's keep it that way.)
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To: expat_panama

Most intellectuals rate intelligence in terms of how far you can depart from reality and make it look as though you used reason to get there. It doesn’t take a whole lot of intelligence to see the truth. It does take a whole lot of brain power to create a well-integrated, sophisticated lie or fantasy. Consider that it took a huge amount of brain power to turn out an episode of Star Wars(not true) than it does a video of kids playing in the back yard(reality).
This explains why the folks at Harvard, Yale, etc. can turn out such nonsense that mere mortals know is foolishness.


8 posted on 11/12/2008 5:36:53 AM PST by all the best
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To: expat_panama

Sowell explained the “intellectual worship” phenomena in his “Conflict of Visions” book.

The left has the worldview that humans are perfectible (as opposed to the “tragic” worldview that humans are inherently flawed, ie sinners),

and therefore, some humans are already “more perfect” than others,

and therefore, those who are “more perfect” SHOULD make decisions for those who are “less perfect”.


9 posted on 11/12/2008 5:37:49 AM PST by MrB (The 0bamanation: Marxism, Infanticide, Appeasement, Depression, and Thuggery)
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To: expat_panama
Once again we see the truth of the maxim:

“Intellectualism does not equal wisdom”

10 posted on 11/12/2008 5:39:08 AM PST by jokyfo ("OBAMA" is Arabic for "CIPHER" and Farsi for "VACUUM")
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To: expat_panama
It would be no feat to fill a big book with all the things on which intellectuals were grossly mistaken, just in the 20th century — far more so than ordinary people.

Or, as Dennis Prager says, some ideas are so foolish they could only come from a university. Another bullseye by Sowell.

11 posted on 11/12/2008 5:40:30 AM PST by Hugin (GSA! (Goodbye sweet America))
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To: expat_panama

some intellectual....can’t even distinguish between the fatuous narcissism that passes for intelligence among the Ivy League, with true intellectualism.


12 posted on 11/12/2008 5:40:54 AM PST by mo
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To: 1rudeboy; Toddsterpatriot; Mase; EveningStar; LS; La Enchiladita
A great point Sowell makes here is not that scholarship is bad, but rather that it's good only when coupled with good sense.   Another is that the left seems to go ape over morons with PhD's.  

On this other tread we were comparing Rush Limbaugh and Dennis Prager --another bumpkin/intellectual pair --and IMHO Prager's got good sense in more areas than Rush does.

13 posted on 11/12/2008 5:41:39 AM PST by expat_panama
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To: expat_panama

There is absolutely no danger of any intelligent person “overrating” intellectuals. Only they can do that...........


14 posted on 11/12/2008 5:42:11 AM PST by Red Badger (Hey! Look on the bright side! At least Joe Biden is out of the Senate!..........)
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To: expat_panama
The definition I've always used for ‘academic’ (or really intellectual) is someone who has lived their entire lives without any consequences for being wrong.
15 posted on 11/12/2008 5:42:22 AM PST by tcostell (MOLON LABE - http://freenj.blogspot.com - RadioFree NJ)
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To: expat_panama
Usually the dumbest people are the best book educated. They spend years to learn how to talk and put together a paragraph, but their abstract thought ability stinks. The smarter they think they are the more danger they are to themselves and others.

Has Obi learned there are not 57 states, yet?

16 posted on 11/12/2008 5:42:45 AM PST by FreeAtlanta (Join the Constitution Party)
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To: Loud Mime

Roger that. Sent it to my lists here.

Too bad Sowell won’t run for office.

Doubt he could win as he has this annoying habit of TELLING THE TRUTH. I’m afraid the American sheeple CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!


17 posted on 11/12/2008 5:44:23 AM PST by Dick Bachert
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To: kittymyrib
Those who proclaim themselves to be “intellectuals” aren’t.

That's one of my rules of life. The more someone proclaims his or herself to be a (fill in the blank), the less likely it is that they're not.

18 posted on 11/12/2008 5:44:31 AM PST by JRios1968 (Sarah Palin smash Hulk!)
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To: Hugin
"...as Dennis Prager says..."

lol!   Our great minds tread the same path (re post 13).

19 posted on 11/12/2008 5:44:34 AM PST by expat_panama
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To: jokyfo

Intellectuals are so damn smart that they don’t realize that THEY are the first to be eliminated in any Left Wing Dictatorship.....


20 posted on 11/12/2008 5:44:37 AM PST by Red Badger (Hey! Look on the bright side! At least Joe Biden is out of the Senate!..........)
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