Why do we conservatives hold intellectuals...

-Self | epigone73

[epigone73]

quick question, been bothering me for ages.

Given that the average leftist is a barely verbal barbarian, why do so many conservatives not relish our own cultural superiority?

I mean, for G-d's sake, why defend a culture the practice and refinement of which we seem to deride? ("eggheads", "intellectuals," "philosophers" seem to be terms of contempt.

The left, and others outside us, want to bring us down as a whole. It is all well and good to smash the faces of the barbarians, and even necessary and commmendable to do so, but why do we so often turn against those who are our natural allies, i.e., the conservative thinkers and scholars. Trust me, they need our help and support.

[epigone73]

as for honesty, well, even joe stalin could be honest; hitler certainly deceived nobody about his intentions.

[squarebarb]

You're right. He's a troll. Not one specific answer.

[JRandomFreeper]

assurances of my conservative bona fides;

You have no bona fides here. If you had a letter of introduction from a freeper with standing.... or a history with FR. Possibly. But you have no standing or good feelings or bona fides. None.

You can earn them. And if you hang around and prove to be conservative, I'll be willing to speak good things on your behalf. Say in 4 or 5 years.....

Conservatives tend to be patient.

/john

[epigone73]

Amazing, and a little hurtful from a Savage fan. (Love the deadman's pants, the penn station, and other tales almost as much as I enjoy his passionate discussion of what we are up against.)

Alright, fine, I'm all the things of your worst imagination. You are far too clever to be deceived by a troll such as I. So, having unmasked me, tell me what the right is defending, and how? And low taxes, school prayer, etc., do not constitute a coherent or rational set of beliefs and principles, any more than abortion on demand and gay weddings do. These are merely tactical positions, or reflections of underlying beliefs. And it is these beliefs which interest me.

[epigone73]

you're probably right, of course.

but then again, according to some on this thread, i might be just a consistent troll, and my consistency would be simply more damning proof of my bad intentions.

[JRandomFreeper]

throw them bodily out of office.

Defenestration. The Czechoslovakians had a word for it.

You have to respect a people that have a word for everything.

ZOT!

/john

[T'wit]

>> The logos is not like twinkerbell.

:-) :-)

>> but, these fever-swamps have spread their malarial infection - to extend the metaphor- into new areas, and their graduates are spreading the contagion all over the country. It's as bad as the madrassahs, really.

Hard to overstate that case. The swamps just get swampier.

It isn't the swamp-people's minds we need to fathom, it's their souls. Horowitz is a clue. He is the only one of his prominence who has broken. The faith of the rest must be great, that they cling to it so -- or perhaps it is that they so fear the faith of their fathers.

[epigone73]

Horowitz's Radical Son is his generation's Witness.

Old Whit Chambers had bad teeth, a great mind, and a powerful soul. Anyone who is still an optimist after reading that is blind, as is anyone who loses all hope on the last page.

[T'wit]

>> Higher education... isn't.

And never will be again, so long as we maintain the democratic delusion that everyone is capable of being educated.

Long before state schooling loused everything up, Adam Smith spotted the problem. When students pay their teacher directly for good and useful learning, the teacher must provide it or lose his livelihood. However, when teachers are paid by a third party (the college itself or the state), they no longer have to please their customers, the students, and are increasingly free to preach, rather than teach, useless and noxious doctrines.

As usual, a free market works, socialism corrupts.

[epigone73]

careful, someone might acuse you of being an elitist snob. evidently, conservatives aren't allowed to acknowledge any differences in human capacities, or so I learned this evening from another poster.

[Mike Darancette]

("eggheads", "intellectuals," "philosophers" seem to be terms of contempt.

Only when they believe that intellectualism is the end not the means to an end. To the liberal the end product of an education is the ability to spout and defend the liberal story line by rote.

[T'wit]

There was only one little conservative publisher back when, Henry Regnery. One was all it took to publish WITNESS, in days when a prominent intellectual (I think it was Lionel Trilling) declared that there was no dissent remaining in America from the liberal orthodoxy. That's what conservatives do: we dissent. We resist. We bury the fingernails of a saint.

[epigone73]

First of all;

a genuine education does not justify itself - nor must it - by its utility. An education is an end in itself, if it is a real education; otherwise, it's indoctrination or vocational training.

And the hostility and suspicion I have encountered in this thread from certain posters does little to dispel the image of the right-wing neanderthal. It does us no little harm, and makes us look foolish and ignorant.

[epigone73]

but resistance and dissent are not enough. why resist, why dissent?

Is our goal simply to slow down the decline brought on by the left, to meet them half-way. Nietzsche was right in pointing out that all merely defensive positions are ultimately doomed.

[T'wit]

> conservatives aren't allowed to acknowledge any differences in human capacities

Individuality is the essence of conservatism. Groupthink is basic socialism, and I think it is the trademark intellectual mistake of the modern era.

[epigone73]

don't tell riley that. evidently, if i haven't been on this site for ages, and if I ask questions, I am no conservative, but am rather a troll.

But if i'm a troll, why does he not knock me off the bridge like a good billy goat?

but he doesn't even do this; rather, he finds I'm a snob and elitist, two things which evidently conservatives cannot be, in his opinion.

If he ran a business witht his much suspicion and distrust, he'd never sell anything to anyone.

"Why do you want to buy gas? I thikn you might be an arsonist.'

"But I'm not an arsonist."

"That's what arsonists always say!"

etc. etc.

[T'wit]

>> Is our goal simply to slow down the decline brought on by the left

Heavens no, I was being a bit poetic there :-) Conservatives have a lot more going for them today than they did when I was an editorial cub (in Whit Chambers' old cubicle, btw, though I never met him). We have more publishers (Regnery is still around), more magazines, and new channels in talk radio and the Internet -- all fed by staggeringly greater numbers of political conservatives than anyone would have dreamed in 1960. Moreover, free markets are always opening up new ways to get around bureaucratic ossification. For one imporant example, you can get excellent course material for K-12 home schooling on CDs at prices anyone can afford.

So I'm pretty optimistic. I think it's liberalism that is in decline, from its own internal rot; or at least I'd like to hope so.

[T'wit]

I should add that Free Republic itself is a new kind of channel for the struggles at hand. It is a clipping service and press agency for items of interest from all around the world. Literally thousands of people search for such items, and many are capable posters. We also do original reporting. All of this is subject to what might be called peer review. Facts are checked (and it is astonishing how much expertise several thousand conservative Freepers can toss at a given question). Hoaxes are sniffed out, duplications are spiked, trolls are spotted and suffered until they wear out their welcome. You can get your news here sooner and a lot more honestly than you'll ever get it in the New York Times.

After all that, everyone gets to cheer or vent or chat, so long as they observe the usual courtesies and stick within the rules.

I hope you will find it agreeable in Free Republic, and if you do, pretty soon you'll be family.

[JRandomFreeper]

does little to dispel the image of the right-wing neanderthal. It does us no little harm, and makes us look foolish and ignorant.

Do we care about image? No, I do not.

Who cares. We're the people that make the world go 'round. I don't look foolish or ignorant at all. I feed the masses.

I have suspicions about those that worry about 'face'. N. Korea will suffer for that...

/john

[JRandomFreeper]

And I'll refer you, yet again, to Kipling. And the sons of mary and matha. All questions have been answered. All knowledge is gained. And a second-rate poet from the last century has written it down.

It's the real man's burden. You gotta be cluefull. Even in English.

/john