Posted on 05/15/2010 3:18:26 AM PDT by mattstat
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...
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
April 19th-20th, 2002
Chicago Illini Union
828 S. Wolcott
This conference is part of the Center's mission of helping to create a more engaged civil society, working towards social change, fostering coalitions between theorists and activists, and combating anti-intellectualism in contemporary culture. It will be both a celebration of ideas and a rigorous examination of the roles and responsibilities that intellectuals play in society.
I. Why Do Ideas Matter? (a keynote panel)
We introduce the “meta” theme of the conference by hearing “success stories” from diverse voices discussing their experiences intervening intellectually.
Timuel Black, Chicago activist; Prof. Emeritus, City Colleges of Chicago
Lonnie Bunch, President, Chicago Historical Society
Bernardine Dohrn, Northwestern University Law School, Children and Family Justice Center
Gerald Graff, UIC, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Richard Rorty, Stanford University, Philosophy
III. Lunch and Public Encounters
Alternative breakout tours led by Chicago activists. Tours of Bronzeville and other communities, and visits to organizations that are working on partnering theorists with activists.
IV. Intellectuals in Times of Crisis
Experiences and applications of intellectual work in urgent situations.
William Ayers, UIC, College of Education; author of Fugitive Days
Douglass Cassel, Northwestern University, Center for International Human Rights
Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago, Political Science
Salim Muwakkil, Chicago Tribune; In These Times
Barack Obama, Illinois State Senator
Barbara Ransby, UIC, African-American Studies (moderator)
The Center for Public Intellectuals
University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC):
http://www.uic.edu/classes/las/las400/conferencealt.htm
_____________________________________________________
"Dig It. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!"
-Weather Underground leader and wife of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn ("intellectual"), referring to the Manson murders
Article: Allies in War -by David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 17, 2001
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=63512670-BF7C-42A0-B41D-5D0FB9E09C09
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"Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at"
--Bill Ayers ("intellectual") (1970), quoted in New York Times, September 11, 2001:
Article: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
_____________________________________________________
"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that ["intellectual"] Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World — where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' — both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."
Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==
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.
Ayers, Dohrn, Obama and the rest of the elitist commie left only THINK they’re intellectuals. In reality, they are dumber than... (rhymes with “it”)
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