The Betrayal of the Intellectuals?

After nearly eight years of aiding and abetting Obama, leftists now fear the possible constitutional overreach of our next president.

I and many others, long ago in the pre-Trump age, cited the quite dangerous trajectory of Obama’s constitutional overreach. That worry is now shared apparently by the New York Times. Suddenly in year eight, its editors fear that someday another president, perhaps one less sensitive, more uncouth than Obama, might find his exemplar useful, but for less exalted progressive purposes. Thus the Times has characterized Obama’s overreach as “bureaucratic bulldozing rather than legislative transparency.” And more ominously it notes, “But once Mr. Obama got the taste for it, he pursued his executive power without apology, and in ways that will shape the presidency for decades to come.”

Long before the arrival of Donald Trump on the current election scene, many noted with alarm efforts to circumvent the Congress with Obama’s “pen and phone” executive orders and nullification of existing law — whether the executive-order amnesties and non-enforcement of the border that he had warned he could not do before his reelection, given that they would be the work of an autocrat, or his allowance of sanctuary cities’ Confederate-like nullification of existing federal law, or his arbitrary reelection-cycle, non-enforcement of elements of his own Affordable Care Act, or virtual rewriting of laws in federal bureaucracies such as the EPA, or the quite dangerous politicization of agencies such as Lois Lerner’s activity at the IRS or the Eric-Holder/Loretta Lynch Justice Department or his divisive Chavista braggadocio (“get in their faces,” “punish our enemies,” “bring a gun to a knife fight,” “you didn’t build that,” etc.).

First, the term "intellectuals" has been much overused in recent times, especially when referring to the crowd which has dominated in this Administration and in the "progressive" element of the other Party.

So-called "progressives" of both Parties in recent times, portray themselves as the "intellectual" elite, although they may be totally bereft of any real knowledge or understanding of the great ideas which were the seedbed of Ameria's successful 200-year experiment in liberty.

Today's so-called "progressives," with all of their domination of academia and Far Left politics, seem to fit into a category described in an essay by T.S. Eliot on Virgil:

"In our time, when men seem more than ever to confuse wisdom with knowledge and knowledge with information and to try to solve the problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is a provincialism not of space but of time--one for which history is merely a chronicle of human devices which have served their turn and have been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no share."(Bold added for emphasis)

Without intellectual anchoring in the enduring ideas which provided the philosophical foundation of America's Declaration of Independence and Constitution, their vain imaginations of superiority only expose their limited world view.

Yet, the America which rose from obscurity to greatness, from crude hoes and axes to putting a man on the moon, and from oppression by King George to a symbol of liberty for millions all over the world--that America provides shelter for them, even as they attempt to "change" her into something unimagined by the Founders, and ungrounded in Constitutional principles.

If they are allowed to succeed in their own little provincial experiment, their posterity never will know the "blessings of Liberty" proclaimed by the Preamble to America's Constitution.

Now might be a good time for conservatives to read Dr. Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind, which can be read online, by the way.

In Kirk's last chapter he reviews the works of poets and writers, quoting lines which now seem to bear a striking resemblance to the players on stage in American politics today.

For instance, in Robert Frost's "A Case for Jefferson," Frost writes of the character Harrison:

"Harrison loves my country too
But wants it all made over new.
. . . .
He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
But his mind is hardly out of his teens.
With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it made over new."

Yes, the pseudointellectuals who occupy the White House, the media, and much of Congress fancy themselves "intellectuals."

By their words and actions, however, they display that provinciality Dr. Kirk recalls as having been described by T. S. Eliot (see above) as being one of time and place, having no intellectual grounding in ideas older than their own little experience in dabbling and discussing Mao, Marx, and other theoreticians.

America's written Constitution deserves protectors whose minds are out of their "teens" in terms of their understanding of civilization's long struggle for individual liberty.

It certainly deserves protectors who do not consider it a "flawed" document because that Constitution does not permit the government it structures to run rough shod over the rights of its "only KEEPERS, the People" (Justice Story).

Blasting it "all to smithereens" seems to be the goal of the Far Left and its power-hungry leaders.

Those who have found ways to bypass the Constitution's limits on their power rely on what they believe to be the ignorance of the American people when they assert extra-Constitutional powers. They have been outwitted, however, by an increasingly knowledgeable citizenry who are using the miracles of technology to study for themselves ancient and modern writings on the ideas of liberty versus those of tyranny. As Jefferson wisely observed:

"History, by apprising the people of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."

VDH is back in form in a magazine that may no longer wish to hold him, judging by its recent establishment blatherings. He still doesn't like Trump, fine, lots of people who are going to have to vote for Trump don't, because they do love their country too much to place it into the hands of the predatory, racist criminal gang that is the current Democrat party. Given that the designated Vice Presidential candidate of that gang has just blurted shamelessly that a significant portion of the American public is going to have to be made to suffer based on the color of their skin for the Greater Good, we can see very easily what too much toleration of the wilder progressive fantasies has led us to. If it's that or a little New York bluster, I'll take the bluster, thanks.

Note Beinart’s pride in his and other intellectuals’ supposed ability to “push the political system.” But, alas, by his own admission, they so far have not pushed much of anything concerning the “despair of the working-class white men” — raising the question of “why not”?

The answer is uncomfortable for self-congratulatory intellectuals: their model of oppressed classes that are signified by race is contemptibly crude and has led them very far astray. We had, in an earlier article, a reference to American farmers as "rich white males". It's that bad. And the result is that these founts of wisdom turn out to be lazy, presumptuous, and out of touch. That isn't much of a base for sound decision-making. It isn't even particularly intellectual.

There is pattern at least as old as history, and it is simply this: when the ruling class becomes a criminal class the society either purges or falls. And the longer that reckoning is suspended, the more violent and unreasonable it is likely to be. That's the real thrust of the article to which VDH is replying: that a chuckling complaisance in governmental excess is likely to turn against its fond proponents. That argues very ill for those whose hands look to slip off the levers of power, replaced by those who may like the power but don't like them. Once used it is very difficult to return those levers to their original positions, at least without breaking the entire machine first.

“Is sticking your fingers in your ears and repeating “La, la, la, I can’t hear you” really the best you can do?”

I see this sort of canard thrown out a lot about people who don’t want to focus their attention on what some other person finds important. But just because you find something worth your time doesn’t mean I necessarily should find it worth my time. I have read a great deal of VDH, and Sowell, and many, many others who have revealed themselves to be poor judges of character and policy by supporting knaves and fools when the chips were down and they needed to fall in with those who were the true defenders of liberty and freedom. Such “intellectuals” have disqualified themselves from my personal list of those writers I should pay attention to and read. You can continue wasting your time with these sorts and stupidly look for them to make some sort of “wise” remark or “sensible” judgment that they have already shown they are incapable of making. However, given their poor track record, I choose to look elsewhere for counsel and advice.

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