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Intellectuals and Society (Thomas Sowell)
Jewish World Review ^ | January 5, 2010 | Thomas Sowell

Posted on 01/04/2010 7:17:12 PM PST by jazusamo

There has probably never been an era in history when intellectuals have played a larger role in society. When intellectuals who generate ideas are surrounded by a wide range of others who disseminate those ideas — whether as journalists, teachers, staffers to legislators or clerks to judges — the influence of intellectuals on the way a society evolves can be huge. Trying for years to understand the nature of that influence eventually led me to write the book "Intellectuals and Society," which has just been published.

Intellectuals generate ideas and ideas matter, whether those ideas are right or wrong, and they matter far beyond the small segment of society who are intellectuals. Ideas affect the fate of whole nations and civilizations. Nowhere is that more true than in our own times, when some people make suicidal attacks to kill strangers who have done nothing to them, as on 9/11, because the attackers are consumed with a set of ideas — a vision — and driven by the emotions generated by those ideas and that vision.

Whether in war or peace, and whether in economics or religion, something as intangible as ideas can dominate the most concrete things in our lives. What Karl Marx called "the blaze of ideas" has set whole nations on fire and consumed whole generations.

Those whose careers are built on the creation and dissemination of ideas — the intellectuals — have played a role in many societies out of all proportion to their numbers. Whether that role has, on net balance, made those around them better off or worse off is one of the key questions of our times.

The quick answer is that intellectuals have done both. But certainly, for the 20th century, it is hard to escape the conclusion...

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


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: sowell; thomassowell
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To: Billthedrill

Amen! Very well said and thanks for your post.


21 posted on 01/05/2010 9:04:51 AM PST by jazusamo (But there really is no free lunch, except in the world of political rhetoric,.: Thomas Sowell)
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To: Finny
Oh, yes - as a young man Sowell was very conversant with Marxism; in fact, out of that experience he wrote THIS BOOK - one might expect a diatribe against it from an Austrian School economist but one would be wrong. It's a very concise and objective study of the topic.

He is also a former Marine pistol instructor. The guy has led a life. ;-)

22 posted on 01/05/2010 10:45:35 AM PST by Billthedrill
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To: Hawthorn
Well, sorry, but you heard wrong.

Not just me. In the Sources and Acknowledgements chapter of 3001: The Final Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke acknowledged that he didn't invent the quote and didn't know who originally said it but he agreed completely.

23 posted on 01/05/2010 11:26:55 AM PST by Knitebane (Happily Microsoft free since 1999.)
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To: jazusamo; All
More on "intellectuals" --

"The talkers and writers resent being left on the sidelines by the doers." -- Thomas Sowell

"The terrorists have spoken in words and in deeds, including suicide bombers. They have what Churchill once described in the Nazis as 'currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of those who swim upon them.'  We saw that on 9/11 -- or should have seen it. But many, especially among the intelligentsia, are determined not to see it. ... People who have long been sheltered from mortal dangers can indulge themselves in the belief that there are no mortal dangers. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran or North Korea -- and, through them, in the hands of hate-filled terrorists -- may be all that will finally wake up succh people. But that may be tragically too late." -- Thomas Sowell

"Adolescence is a relatively recent thing in human history -- a period of years between the constraints of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood. This irresponsible period of adolescence is artificially extended by long years of education, much of it wasted on frivolities. Tenure extends adolescence even further for teachers and professors." -- Thomas Sowell

"Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is." -- Thomas Sowell

"People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

"Someone once defined a social problem as a situation in which the real world differs from the theories of intellectuals. To the intelligentsia, it follows, as the night follows the day, that it is the real world that is wrong and which needs to change." -- Thomas Sowell

"An e-mail from a reader says that liberals like to take the moral high ground, even though their own moral relativism means that there is no moral high ground." -- Thomas Sowell

"During the 1930s, some of the leading intellectuals in America condemned our economic system and pointed to the centrally planned Soviet economy as a model -- all this at a time when literally millions of people were starving to death in the Soviet Union, from a famine in a country with some of the richest farmland in Europe and historically a large exporter of food." -- Thomas Sowell

"People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

   "The magic formula of 'race, class and gender' ... has replaced thought in many intellectual circles." --Dr. Thomas Sowell

 "Dalrymple's latest book, published this year, is titled Our Culture, What's Left of It and now he takes a look at the intellectual and political elite, as well as the underclass that has served as guinea pigs for their social experiments.  His account of the smug ignorance of this elite is as chilling as his account of the catastrophic effects of their notions on society." --Dr. Thomas Sowell

  "The economic disasters of socialism and communism come from assuming a blanket superiority of those who want to run a whole economy." --Thomas Sowell

   "Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." -- Thomas Sowell

   "Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

    "Having imagined a world in which each individual has the same probability of success as anyone else, intellectuals have been shocked and outraged that the real world is nowhere close to that ideal. Vast amounts of time and resources have been devoted to trying to figure out what is stopping this ideal from being realized -- as if there was ever any reason to expecct it to be." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

   "When Western countries in the past were as poor as Third World countries are today, these Western countries nevertheless had one big advantage: There was no large and influential class of the intelligentsia to impede their progress with unsubstantiated theories and counterproductive propaganda." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

"The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe --  because no one else could be such a fool." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

   "It would be devastating to the egos of the intelligentsia to realize, much less admit, that businesses have done more to reduce poverty than all the intellectuals put together. Ultimately it is only wealth that can reduce poverty and most of the intelligentsia have no interest whatever in finding out what actions and policies increase the national wealth. They certainly don't feel any 'obligation' to learn economics ..." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

 "Charles Murray, however, clearly believes that being able to cure fatal diseases is more important than some other things and that Rembrandt was a greater artist than your local sidewalk cartoon sketcher. Most people might regard this as obvious common sense but some of the intelligentsia may be seething with resentment at seeing their pet fetishes ignored." -- Thomas Sowell

  "Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God." -- Thomas Sowell

-- all found on THIS page

CLICK ON EACH OF THESE TO GET A FULL-SIZE PDF OF IT:

Liberals are self-righteously ignorant of the VAST scholarship of capitalism and liberty

..AND FIND OTHER POSTERS HERE

24 posted on 01/07/2010 11:30:05 AM PST by FreeKeys (Believers in "wealth spreading" are so ignorant they actually CAUSE shrinking economies.)
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To: FreeKeys

Excellent post! Thank you, I’ll be copying and filing with the live links.

I always look forward to reading Dr. Sowell’s quotes and his Random Thoughts.


25 posted on 01/07/2010 11:53:48 AM PST by jazusamo (But there really is no free lunch, except in the world of political rhetoric,.: Thomas Sowell)
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