This is starting to get unwieldy, but since you brought up Chesterton, I think we can both agree he was extremely intelligent. And yet, it took him decades to come to conclude and act on the conclusion to become Catholic. Robert Bork, another very intelligent man, took near the end of his life, having been an atheist. What if Bork died that 50? Or Chesterton at 30? Or (as you mentioned) David Horowitz at a younger age? They had to have been intelligent as grace builds on nature.
I don’t drop the supernatural, or other categories (like scientists) from my examples, because supernatural persons also have varying levels of intelligence, and intelligence exists outside of human beings and outside of limited realms. Ultimately, all the sciences, physical, philosophical, artistic are parts of a great Truth. Since you had made a universal statement, I thought it deserved the scrutiny of a Kantian approach as to whether it applied universally. If not, why not?
Ultimately, I suspect we are working under differing frameworks of what intelligence means in common use. I also suspect that neither of us are going to retreat from our understandings.
One other possibility is that some of the RBGs, and CERTAINLY some of the David Souters and Anthony Kennedys are intelligent enough to know they are spouting nonsense, and choose to lie. They are intelligent, but evil, and use their intelligence to obscure their evil. The sophists of Ancient Greece were certainly accused of that, but also the reductionist “great men” of the 19th century (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Darwin) may fit that bill as well.
“some of the David Souters and Anthony Kennedys are intelligent enough to know they are spouting nonsense, and choose to lie.”
Granted, but that also means that they are not leftists. A leftist doesn’t know that he is spouting nonsense. He believes.
“Since you had made a universal statement”
My remarks applied to humanity, and I’m not backing down from my opinion that that should have been obvious.
“I thought it deserved the scrutiny of a Kantian approach as to whether it applied universally. If not, why not?”
Because we were discussing humanity, this world. What you did was akin to deliberately placing the worst possible interpretation on my remarks, without justification.
“I suspect we are working under differing frameworks of what intelligence means in common use. I also suspect that neither of us are going to retreat from our understandings.”
I have pondered the nature of intelligence frequently for half a century now, and have read widely. Years ago I took a number of courses at university that dealt in part or entirely with that subject. I could be backed down, but it would take some doing. New arguments, or new evidence.