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Where have all the intellectuals gone?
The Washington Times ^ | January 4, 2023 | Cal Thomas

Posted on 01/07/2023 7:42:54 PM PST by TBP

The new slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives lacks something besides its slim majority and the battle over leadership positions. It lacks intellectual depth.

The Reagan administration may have been the last one to challenge Americans to think for themselves, and for that matter, just to think. Perhaps this lack of thinking and intellectual depth in our politics is caused by instruments and websites that do the thinking for us. We now tune in to whatever newspaper, cable network or website reinforces our beliefs and care little about how ideas were developed, whether they work and who benefits most from them.

Growing up and into my journalism career, some of my intellectual idols were William F. Buckley Jr., William Rusher, Milton and Rose Friedman, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Gertrude Himmelfarb, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, M. Stanton Evans and Russell Kirk. Most are now gone, and even the few who remain are largely ignored by academic and cultural institutions that promote a singular, secularist and leftist worldview.

Conservative publications I read with some regularity included National Review, Commentary, American Spectator and later The Washington Times, Imprimis, Crisis and National Affairs. These appear almost exclusively to be the reading choices of like-minded people. Reinforcement is OK to a point, but it stifles growth if you can’t understand and possibly even come to believe opposing points of view. How will you comprehend them if you don’t read them?

Liberals, too, have been robbed of their intellectual giants. Recall Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York Democrat, Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Washington Democrat, and publications like the once great New York Times before it became mostly a mouthpiece for all things secular and liberal, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and just about anything written by Frank Rich.

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


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Miscellaneous; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: andallthatcal; calmeanspoopinrussky; calthomas; conservative; droogies; intellectual; nadsat; newsforumabuse; notnews; philosophy; washingtonslimes
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To: Vendome

Bingo. Far too long for this guy to have a say in anything meaningful. You say nothing Cal, and waste too many words in your feckless effort.


41 posted on 01/07/2023 9:06:13 PM PST by Fungi
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To: Obadiah

And they hate the fact that we, the masses, don’t “need” them. Eric Hoffer wrote about this more than once.


42 posted on 01/07/2023 9:38:11 PM PST by M1903A1 ("We shed all that is good and virtuous for that which is shoddy and sleazy...and call it progress" )
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To: rlmorel

Check out the linked videos I posted above: This man does not in any way hate “the base”.

But, he isn’t really an intellectual in the same mold of Thomas Sowell, but is more like a outwardly populist version of Victor Davis Hanson.

Sure there are a few decent ones. I’m thinking of the National Review never Trumpers and the like.


43 posted on 01/07/2023 9:56:36 PM PST by rxh4n1
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To: Fungi

he’s Goerge Will, with less hair...


44 posted on 01/07/2023 10:37:58 PM PST by Vendome (I've Gotta Be Me https://youtu.be/wH-pk2vZG2M)
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To: TBP

Where have intellectuals gone? Not to the Post, that’s for sure!


45 posted on 01/07/2023 10:48:28 PM PST by Herakles (Diversity is applied Marxism )
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To: Newtoidaho
Takes a lot of time to read anything of substance and the attitude these days is “who got time fo dat?”

Possibly, or that people rightfully don't want to hear problems but instead want to hear solutions, which too many of these "intellectuals" avoid.

46 posted on 01/08/2023 3:22:23 AM PST by T.B. Yoits
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To: TBP

“Today we see the antithesis of conservative intellectuals, including... election denier Kari Lake...”

Cal Thomas is an original Trump-hater, despite Trump accomplishing what Cal Thomas has always espoused. Rush Limbaugh on occasion would mention that contradiction among supposed conservative intellectuals.

Cal Thomas touts his intellectuality but then admits that he reads National Review, which means his intellectual depth is thin as floor wax.

Thomas’s smear and dismissal of Kari Lake as an “election denier” reveals that he, despite his professed nobility, prefers the vocabulary of low-minded media hacks. Does Cal Thomas honestly believe that Joe Biden got 80 million votes? Claiming that is a sign of stupidity or corruption.


47 posted on 01/08/2023 4:03:08 AM PST by odawg
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To: TBP

Thomas is missing the fact that communication has changed since the days when people would breathlessly await their favorite monthly magazine in the mail, and then spend hours deciphering its difficult-to-read passages. One does not have to write like ‘an intellect’ to be ‘an intellect’. Many of these past greats didn’t seem to understand the words ‘clear and concise’. When the most used book in your library is the Thesaurus, you’re not an intellectual, you’re a snob.

Writing on the internet is not done to impress a few, it’s done to communicate with many.


48 posted on 01/08/2023 5:19:40 AM PST by norwaypinesavage (Once you predict children will no longer see snow, you can’t now claim snow proves you are right)
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To: stars & stripes forever
The likes of Thomas think of intellectuals as those with advanced degrees who have a solid grasp of academic theory in their fields, but little practical experience in the real world...

...kind of like Bryan Kohberger.

49 posted on 01/08/2023 5:26:44 AM PST by Joe 6-pack
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To: rxh4n1

I love Thomas Sowell’s work, I have read and purchased at least half a dozen or more of his books, but I have heard he isn’t all that amiable towards people.

I’d still shake his hand, though. I admire his work. But I understand the distinction.


50 posted on 01/08/2023 5:36:49 AM PST by rlmorel ("If you think tough men are dangerous, just wait until you see what weak men are capable of." JBP)
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To: 9YearLurker
The Internet alone is dwarfing brains now.

From "Phaedrus" by Plato quoting Socrates discussing the invention of writing:

But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
I guess Plato wrote this with no irony just as I used my dwarfed brain to look it up on the internet for reminiscence.
51 posted on 01/08/2023 5:53:34 AM PST by KarlInOhio (Soon the January 6 protesters will be held (without trial or bail) longer than Jefferson Davis was.)
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To: KarlInOhio

But with dopamine-driven Internet users, their attention spans are too short to learn anything of significance to forget.


52 posted on 01/08/2023 7:15:26 AM PST by 9YearLurker
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To: TBP

Catturd, Laz, Babylon Bee and the Mutual UFO Network are still around. I’m set for intellectuals for at least another 20 years.

Bigfoot Watch will join the group after they catch one.


53 posted on 01/08/2023 7:51:53 AM PST by sergeantdave (AI is the next iteration of a copy and paste machine.)
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To: stars & stripes forever

Apparently the writer never attended a TRUMP rally or listened to or read PRESIDENT TRUMP’s speeches.

————————————————————

When the rollout for the shots was starting up in the waning days of the Trump administration, IIRC, he was asked how it was going to be done. He responded that the supplies would be given to the states and each governor would decide how to best divvy them out, as they know what’s best for their respective states.

That didn’t go over too well. It showed how many of them were incompetent clowns who needed someone to hold them by the hand. And give them the ability to have a boogeyman.

That wasn’t the only time he gave them and others the chance to be the “leaders” they professed to be. And damn near every time they came up short.

As for this article and lack of intellectual abilities:

Johnson, Booker, Hirono, Waters, Granholm, AOC, Omar, Pressley, Tlaib, Swalwell, Schiff, Raskin, Thompson, Kinzinger & Cheney, Lofgren, Warnock, Ossoff, Harris, Biden, etc etc etc.


54 posted on 01/08/2023 7:52:30 AM PST by qaz123
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To: TBP

The wallet of their masters.


55 posted on 01/08/2023 12:01:22 PM PST by Organic Panic (Democrats. Memories as short as Joe Biden's eyes)
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I’m still here


56 posted on 01/08/2023 6:09:17 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: TBP

Kevin McCarthy is not our Leader?


57 posted on 01/08/2023 8:02:16 PM PST by Paladin2
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To: TBP

The lack of intellectual depth is a result of Cultural. Bolshevism. If you don’t know what it is, look it up, it is fascinating.


58 posted on 01/14/2023 11:47:34 PM PST by Eva
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