[pt17]

The academic profession is structured around the premise that things as they are now must be subject to criticism, and that there must be better ideas awaiting discovery.

Tis true; however, when all's said and done, a lot of the "deep thinking" turns out to be (as someone once said) "the transfer of old bones from one graveyard to another." Decades ago I taught for five years and found what Gladwin said to be absolutely true about many "educators" and intellectuals. They do sit in their dusty little offices in the basements of their university, dreaming up a fantasy of their importance. This was true in part because of tenure systems, in part because education as a profession didn't have much status and, as Gladwin says, in part because they don't produce much of measurable value. I watched a number of good people become radicalized because of their lowered sense of status and value.

[AndrewSshi]

One other thing that must be noted. Not only would academics love to be important, love to be the movers and shakers, but then there's also this, which Stefan mentioned obliquely. Conservatism is not very sexy and doesn't have much place for intellectuals. Compare, say, Communism or Naziism with a capitalistic democracy. In one, you have the government's pet intellectuals micromanaging, designing, and organizing every aspect of society. Designing societies is a great program if you're a thinker. I myself confess that I enjoy as a hobby designing what I think the "perfect society" would be (I don't, though, even begin to think that I'd try to force this on people).

Contrast the centrally planned system with a capitalistic democracy. All the intellectual gets to say is, "Leave things alone, the people can generally take care of themselves." That's it. No central planning, no grand schemes to remake the world, just a simple, "let it be." And whereas an intellectual can spend decades trying to mold his ideal society, free-market democracy can be summed up in a few paragraphs. Not at all sexy.

Of course, then you've got rank idiots who talk about the cleansing effects of violence, and speak with glee about the actions of, say, Sandanista executioners. These would-be Genghis Khan's are just a collection of pathetic Walter Mittys who vicariously imagine themselves toting AK-47's and gunning down capitalists because they're pale, skinny men who in an actual fight would get their a**es kicked. Indeed, the impulse that applauds the Vietcong carrying out massacres is the same that causes an alienated teenager to play games in which he imagines himself a barbarian warrior. Okay, done rambling.