The New 'Treason Of The Intellectuals'.....

The Iconoclast ^ | March 03, 2003 | Stepehn Rittenberg

[ggekko]

This was a brilliant article by Professor Rozick. The evidence for his thesis is overwhelming from the virutally non-existent sales of post-modern academic fiction to the popularity of structuralism among literary intellectuals. The psychological tendency noted by Professor Rozick is also obvious by the choice of almost all literary intellectuals of academic careers over other venues.

There is a corollary problem as well: the right until relatively recently has ceded the entire area of culture to the left. This state of affairs accounts for the banality and nihilism of most popular culture.

[fight_truth_decay]

"Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others- with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means."--Henry Grady Weaver

[A_perfect_lady]

I was somewhat disappointed with the article insofar as I think the rot goes much deeper; i.e. into psychological dysfunction.

I would agree accept that just getting a dose of thought not saturated in Marxism broke the spell for me (well, began the process.) I read THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED and I was never the same again. That and 3 years of Free Republic was quite an eye-opener. I don't think psychological dysfunction could be undone so quickly.... could it?

But then, maybe I never was a true liberal. When I "came out" as an official conservative, my tree-hugging former friends all commented sourly that they had known that about me for years. (-:

[HenryLeeII]

As a grace note to Mr. Rittenberg's analysis, I'd like to contribute the following: In many cases, these verbally-talented "intellectuals" are not very intellectual at all. That is, they possess less actual power of ratiocination than they're presumed to have. They neither analyze nor synthesize; they merely comment. Thus, what matters most about them is their unusual facility with words.

Exactly! Your's is a more scholarly way of phrasing my eternal question: Why are intellectuals so stupid?