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Someone called me an intellectual once and I almost punched him, which of course would have been sufficient proof that I was no such thing.
Another Sowell gem!
If Mr.Kristof of the New York Times thinks we don’t like intellectuals now, just wait until we’re done with Obama. Of course, wasn’t Carter supposed to be an intellectual as well?
“That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves.”
Brings up Orwell’s famous observation...
... ‘an idea SO stupid that ONLY an intellectual would believe it’
STE=Q
“Intellectual” is a word that simply confers favorable status on the person being described—as Sowell rightfully points out here. It has no other value as a characterization.
Symbolism/Substance = Obama
Why, why, Lord, could we not have had Thomas Sowell as our first black president? Aside from the fact that he is too smart to subject himself to the scum-sucking media?
Thomas Sowell should be required reading.
ummm Thomas Sowell, you’re also an intellectual. The right kind :)
More than half a century later, when the archives of the Soviet Union were finally opened up under Mikhail Gorbachev, it turned out that about six million people had died in that famine— about the same number as the people killed in Hitler's Holocaust.
Sowell understands intellectual groupthink's dangers: death - - Ignored and denied.
The term “pseudo-intellectual” was popularized in the 1960s, just to describe the self-described, self-appointed “intellectuals” of the period, who were just as naive and lacking both a real education and common sense.
Granted, studying Latin and the “Harvard Classics” are a good way to round out an education, for some. But in no way do they comprise a core study. For the most part, they are trivial or archaic. Good bathroom reading matter, for cocktail party ego chatter, but of little use in the real world.
And thus, the attraction of socialism and other paper enterprises to academia. On paper, it appears comprehensible and logical; but its adherents are both blissfully unaware of its inherent failures in the real world, and in denial that they could have failed on their own merits.
It is a “silly mythos”. Discovering a fantasy novel that seems so real, tangible, and desirable, that its readers forget it is nonsense, sucked out of the thumb of an entertaining writer. They forever try to define the world in terms of their philosophy.
Anti-knowledge, in that to its believers, it is infallible. Little different from those who believe all knowledge is contained within the Koran, and all else is extraneous and corrupt.
In truth, such people are themselves “anti-intellectuals”. They only tolerate what reinforces their prejudices. They are unlearned bigots.
ONE OF HIS MOST BRILLIANT.
Please read it.
I remember being surrounded by “intellectuals” in Europe during the Cold War who all thought that there was one BENIGN superpower and one EVIL one (we were the evil one). They were all fed by super-secret intellectual pamphlets and journals that even I, a young girl with no interest in politics at the time, knew then were just propaganda written by the USSR. And later I was proven correct. It is very easy to fool “intellectuals” because the self-anointed only need to hear their own jargon before they sign on.
Thanks for the ping jaz. God Bless Thomas Sowell...LOL he’s great. Love this article. Right on the mark as usual.
Thomas Sowell is one of the best thinkers and brightest writers in our firmament. What if a mind like his was in the Oval Office?
Wouldn’t matter the color of the skin that wraps it, would it now.
Instead we got That One. Because of the color of his skin and the facade of his intellect.
God bless Thomas Sowell.
I have encountered the above since and including high school. The most obvious example today is Barack Obama.
Furthermore, there are some lacking in form but have the intellect. I can think of some good examples, but will leave it at that.
Adlai Stevenson was also a bit effeminate, which tended to set him apart as a true intellectual in form. Kerry had much of that form, AlGore some of it, including a heavy lisp.
The Demo concept of the intellectual is quite old fashioned and appears to us as.... an intellectual eunuch. Left over from the time when few people had college educations it is concept which has lost much of its pull over time because of the intellectual’s tendency to accomplish little of worth. In orther words, intellectuals are not men of action, but men who sit and think a lot and are of little use to the country.
The real intellectuals are the engineers who design our space ships, our fighters, our computers. Want some complexity? Try designing a processor with 10 billion operatinal amplifiers that multitasks. Or a fire control system for our fighters that will track and kill 32 enemy figters. Much more complex than readings of Marcus Aurelius, you betcha.
The anti-intellectualism that is referred to is nothing more than anti-aristocracy and it is fully justified.
A great line. And what Liberals inspire.