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Quote of the Day: Intellectual Privilege
“One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation.” – Thomas Sowell
Sowell’s truth has been demonstrated amply over the years, but during the current administration, it seems to be underlined, italicized, and emphasized. It does not seem to matter what an intellectual does. Even when it blows up in their faces, they walk away with their reputation unharmed and generally a promotion.
It is like watching a real-life version of a Roadrunner cartoon. Wile E. Coyote (a metaphorical intellectual) has the boulder he intended for the roadrunner land on him. He is flattened, but soon staggers away and by the next scene is intact, plotting another asinine scheme to get the roadrunner. So, too with our intellectual. No matter how staggering the setback, in the next scene our intellectual is back at it, sometimes at another job, but with no loss of prestige.
I do not think this is due to other intellectuals (I include the media in that category — they have become intellectuals rather than working stiffs) giving the erring intellectual a break on the grounds of “There but for the grace of Gaia go I.” Rather, I believe it is done for two reasons:
1. They know at some point they, too, will get caught out in a burst of asininity. They extend cover to other intellectuals because at some point they know they themselves will need it.
2. Intellectualism has become a tribe. What diminishes one diminishes all. You stick by your own no matter what.
Such a system can perpetuate itself during periods of surplus. Errors do not really matter as long as enough people, especially the producers, have sufficient food, shelter, and goods to meet their needs. The silly games of the intelligentsia simply do not matter to normal people. However, there has been a 30-plus year period (following the fall of the Soviet Union) when times were good enough it simply did not matter how asinine the ideas intellectuals were pushing. Even asininity like Black Lives Matter and transgender lunacy could be pushed at no risk to intellectuals.
However, with that kind of generational success comes hubris. For intellectuals, hubris has appeared in the form of environmentalism. And now, in the name of environmentalism, they are pushing the elimination of surplus, both in terms of food and energy production.
But hubris is followed by nemesis. Previous intellectual asininities have resulted in inconvenience and irritation. Being forced to use pronouns is an irritation. To a large extent, so is the type of widespread criminality in California and New York. A lack of food and goods and the energy to transport those foods and goods to where they are needed is different. That is a matter of life and death. And people, especially the producers, who fall outside the intellectual bubble, will be forced to act.
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What really hurts here is what this process has done to science. Scientists I have thought of as the most vital intellectuals for innovative human progress. What we have done demonstrates that none are immune from being bought by money.
No one ever was. Science worked because prior to WWII no one was trying to buy them. Trofim Lysenko should have been a warning about what happens with government-funded science, but we disregarded it. Now it is Lysenkos all the way down.
Academics employed to teach scientific disciplines now spend considerable energy on DEI pedagogy. A DEI loyalty statement is required to get a position or a promotion.
Hey, it seems to me that I’ve seen this since 1962 with the issuance of the Port Huron Statement when SDS idiots started making plans for their takeover. “They must consciously build a base for their assault upon the loci of power.”
Of course, this was all drivel. Folks like me were still having fun in high school and, in our senior years, we began to read about this place called Vietnam. However, while some of us were busy trying to survive and make a life, SDS was busy planning for their takeover, but they were still establishing their intellectual base which would always separate them and thus form their own “tribe”.
Simplistic? Of course. But the grandfathers of our current group of “intellectuals” didn’t just parachute in from the Left Bank. Of course there have been ebbs and flows but the problem is, thanks to their mastery of the mass (and social) media, they seem to be winning.
I think our intellectuals were better when they were also farmers.
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And, if not by money, by “celebrity.”
We also now have an answer to why federal government spending always increases regardless of which political party controls the purse. The Commie corruption depends on the money and the GOPe has been game for that even though fiscal restraint was supposedly a Republican Party principle. With this behavior the Republican Party has aided and abetted the Commies in corrupting every major institution vital to the traditional American culture. Can we guess why the principle of fiscal restraint became unimportant to Republican leaders?
Yesterday, Vivek Ramaswamy revealed his connection to the Republican Party big spenders with a position on international trade that will remove him from any further consideration as a possible alternative to Donald Trump.
During a Twitter spaces discussion yesterday presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he was in favor of reengaging the U.S. in the TPP trade agreement. This is a non-starter for any America First economic platform.
“I think we should re-enter it,” Ramaswamy said to Musk about 94 minutes into the conversation on Twitter. “I think this is a little bit different than what, you know, the course of action taken by Trump in exiting the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership]. I think that was actually a poor decision.” (link)
The above is from today’s article at theconservativetreehouse.com.
Oh! Can we now get lectuced again by people at Ricochet on how The TPP is an unalloyed good?
Paul Erlich is a perfect example of the kind of intellectual you describe, Seawriter. Given how his “population bomb” turned out to be a dud, one could expect that his reputation would be deservedly tarnished. At the very least, one would expect that his invitations to opine on shows and in print would have dried up. But no, he’s still being consulted as if he had been proven by events to be a sage.
I supported Trump’s position on TPP because I thought his moves on TPP benefitted the American people and there were other moves contemplated back then regarding Dodd-Frank and our domestic banking arrangements, most of which never were enacted, I think.
Multiple changes all moving things in one direction are rarely all beneficial. Population concentrating in big cities is an example. The continuously increasing range of powers concentrated in our federal government is another. It is difficult for me now, with my limited knowledge to know and understand how individual people will provide for their well-being in the future. Past practices or approaches have not worked to the benefit of people in different circumstances and a search for ways to alleviate this makes sense. There must be rules and standards for how this is done. Approaches designed to kill people or reduce population increase by morally questionable practices that might include war, limiting resources such as food and energy, bio-technology, mandatory birth control including abortion, are not acceptable to many whose voices should be heard. I want to read that book on Superabundance to see what the authors’ ideas include. I can’t just throw Ramaswamy under the bus but he certainly has moved from the path Trump has established.
With respect to their positions in society, today’s “intellectuals” are just that–inheritors of the tradition.
But they have abandoned the goal–to discover truth where it lies, rather than declare it, as Marx taught–the values, and the methodology of the ancient intellectual program.
They are counterfeits of intellectuals in that regard.
Judged by the traditional standard of Western Civilization, their methods and the resulting theories are already provably asinine from the time they start their education. Not only after they have been given the dictatorial power to apply their absurd theories in the real world.