A popularity contest for public intellectuals seems about as
silly as a beauty contest for dogs. Still both are done. The latest
— and as far as I know the only — was conducted by the journals
Prospect and Foreign Policy. Editors compiled a
list of their top 100 intellectualoids and Web readers were asked
to select their top five. More than 20,000 people voted.
As in an earlier BBC Radio poll for “greatest philosopher of all
time,” the results confirmed the view of many cynics: to wit, that
the public should not be trusted to decide an issue more important
than “paper” versus “plastic.” In the BBC poll, Karl Marx was voted
history’s greatest philosopher. According to the
Prospect/FP poll, the world’s top public intellectual is
Dr. Avram Noam Chomsky. By a landslide.
To no one’s surprise the list was heavily skewed to the Left,
and included such obvious quota-queens and multi-culti quacks as
Naomi Klein, Germaine Greer, radical cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. While a few conservatives made the
list (Robert Kagan, Richard Posner, James Q. Wilson, and Paul
Wolfowitz) the absence of important conservative intellectuals was
disappointing if not expected. Not only did Roger Scruton fail to
make the cut, so did Leszek Kolakowski, Irving Kristol, Hilton
Kramer, Paul Johnson, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Charles Murray, and
Robert Nisbet. Milton Friedman was just one of two who made the
list as a write-in (Stephen Hawking was the other).
At the same time we must be grateful for who was left off, most
notably Gore Vidal, Alan Dershowitz, and the past half dozen Nobel
Prize for Literature winners. Rounding out the top five were
Umberto Eco, Richard Dawkins, Vaclav Havel, and Christopher
Hitchens. I suspect Havel and Hitchens would agree that putting
them ahead of Hawking and Aleksandr Solzenheitsyn is a bit
presumptuous, to say the least.
The poll did reinforce the notion that the U.S. has supplanted
Old Europe as the world’s intellectual powerhouse. France, which
once enjoyed the status as Intellectual Capital of the World, had
one measly name in the Top 40. Peru had more. This complete
discrediting of France may say more about the inherent flaws in the
poll; most voters were by definition from America and Britain since
they are most likely to read English-language political
magazines.
While the results may be seen as having an English-language
bias, the enlightened editors of Prospect and FP
would be expected to be more open to diversity. Even so, the
editors could only come up with four French intellectuals (same
number as China) compared to 39 Americans, and Britain’s 13.
Another obvious flaw in the polling surfaced when the websites of
at least three of the top 20 (including sites dedicated to Chomsky
and Hitchens) linked to the Prospect poll and encouraged
supporters to vote.
Chomsky’s top finish was predictable, particularly since the MIT
linguistics professor has worn the unofficial mantle of world’s top
intellectual since 9/11, the event which more than anything else
rescued him from obscurity. Ask any hip young slacker to name one
public intellectual and inevitably you will get the name Chomsky.
Ask for two names and you will get a blank look.
OUTSIDE HIS FIELD OF EXPERTISE, however, Chomsky remains the
proverbial anti-intellectual. The Prospect’s David Herman
(perhaps reluctantly) admits that Chomsky’s geo-political
pronouncements are often “maddeningly simple-minded.” His numerous
adolescent acolytes are not devotees of theoretical linguistics
(yawn), but rather followers of his puerile politics. Give Chomsky
credit where it is due, in the field of linguistics. But his forays
into geo-politics recall Richard Posner’s remark in his book
Public Intellectuals that “a successful academic may be
able to use his success to reach the general public on matters
about which he is an idiot.”
“Chomsky belongs to a tradition which goes back to Zola,
Russell, and Sartre,” writes Herman. “[A] major thinker or writer
who speaks out on the great public issues of his time, opposing his
government on questions of conscience rather than the fine print of
policy.” Were Zola around today he would doubtless sue this Herman
fellow for defamation of character. Not only did Zola create some
of the finest literary works of the 19th century, but he bravely
spoke out against the injustices of his day and, in his defense of
Dreyfus, against traditional French anti-Semitism. Besides, Zola
was a reluctant public figure.
Chomsky, to the contrary, is able to remain in the public eye
only by making more and more outlandish statements, i.e., he often
compares America (and Israel) to Nazi Germany, calling “the
pretenses for the invasion [of Iraq] no more convincing than
Hitler’s.” In his spare time he defends Holocaust deniers (“I see
no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas
chambers or even denial of the Holocaust”). He proposes America end
global terror by not “participating in it,” and that American and
Israeli military and political leaders be tried for war crimes. The
U.S. is rotten through and through, according to Chomsky, and has
been a threat to peace since 1492.
Incredibly, Chomsky is cited for his “political courage,” as if
walking in step with Hollywood, the mainstream media, the
professoriate, Big Labor, Old Europe, and its anti-American and
anti-Israel blowhards were a sign of valor. Likewise if issuing
controversial statements made one an intellectual then every
Arkansas Klansman and British imam would be the recipient of a
MacArthur Grant.
Chomsky’s real popularity among liberal arts majors and other
slackers stems from his consistent support of America’s enemies,
praising the Hanoi government during the Vietnam War, accusing the
U.S. of exaggerating the Cambodia Killing Fields, and blaming 9/11
on the “U.S. invasion of Saudi Arabia.” A self-proclaimed
“libertarian,” Chomsky loathes the most world’s most free nation
and while praising the world’s most totalitarian regimes.
Adolescent rebellion is the most common way juveniles have of
demonstrating their independence. Forever the adolescent, Chomsky
has been rebelling against the United States and Israel his entire
72 years.
As the Prospect/FP poll illustrates, the French badly
need a new intelligentsia. Chomsky despises America and all it
stands for. Perhaps this is a good time for trade negotiations: one
Massachusetts malcontent for a bottle of Chateau de Bligny.
Christopher Orlet is a frequent contributor and runs
the Existential Journalist website.
