Among the Intellectualoids
Leftist Intelligentsia Dementia
Copenhagen was just the latest anti-capitalist thrust from liberal intellectuals.
The Copenhagen Climate summit demonstrated once again the leftist intelligentsia’s visceral anti-capitalism. First from global cooling then to global warming and now to climate change, like elitist bloodhounds they follow the trail relentlessly through tangled inconsistencies in hope of catching their prey. And the scent remains strong: the capitalist system.
If you had a hard time getting your noggin around Copenhagen, don’t worry. It is just the latest anti-capitalist thrust from liberal intellectuals. The next opportunity will come around soon enough. Their cavalcade of causes revolves like a carousel — the Green Movement, the living wage, animal rights — virtually every one an attempt to deny individuals’ right to determine outcomes through free choice. The quarry never changes, only the backdrop to the chase.
Why does the leftist intelligentsia hate capitalism so much? It is a triumph of instinct over insight. Capitalism rests on the collective wisdom of society exercised in free exchanges. It relies on markets — not experts — for its decision-making. The collective wisdom of all, freely participating in markets, will determine optimal outcomes — price, amount, timing, and location.
In short, quantity produces what self-styled “quality” can not. Capitalism’s anonymous multiplicity produces information, expressed in prices, which directs the system.
In capitalism’s creative chaos, the leftist intelligentsia sees only chaos. And only a limited role for themselves.
Therein lies the leftist intelligentsia’s first falling out with capitalism. They envision themselves a privileged group. Self-seen as the most capable, they find their elitist birthright frustrated by capitalism’s egalitarianism.
Repelled by capitalism, liberal intellectuals are drawn to economic systems run by dictate. In command economies, they imagine themselves being the ones giving the commands. To their minds, this is their rightful place.
Interestingly, their presumption has been prescient in the command economy’s most extreme form. Despite Marxism’s rhetorical elevation of the worker and the masses, communism in reality has been dominated, since Marx himself, by leftist intellectuals claiming to speak for workers.
The leftist intelligentsia is not only drawn to non-capitalist systems in search of advancement. They also seek escape from the threat capitalism poses them.
Liberal intellectuals have imagined themselves immune from the increased productivity capitalism has injected into every other sector of society. Believing in a separation by superiority, they saw the demands for enhanced efficiency as not pertaining to them. A musician, a teacher, a doctor, an artist, a writer, could only personally serve so many. As the population expanded, their numbers had to expand at least proportionally, right? Wrong.
Works once limited to in-person, or at least limited, consumption can now be distributed on a vast scale. The same productivity that has been applied to other occupations now extends to intellectual endeavors and professions as well. We can hear a symphony played flawlessly in our homes through a variety of media and never have need for a live musician beyond the initial performance.
The best works and the best of their professions greatly benefit, as does the rest of society. But to the leftist intelligentsia, this is a threat.
The comparable worth doctrine embodies the leftist intelligentsia’s posture to capitalism. The idea that remuneration should be set to compensate for the work (or education) that went into producing them is inherently compelling to the Left — just as its inefficiency is inherently clear to the broader population. Capitalism does this — only as the result of free competition between producers seeking consumers, not as a matter of guarantee. Where comparable worth is reward without risk, capitalism balances risk and reward.
The leftist intelligentsia’s professed interest in selflessness, through its myriad of causes, is no more than their own self-interest. They seek their aggrandizement on one hand and staving off their diminution on the other. Before we take their causes at face value, we should first recognize both their ultimate interest and goal.
Their goal is not the piecemeal reform of capitalism but the piecemeal dismantling of a system they despise and fear.
The leftist intelligentsia reject capitalism’s premise (collective wisdom over selective wisdom), its process (individuals’ free choice), and its products (unplanned and ever-changing). But in the final analysis they reject capitalism’s refusal to enthrone them and its ability to excel without them.
About the Author
J.T. Young served in the Department of Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004 and as a Congressional staff member from 1987 to 2000.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (86) | Leave a comment
Related Articles
More Articles by J.T. Young
More Articles From Among the Intellectualoids
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/01/05/leftist-intelligentsia-dementi
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- The Vast and the Tiny
- Downton’s Class System — and Ours
- The Great Train Robbery
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Richard Baker| 1.5.10 @ 6:23AM
Remember what Orwell said, "Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them." Truer words were never spoken.
Eric Cartman| 1.5.10 @ 8:47AM
Richard, you beat me to the punch. I also like Agnew's quote: "An intellectual is a man who doesn't know how to park a bike."
Eric Cartman| 1.5.10 @ 9:15AM
Now if only the Republicans can teach people what intellectuals are doing to them, maybe we have a chance. There is a large pool of people who instinctively know that something isn't right with what an intellectual is saying, they just can't get their brain around it enough to feel comfortable dismissing it. I spent the summer doing door to door sales between semesters and talked with thousands of average Joes and Janes. They were rightly suspicious of Obama, but were willing to give him a chance. They wanted something different, but didn't know what that "something" was. They were angry that Bush was such a weasel toward the end, that Republicans were spending so much and diddling the young help besides. Obama was new - how bad could it get. Well, they are finding out!
What needs to be done now is for some political party to step in and talk like a regular person. Tell them what Liberals are doing in plain language - not "My colleague this" or "My good friend that" and then proceed to mealy mouth the issue. People are waiting for leadership - not "me too, only less". Tell them that there is a cost to large government programs, explain the consequences, tell the Liberal media they are lying when the lie about you and have a little back-bone. Newt Gingrich gave a great speech at an event a while back. Take a look - it outlines what a campaign ought to look like.
http://www.davidhorowitztv.com.....wtgingrich
Pingback| 1.5.10 @ 8:05AM
Leftist Intelligentsia Dementia | Republican Party of Door County links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 1.5.10 @ 8:39AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Leftist Intelligentsia Dementia [spe links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Ret. Marine| 1.5.10 @ 8:43AM
Wow, I'll bet this will hit a raw nerve with Liberal Reader, wait for it.
Pingback| 1.5.10 @ 9:01AM
The Two Malcontents » Among the Intellectualoids:Leftist Intelligentsia Dementia links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Marc Jeric| 1.5.10 @ 9:05AM
Absolutely right! What is not contemplated or known by our inteligentsia is that the first thing the communists do once in total power they execute those intellectuals. That has happened consistently in all communist countries - the thugs are afraid of those sympathetic intellectuals who might turn around when faced with the communist brutality. Before I escaped from that communist hell I witnessed mass executions of those professors, authors, actors, economists, journalists, and other intellectuals that agitated for "social justice" - they are considered real enemies by the murderous communist thugs.
Anneke| 1.5.10 @ 12:43PM
All too true and a nice warning, but these intellectuals aren't listening. The mantra I keep hearing from professors, artists and activists at my university is what happened in the Soviet Union, China, et al was not the implementation of "pure" or "true" socialism. I can't count the number times I've heard a professor reply "Marxism hasn't failed because a true Marxist system has never been instituted." They contend that the Soviet and Chinese systems are somehow flawed and those flaws caused despotism, destruction, and mass murder. Of course, the socialist intellectuals at my university and other U.S. universities think that THEY are the truly enlightened and more brilliant, therefore they will be able to institute the true, pure, and noble socialist utopia. They still don't understand that by definition they are the elite (i.e., the Master class), and they will be the target of the rage of the masses if a revolution ever happens here.
Don Carlson| 1.7.10 @ 9:13AM
I'm not sure that communists, once in power, are threatened by the artsy-intellectual crowd so much as they are annoyed by the intellectual minority’s noisy uselessness. I don't mean to suggest that all such folks are without merit. It's just that in a free economy those who cannot find an audience wish to be supported by the state; thus they become militants for statism. However, when the state grows sufficiently powerful that it has to take stock of its assets, it finds that these militant and unproductive 'eaters' are of no real use. After the state has achieved a size and shape that makes it virtually free of democratic folderol, it no longer has need of apologists or propagandists among the mediocre fringe and ‘dispenses’ with them.
However, Mr. Young is right that the fringe is likely to be resentful of the totalitarian power that ignores them, and will therefore cry and moan and hasten their own demise.
explosion proof flood light | 11.25.10 @ 1:33AM
That's the way it went in the U.S. for decades. People in poor communities were convinced that the police and justice system didn't give a hang about crime in their neighborhoods.
Tony in Central PA| 1.5.10 @ 9:31AM
I grew up near Penn State University, an island of academia surrounded by Appalachia. When I left the area, I began to develop a severe distaste for the University - associated elitist baloney that pervaded the air of my hometown. I began to see things more as they were. It wasn't just that many of these people who worked at the university knew they were smarter than average, many of them seemed to believe they were also a better, perhaps " more highly evolved " species of human. I now recognize this same attitude in many places and occasions. I don't think it has as much to do with liberalism as human nature - - the worst aspects of human nature.
The article does a great job of pointing out why people with this mentality so often disdain capitalism, but it would also be true of any situation where they aren't granted special powers or privileges because of their alleged superiority. I suppose any society has use for intellectuals, but intellectuals can have ideas as bad as anybody else, and when they obtain exaggerated powers they can do much harm.
Claire Solt PhD| 1.5.10 @ 11:53AM
It is a Democrat conceit that they are smarter. Both government and academe attract mediocre wannabees and coddle them with rigid pay schemes that do not reward performance.
Consider the lawyers turned politicians in congress. They are not the best and the brightest who charge $1000/hr but those happy to live on a sinecure and graft. If I wanted a black AG, I would have asked Willie Gary to arrive at conformation hearings in his private jet instead of the compromised hack Holder.
There are public intellectuals who test themselves against the real world. Think Craig Ventor who challenged the slowness of the genome project himself.
I went from a stultifying academic career to commission sales. It was so liberating my personality changed from schoolmarm to funny lady. Somewhere along the line I came to appreciate the real world wisdom of farmers and truck drivers over the astigmatism view from the ivory tower
Jeremiah| 1.5.10 @ 3:40PM
What is currently called the intellectual class is merely a bunch of shallow, lazy, self-congratulatory sophists who have a certain glibness. Shallow glibness does not an intellectual make. People who are utterly impervious to evidence and reason are the exact opposite of intellectuals.
Societies usually fall (often in slow motion) when the people become decadent. We have a fascinating - and possibly unprecedented situation - the elite classes in American society have become decadent, while the bulk of the people remain robust. The average guy has allowed the elite classes to intimidate them - through that intellectual glibness to convince them that the elites are indeed smarter. What is happening right now is the average classes are realizing with certainty that the modern elite class is an utter fraud.
Because of my work I have cause to interact with a lot of supposed intellectuals. I have been put on several organizations lists of people they will not debate in public with. It's simply because they are running a scam - they have read the Cliff's Notes - I've studied the works. Though I am generally kind, I must confess in public forums with such, I do take a rather unkind relish after slicing them up in sympathetically consoling them that they could, with some serious work, get up to snuff. Nothing so riles the sophists as being delicately called stupid by a conservative that is obviously smarter than they are.
This article probably sums up best what has gone wrong. The people commonly called intellectuals in modern times is simply a guild of glib, shallow sophists looking to advance their interests. If they had a crest, their motto would undoubtedly be, "Ubi est mea?" (Where's mine?)
It has not always been so. In most ages people have known you don't have to be stupid to be an intellectual. Only in our own age is it regarded as a pre-requisite.
MikeBee| 1.5.10 @ 4:55PM
Well said, Jeremiah! I've been expecting the day to come when real folks would see today's intellectuals for what they are: shallow, selfish, and, certainly, NOT intellectual. Years ago, the major collegiate institutions did away with teaching traditional philosophies (Platonism, Aristotelianism, etc.) and excitedly began teaching a new philosophy: Marxism. The old could finally be dismissed (difficult as it was to understand) and the new should now be taught (much easier to get one's mind around). This occurred about fifty years ago. At the same time, these same intellectuals began dismissing Science as a study for themselves (again, too difficult; much too much memorization). In the 1970s, when I attended an elite high school (had to have a 3.3 GPA to get in), I noticed that most of the students there did not take science courses seriously. Not taking science seriously has led to an ignorance of real science and real scientific method on the part of intellectuals, and an embracing, instead, of "consensus" as a replacement for true scientific method. I truly hope and pray that, very soon, today's intellectuals are seen for what they are by most in the U.S.: shallow, very much NOT intellectual, and selfish.
Conan the Grammarian| 1.5.10 @ 9:33AM
I loved this article. The last two paragraphs capped it beautifully, the strategy and the motive.
donserge| 1.5.10 @ 9:35AM
I find it completely illogical that the mainstream media slavishly agrees with all the leftist/Marxist/Communist agenda. If the left ever gains total power (not too far away) they will not have a voice of their own; no editorials; no news stories; only reporting what they will be told to. They will be virtual slaves like the rest of the 'masses'. The only profit from this scenario is dollars to the very few and eventually the entire system collapses.
racking | 1.5.10 @ 9:35AM
http://www.racking-shelving.com
http://www.cold-store-equipment.com
as a whole contractor for cold store equipment, design, manufacturing, installation.
professional racking & shelving manufacturer, pallet racking, drive in racking,
cantilever racking, longspan shelving, dexion racking,
Sheila| 1.5.10 @ 10:48AM
Marvelous article. Tony in central PA - you're so right, this attitude of rightful privilege stinks up all sorts of places. I will never send my children or my money to my well-known elite undergraduate and graduate schools. The State Department is full to the top of people who are told daily they are the creme de la creme, the best of the elites, and they feel they are best suited and indeed entitled to determine our nation's foreign policy (electorate? what electorate?). This entire administration is our own "best and brightest" writ large, yet people continue to impoverish themselves to send their children to schools which subvert every value or cultural norm they were ever taught - and then those same parents lament the ignorance of the American people. Sorry, folks - you ARE the source of the problem, and all your posting won't change a thing. Put your money where your mouth is and keep your children out of public schools and elite universities.
tailgunner| 1.5.10 @ 10:50AM
As proof of the historical blindness of the intellectual, I submit that the first victims of the totalitarian regimes which are facilitated by intellectual sophistries are usually the intellectuals themselves.
Mike Giles| 1.5.10 @ 11:18AM
The first question of Capitalism is what is it (or you) good for?
Leftist intellectuals have never been able to answer that question.
And they hate Capitalism for asking it.
Yosemeti Sam| 1.5.10 @ 11:25AM
" ... The Copenhagen Climate summit ...."
Nothing more than a panhandlers - convention.
Worldwide RSVP'd obliging lefties in attendance.
Gimme, gimme, gimme!
So's they can open up Swiss bank accounts.
As to intelligentsia - as in lefty favored reflective minds, say, of Marx, Mao, Che, BHO ?
'Brothers' united in their warped intelligentsia predilection of facilitating mass murder - of innocents.
Crapgentsia - I say! Coining a new word BTW.
LOL.
Northern Rebel| 1.5.10 @ 11:50AM
Liberal Reader has changed his name again, but he's not hard to find. You just have to follow the communist rhetoric.
He's probably Bob, or Alan Brooks, but he used to be David Matthews. After you've exhausted your credibility, you can just change names in AmSpec world.
Anastasia Mather| 1.5.10 @ 12:37PM
The best and brightest of our young people are in the military. Hands down. Hopefully, they will come out and change the USA remembering their oath to defend her from enemies foreign AND domestic.
Son Of Sam | 1.5.10 @ 12:49PM
If you ever needed just one insight to understand the minds of the so-called "journalists" in the fossil media, all you had to do was see the story posted on Drudge about this very same tribe of hacks freezing their asses off waiting in line to get into the global warming conference in Copenhagen. Creatures as un-evolved as bunnies and squirrels know enough to hole up somewhere warm when its freezing cold out, but nope, not these beknighted little half wits. Good GOD almighty, did none of them appreciate the irony?
stand strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
http://www.samadamssos.bravehost.com/
PS Is it just me, or do we have the coldest weather directly following every global warming conference?
David J| 1.5.10 @ 2:09PM
PS Is it just me, or do we have the coldest weather directly following every global warming conference?
____________________________________
It's not just you Son of Sam (maybe Samson for short?)... God has a sense of humor!
davelnaf| 1.5.10 @ 1:15PM
Exactly right. This is communism’s appeal to intellectuals (so-called) because it puts them in the driver’s seat—a privilege of their ‘class.’ It is very useful to point out these distinctions and the contradictions surrounding this class to certain of our citizen who seem to be rather clueless about the anti-capitalist class. It must also be done to remind these people that the current (leftist) administration must be taken seriously for its capacity to harm the country.
Oldefarte| 1.5.10 @ 1:37PM
So called intellectuals and elitests are raised through the college/university systems, resulting in a godlike reverence for the words/ideas of their college professors; and the related philosophy post-college that the answer for all of life's problems are to found inside the pages of books. These [intellectuals] liberals constantly read books, newspapers, etc; and believe in the literal meaning of the words that they read. Reading between the lines [or disagreeing with the writer's message] is a mortal sin to these people. To them, if it is written, then it must be true and gospel. Capitalism results in those individuals who use their intelligence to succeed in their chosen profession [usually this is tied to their acquiring varying degrees of wealth correspondingly, since they are paid/rewarded for their intelligence/hard work in a demand/supply system]. Intellectuals are mostly not so rewarded in income for [their] perceived intelligence [ie teachers, scientists,etc], and are resentful over same. They see businessmen, bankers, enterpreners,etc receive large amounts of income from their intelligent efforts; and they consider themselves intellectually superior to same. Their only remedy is through the political takeover of government in order to bring about equalization with same. Hence, WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION of Obama and the Democrats. In other words, if you can't beat them, then confiscate the societal signs of their success!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pingback| 1.5.10 @ 2:02PM
The American Spectator : Leftist Intelligentsia Dementia American Me links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Anthony| 1.5.10 @ 3:13PM
From Anthropogenic global warming to man made disasters to granting terroritst access to the civilian court system; what has been clearly demonstrated is that liberalism is indeed a mental disorder and leftist elites are terminally infected.
Northern Rebel| 1.5.10 @ 3:31PM
David J:
That is why the terms have changed: it is now global climate change.
Plus it's now cold because of global warming, in their convoluted world.
What it is, and always has been, is just another way for socialists, and communists to separate Americans from their money, and freedom.
victor| 1.7.10 @ 12:01AM
Northern Rebel:
"That is why the terms have changed: it is now global climate change.
Plus it's now cold because of global warming, in their convoluted world."
I remember growing up, it was just WEATHER.
Cold in winter and hot in summer.
Now weather has to be a statement.
Whatever it does, it has to mean something.
The irony of blizzards covering every "Global Warming Conference" is just too delicious.
The old saying about not being able to do anything about the weather is still just as true.
Pingback| 1.5.10 @ 4:00PM
The American Spectator : Leftist Intelligentsia Dementia capital university links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Clay Barham| 1.5.10 @ 4:02PM
How to grow an entrepreneur is coming to Amazon.com soon. It is a book called SAVE PEBBLE DROPPERS & PROSPERITY, also cited in claysamerica.com. The book shows how America prospered in a world unable to achieve freedom, prosperity and success, other than dictatorship and special interest elite bennies. It describes the psychological foundation of entrepreneurship and prosperity. The basic, simple elements of prosperity are listed in claysamerica.com and are great Tea Party and Ayn Rand justifications for those new to politics. Many people are learning why and how to apply the brakes to Obama’s headlong rush to European Marxism, mercantilism and bigger government. The tradition of individualism and freedom is still too strong for the kind of centralizing power-grab we are experiencing today. Claysamerica.com
Pingback| 1.5.10 @ 6:25PM
A Bandage of Love : African Voices in African American Art and Life | The African Art links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Bohred| 1.5.10 @ 8:39PM
I want to posit an impression here. Is it me, or do things react in opposition to Liberal thought everytime???
Just listen. We get whined at for Global Cooling. So the Earth warms, then it's Global Warming, so the Earth cools. Could it be that prayer is controlling the weather? I know I pray for Liberals to fall face first in pig scheiße, but if we all pray like this, are we possibly having a Global Effect.
I wonder.?
By golly that would be great.
martha| 1.5.10 @ 9:03PM
Most of the left cannot face the fact of their own mediocrity and they know in their heart of hearts that they could not function in the real world of bricks mortar and market forces. That's why so many of them gravitate to teaching and government and the arts. in my experience I have found them to be bitter jealous and spiteful people that resent everyone around them. I'm talking about the ones I've known and no longer speak to because they are just so toxic
Northern Rebel| 1.5.10 @ 9:57PM
bohred:
We can only hope!
Liberalism is inherently evil, and you might be onto something, as far as prayer is concerned.
Most conservatives believe in prayer, and most liberals believe in facsism.
I am goingto pray that you are right!
John II| 1.5.10 @ 10:47PM
Nice piece, but I prefer the term "market" or "market economy" to the term "capitalism." The -ism business suggests some idea that someone invented. What "capitalism" alludes to is something grander than a bright idea; it alludes to a kind of spontaneous cooperation with the way the world works.
The main trouble with "capitalism," so far as I can tell from experience, is that, among mostly good things, it also produces a few noxious things, not least being socialism--which really is nothing more than a bright idea. All socialists of my acquaintance are the offspring of successful capitalists, upper-middle-class twits with napkin-rings for backbones and a seething disgust for the busy parents who ignored them. They want everyone else to be just as pampered and worthless as themselves.
Roy| 1.6.10 @ 1:59AM
I prefer the word "freedom".
Pingback| 1.6.10 @ 12:03AM
Wednesday: January 6, 2010 : DBKP REPORT links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
bluecollarbytes| 1.6.10 @ 11:11AM
J.T. Young: "The leftist intelligentsia’s professed interest in selflessness, through its myriad of causes, is no more than their own self-interest. "
What a great basic point. If professional Republicans acknowledged this obvious reality, maybe they wouldn't feel compelled to spend so much time splitting hairs with the opposition in an effort to not look as bad as Leftists paint them.
It's time to Stop allowing these Leftists "the best of intentions, if misguided'". They know exactly what they're doing and what they want. It's all about them and always has been at least since the 60s.
Sarbo| 1.6.10 @ 2:25PM
Never mind the communists. Here I am in Calcutta, where in the 19th Century, genteel fair maidens from Ol' Blighty braved the heat and dust to find a wealthy white husband. It's got so cold that I've had to buy new quilts for the whole family, the old ones having got all mothy and smelly from non-use.
What are the CRU sleuths upto now? When all of Europe and America are freezing under 40 centimeters of snow, in some places cold snaps not seen in a century, what are these pseudo-scientists up to? Maybe ban newspapers, not just journals, from peer review. Let them come and peer review me in Calcutta, I'll leave them out-of-doors at night, quiltless and see if their nuts freeze up.
John Blake| 1.6.10 @ 3:50PM
Leftards' herd mentality, a rent-seeking something-for-nothing, is a death-eating social disease. Luddite sociopaths from Climate Cultists to greenie-weenies, ZPG misanthropes from Ehrlich and Holdren to Singer, uniformly exhibit nihilistic tendencies compatible with militant mass-movements of all kinds: National and International Socialism, Maoism, lately Islamic terrorism as expressed from the Saudis' Wahabist crookshanks to Iranian mullah-dullahs' millennarian rants.
Pseudo-intellectuals are mere academically credentialed dolts, neither educated nor uneducated: Creatures of habit, self-absorbed grievance-mongers without a grain of intellectual integrity of even common sense. No wonder real-world performance is beyond them... as Eric Hoffer, T.S. Eliot, many another has observed, an academic/intellectual class which contributes nothing (quite the opposite) feels nonetheless entitled to overweening compensation on all fronts. Given an Elect's self-professed monopoly on virtue, are members not entitled to power and prestige at benighted society's expense?
If you would see their monuments in China, Cambodia and Cuba; North Korea and Russia; Venezuela and Zimbabwe-- circumspice.
Pingback| 1.11.10 @ 12:31PM
Cooler Heads Digest 8 January 2010 | GlobalWarming.org links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 1.21.10 @ 5:58AM
The American Spectator : Leftist Intelligentsia Dementia | Health News links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Sometime Spook| 1.30.10 @ 5:59PM
Despite the fact that I spend a lot of time on the Internet, I'm a relative newcomer to the pages of The American Spectator and to my chagrin, I realize just how much I've missed. There's no way I can backtrack, and in my autumn years, my pension has been so badly eroded that I cannot afford a subscription. However, for 30-odd years, I have lived in the shadowy world of intelligence and the past two decades have seen enormous changes. It sounds terribly trite coming from a foreigner but I was watching black-and-white TV late at night when there was a sudden dramatic cross to American ABC and just in time to see the second jet plough into the World Trade Center. That night I vowed to write about terrorism and part of my being became American.
Throughout my professional career, I had a great deal to do with the Americans and I had high degree of respect and professional regard for the FBI. Recent events have shown that the FBI has succumbed to the disease that afflicts most Western intelligence services. Despite Osama bin Laden declaring war on the US and by extension, every Western liberal democracy, there are still snafus, turf wars, near tragedies and of course, the blame game.
The times have changed but not the left. During the Cold War, a significant core of left wing thought expressed in academe, the media, government and just about anywhere you care to name, foisted us with the notion of moral equivalence between the US and the Soviet Union. It was fascinatingly repugnant to watch some of these characters groveling to Moscow and their activities have been well and truly laid bare by a number of outstanding US authors and perhaps the best documented account of subservience to Moscow is Paul Hollander's "Political Pilgrims."
There is no doubt in my mind that the fall of the Wall and the collapse of the USSR took a lot of steam out of the left but not for long. They reinvented themselves, cloaking an innate hostility to liberal Western democracy (and capitalism) with ardent environmentalism and the noxious notions enshrined by writers on deconstructionism and postmodernism. Now they accuse us of Islamophobia, while President Obama can't or won't get his head around the notions of fundamentalist Islam and jihad.
Mr. Young is essentially correct in describing the leftist intelligentsia as having a bout of dementia but it seems that they imbibe their ideas with their mother's milk. This is a disease of Western society as a whole, not merely in America but just about everywhere. By some measure, I could be regarded as a sort of social democrat but I am a firm believer in the market and generally what we regard as liberal democracy. Where we have signally failed as a society (and I include all Western liberal democracies) is that we have failed to recognize the enemy within. Honorable conservatism, with which I can identify thoroughly and agree with most principles has fallen into the hands of reactionaries, which is a disease of the right.
However, the grand project of the left, which some have the bald-faced cheek to refer to as the Enlightenment project, is fundamentally aimed at destroying an open society. Basically, they want to impose their ideas on everyone else and dissenters are not welcome. I can go back to the "hate Amerika first" generation of student radicals and that was when, assisted by liberals, they secured ideological hegemony over so many of our institutions and became regarded as experts, worthy of quoting, interviewing and becoming celebrities. It was a time when more publicity was given to brainless starlets raving on about one thing or another, whilst usually ignoring those who actually knew something about social problems.
I can remember the first panic over acid rain, which according to some was going to decimate the forests at Northern latitudes. Then there was the hole in the ozone layer (which would see us all baked and suffering from melanoma) the uncontrollable greenhouse effect... And then came Tennessee Al Gore and it says a great deal about the Nobel prize process that he can make a science-fiction film and capitalize on the proceeds. With global warming, we have lost sight of one of its progenitor ideas, the greenhouse effect, but the crude manipulation of statistics and the concomitant computer models prove that the old adage of GiGo still reigns - garbage in, garbage out and that hasn't changed in the history of computing. Now the green movement has taken on a quasi-religious mantle and I object most strongly to those who disagree with the current panicky thinking on global warming being labeled as "deniers" in a manner reminiscent of Holocaust deniers.
When I was young and scientifically trained, I worked in the UK meteorological office and the great scare in the 1960s and 70s was of a new Ice Age. How well I remember a lecture in which we were told that climate is never stable: it is a dynamic system and it changes according to a host of variables too numerous to elaborate in this short but far too long response.
I have waited for years for the scientific method to be rigorously applied to not just climate change fanatics but the accepted "truths" peddled by the left. It appears unfortunately that there is no place for moderate, informed skepticism in our society and when the center cannot hold, we all know what the outcome is likely to be.
matthew | 2.5.10 @ 12:21PM
skimming the comments and content here is very interesting. i find it pretty hilarious that there is a tendency to use interchangeably the words 'liberal' and 'leftist'. like it or not, liberalism saves capitalism, where as leftism would like to end it. also hilarious is that the general conservative consensus here seems to have no memory of history that they wish to conserve. without left-wing movements to end some of the more aggressive aspects of capitalism, your kids would be working from the age of 5 or 6, you would surely be working more than 40 hours a week for much lower wages, women and blacks wouldn't be allowed to vote, etc etc. i understand that some of you would consider this to be a good thing, however the majority must realize that the lazy intellectual class has only followed a tendency that every profession has in the progression of capitalist development : specialization - and that this tendency alienates these professions from the average 'worker'. specialization, i would argue, creates so-called 'experts', which i would agree is bullshit and leads them to some crazy ideas. without the confusion between 'leftist' and 'liberal', though, i would also agree with probably 75% of the criticism of the liberal intelligentsia. however, where is the credit due to some, only some, of the liberal intelligentsia who gave form to the movements that, yes did conflict with capitalism as it existed in that form, but also created conditions of freedom for more people in the form of higher wages and freedom from exploitation. where is the crying out against the business elites who truly profit off of our labor? comparing the wages of a tenured 'radical' or 'liberal' professor to an investment banker or ceo of a big agribusiness that destroys small farmers is pretty hilarious and lopsided in terms of elites profiting off of us. or do conservatives simply accept the argument that the investment banker or the ceo are more valuable, better people (and the professor is a lesser person) and thus deserving of much higher incomes than workers, even if that investment banker was born with a silver spoon in his mouth? should the intelligentsia shut up about the lack of equality of opportunity when it exists and promote a rigid hierarchy of the rich and the poor, as so many do already? would that make them less 'elite'?
lay123| 4.1.10 @ 11:16PM
These are easy to be purchased from online retail stores. You have the advantage to check the available variety on internet and then buy the item of your choice through the
credit card. It would be good to make a Juicy bag phone call at the company number before making the transaction, in order to
confirm the authentication of selected retailer.
karen | 4.2.10 @ 5:03AM
For men always fit the occasion if there is any doubt about what a man should wear. Sometimes an invitation is not very specific about the www.herveleger-outlet.com
; or it’s a place you are not familiar with so you don’t know what the dress code for the venue is likely to be. www.us-chaneloutlet.comIt’s very embarrassing to be asked to put on something more suitable or to ‘up’ one’s dress standards before being allowed to enter a restaurant or nightclub.
Converse | 8.11.11 @ 9:37PM
is good