The ruined dictatorship of the intellectuals
We came across this sentence in Heather Mac Donald’s piece on torture in the City Journal (HT, Powerline): “When the history of the war on terror is written, the strangest chapter will address why so many American intellectuals were so determined to believe the absolute worst about U.S. behavior.” However, this phenomenon has been going on for most of the last century. Some people, and many intellectuals, have a tape playing an endless loop in their heads. The tape says: A man who speaks of ideals and wields power unashamedly has something very sinister he is hiding.
When a person afflicted with this mindset sees a military officer, he sees someone who looks bright and shiny on the outside, but carries deep malevolence within. He knows that secretly that officer is a cauldron of hatreds and barely contained violence. Shrinkwrapped made a pertinent comment about this at the time of the Durbin incident at Roger Simon’s site (Dr. Sanity has some apt comments as well):
The fundamental psychological mechanism at work in paranoia is “projection”. Since those on the left know themselves to be more caring and loving of their fellow man than those of us who reside closer to reality, they are unable to tolerate their own hatred and must deny it. It is then projected onto others (ie, “I don’t hate you, but you are hateful to me.”) This, in turn, then justifies their rage as a reaction to our (fantasied) attacks on them. It is as if the left (which sadly, now includes the core of the Democratic party and the MSM) has been so enraged by their rejection by the country (which has been going on now for 20 years), that they first deny it (the election was stolen), justify their innate goodness by projecting the hate onto the “Republicans”, invent fantasies of horrors perpetrated by our government and military (Abu Graib, Gitmo) and then can offer aid and comfort to our enemies with a clear conscience. (Senator Durban).
We think there are some other elements at work as well, but frankly we are having a hard time putting them into words. It is interesting, for example, that leftist intellectuals give a pass to, or overtly admire, authentic men of violence like Castro or Arafat or Stalin, but vilify the good guys who are their enemies.
Maybe it comes down to power, with the wimpy intellectuals jealous and fearful of powerful and straightforward men. Maybe it has a religious element, with the vanity of the intellectuals a graven image they have made to themselves in a Marxist, materialistic universe. Maybe it is because because they stop too soon in their inquiries — having replaced the ten commandments with ten questions, they fail to engage the serious moral issue of how should one live one’s life. Jonathon Lear put it this way: “Freud is a deep explorer of the human condition, working in a tradition which goes back to Sophocles and which extends through Plato, Saint Augustine and Shakespeare to Proust and Nietzsche.”
It is ironic that some intellectuals, many of whom have a therapeutic understanding that there is a host of underlying, often conflicting, motivations for human behavior, would fail to note that the important thing is not the catalogue of emotions and motivations, but the choices we make among them. That strikes us as either not too bright, or too clever by half.
November 22nd, 2005 at 4:19 pm
I am reminded also of Thomas Sowell’s comment that there are many
people whose opinions are shaped more by their need to feel more
virtuous than their fellow human beings than by the real-world
consequences of the things they advocate.
November 22nd, 2005 at 4:19 pm
The problem, in my experience with intellectuals, is they lack the wisdom to be humble.
November 23rd, 2005 at 6:32 am
Comment to DL–HOMERUN!!!! You hit it exactly!!!
November 23rd, 2005 at 11:00 am
“Far rarer still than any unicorn is the introspective liberal”
November 24th, 2005 at 12:33 am
“The problem, in my experience with intellectuals, is they lack the wisdom to be humble.”
You’re calling George Bush an “intellectual?”
Seriously, I don’t understand the need for extremist positions. Do you have leftist “friends” who have become your enemy now, or what? This is a general question, because I honestly do not know what drives people to polar extremes. Why the incessant labelling?
Leftist, right-winger, liberal, democrat, conservative, etc. These labels are just that. Meaningless, hollow words.
There is little humility at all in politics today. I dread the upcoming election bash festival that will soon appear on television. All it is is name calling today. No issues are discussed in a fair and honest manner whatsoever. It’s as if people want it to be that way. For entertainment purposes. Just like the fucking media used 9/11 as entertainment. Instant replays over-and-over of jumbo jets slamming into buildings *killing* people. Let me remind you, it wasn’t the people labelled “terrorist” that replayed that footage again and again ad nauseum for entire months. That alone speaks volumes of the American psyche, I do believe.
November 25th, 2005 at 6:00 am
You are correct in both large canvas and in the minute details. I too never met a humble or an introspective egghead or liberal. Emotion, yes, but that about covers it. Of those I know, and I know a lot of academic types, it seems they believe what they read in books but are unable to read people and events and the times. Reality is what is confined to the faculty club or lounge or 3-hour seminars in which they participate either as teacher or student.
Again, thank you for your most thought writing.
Sincerely,
James A. Glasscock, a 70-year old Texan
November 25th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
There’s nothing new under the sun:
“England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box.”
from England Your England (1941), by George Orwell
December 13th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
Almost uniquely among the human race, the people we call intellectuals can, if they choose (and most do), live in a world of abstractions. They think about what they think, and think about what others think. They think about how they can make a good argument; they think about how they can refute someone else’s argument.
They like facts only as long as the facts fit in with a proposition at a higher level of abstraction, a theory or ideology; they have trouble taking aboard experience whose “relevance” is elusive. Intellectuals often reason well, but are poor at examining the premises that underly their reasoning.
Above all, intellectuals do not have to submit to reality testing in the way that most others do. A scientist or engineer may have no end of exciting ideas, but no one will take him or her seriously unless those ideas are demonstrated to work adequately. The intellectual’s concerns involve complex phenomena subject to widely divergent interpretation, where there is no purely pragmatic way of quickly determining what’s correct. (Eventually, in such areas as sociology, politics, or psychology, we do amass enough evidence for or against ideas that we can say there is probable cause to believe them true or false, but that may take generations.)
So the intellectual gets accustomed to being able to say anything without fear of being proven wrong. Sure, there may be strong counter-arguments, but the intellectual’s job is to come up with plausible-sounding counter-counter-arguments. The music never stops. Too many intellectuals unconsciously quit worrying about validity; the only failure they fear is the failure to speak or write persuasively.
Thank goodness we have people who are interested in ideas and expressing them well. In sum, and over the course of a long time, intellectuals’ pursuits do contribute to knowledge and progress. At any given time, though, the ability to score debater’s points has no necessary connection with truth or wisdom. Those brilliant talkers of antiquity, the Sophists, gave sophistry a bad name.