Saturday, December 17, 2011
Two Excellent Articles
What Does It Mean to Be an ‘Intellectual,’ Anyway?
"...Yes, there are non-leftists who are sometimes described, perhaps grudgingly, as intellectuals. But when that label’s affixed to them, the people doing the affixing almost invariably feel a need to prefix “intellectual” with some word like “conservative” or “right-wing” – even if the person in question is somebody you or I might consider pretty middle-of-the-road. Meanwhile a left-wing intellectual is typically prefix-free: a left-wing intellectual is just an intellectual, period."
"To be sure, many people on the left dismiss the idea that anyone not on the left could be legitimately described as an intellectual. For them, intellectualism consists essentially of reiterating and fiercely defending their own lockstep ideology. Google “right-wing intellectual” and the very first hit you’ll get is a snarky post at the Democratic Underground website asking “Is there such a thing as a right-wing intellectual?” Google “conservative intellectual” and the top hits include items about “conservative intellectual collapse” and “conservative intellectual bankruptcy.”"
"The difference between the U.S. and continental Europe (Britain leans more our way) is that America has a vibrant network of non-left intellectual institutions – think tanks, magazines, websites like this one – and electronic media that are receptive to their ideas. In Europe non-left intellectuals are more on their own. And they are almost never, ever referred to by anybody as intellectuals."
"And why is this? Because being an “intellectual,” at least in the European sense, isn’t about being intelligent. It’s about belonging to a class of high priests whose role is to preserve and pass on its own sacred dogma. It’s not about contributing to a free exchange of ideas in the expectation that the best ideas will rise to the top, but about trying to demonize and intimidate opponents and stifle dissent. It’s about “speaking truth to power” – and the “power” is always democratic capitalism, and the “truth” always comes in various shades of red."
and...
Inequality: The Eternal Wellspring of Collective Power
"So, to repeat the question defenders of economic liberty have been asking socialists for over a century: what percentage of tax paid by the Evil Rich would be “fair?” It’s obviously not a tax burden equivalent to their share of income, because they’re paying two or three times that much now. Why don’t we isolate that number, according to some logical formula, and put it on the table for consideration?"
"The answer, of course, is that “inequality” is the eternal wellspring of collectivist power. It is the dragon that can never be slain, the Grail that can never be seized. It will always dance just out of reach… and there will always be socialists leaning over our shoulders and whispering that we must hand over more control of our lives, so they can get us just a little bit closer. They’ll never tell us exactly what “fairness” would be, because then we would know if we had achieved it. Blindness is an important tool of control."
