Watch the whole thing!
Nov 18, 2008 Heart and spirit, O Mores!, Politics and Poker, Stragety
Pace Emmett Tyrell, now is the conservative crackup. Melissa Clouthier is right: You really have to take a few minutes to watch this, the whole thing, to get a sense of where we aren’t going, and how we aren’t getting there.
I don’t know what to make of it.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:04 am
It’s probably just me but I keep getting confused why people think “being intellectual” naturally equates with being smart, much less with being a great or visionary leader. Or confuses being intellectual with even being capable of leading, of recognizing in what direction the future is eliding, of preparing for and anticipating progress, or of being good at the necessary leadership function of actual problem solving (I’ve yet to personally meet any shade of intellectual who is nearly as good at devising solutions to a problem as he is at dissecting and deconstructing the useless minutiae of why a problem might deserve a solution, if only one could be figured out by someone less intelligent than he).
I had a very intellectual professor one time tell me that the modern intellectual is the guy who can’t repair his own plumbing but devises endless theories on water flow and ocean currents, doesn’t understand money but demands he understands and needs to control whole economies, doesn’t understand the average man and yet claims to be a genius at political necessity, and is just not that bright but speaks extremely fluidly and without pause about why the darkness is the ultimate end of all things. I suspect he may have known his own kind better than me, so I took him at his word.
The only real reason I can see to keep the vast majority of intellectuals employed at any public capacity is so that by knowing their exact location, we can better limit their potential malignant effect upon the rest of human society. That, and the fact that by reading and observing what they ceaselessly produce we are all that much more entertained, and thankful that but by the grace of God there go we.
I will say this though. If you’re unemployable for anything remotely productive, or you lack any other marketable talents, then it seems like an awfully good gig (being an intellectual that is) to me if you can fool enough other people into thinking the way you do.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:09 am
By the way, the professor buddy I had used to call modern intellectuals the “Intellectonauts.”
If you close your eyes and imagine one in your mind when you say the word out loud to yourself you’ll hear the real thrust of the joke.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
We could probably benefit by changing the process by which we hold presidential primaries. However, I think that the bigger issue may be today’s voters, many of whom have no memory of European communism and don’t know much history — a triumph of our leftist-dominated educational system. If this is true then the political parties are merely following public opinion, and the country is in even worse shape than infighting conservatives realize.
November 19th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
“However, I think that the bigger issue may be today