What use are intellectuals?

January 26, 2009 by
Filed under: Politics 

Ted at Bore Patch has an excellent essay on politics among the intellectual classes.  It’s great reading…especially the linked sources.

Among points that he makes is that orthodoxy has replaced rigourous scrutiny in academia.  Ideas are made to be absorbed and parroted, not tested for truth.  Any deviation from the broader agenda is harshly criticized by the broader left.  The screeds against Kirsten Gillibrand are evidence of that.  She is a Democrat who does not immediately embrace the agenda of the anti-gun-rights left.  The AP opens their story about her this way:

Instantly opening a rift among New York Democrats, Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand – a little-known, pro-gun Democrat from a rural Republican district – won appointment Friday to the Senate seat left vacant by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The article goes to quote Carolyn McCarthy and Mike Bloomberg on what a terrible person Gillibrand is for opposing further restrictions on gun rights.

This requirement for integrated orthodoxy is having a backlash effect against the left, despite the current election results.  As Ted says, they are damaging the brand.  This is why you often encounter people who are “reformed liberals” but rarely “reformed conservatives.”  Again, consider the gun rights movement.  We argue with facts, statistics, and logic.  The arguments from the anti crowd begin with ominous innuendo (“It will be like the Wild West….shootouts in the streets!”) and quickly degenerate to crying and name calling (“Gun Lobby, Gun Lobby, Gun Lobby!”)  As Sebastian points out here, when you spend political capital, it is just like spending money.  Once it is spent, it is gone.  Because the coalition on the left requires this integrated orthodoxy, they spend a lot of political capital.

There is a downside to all this.  Once someone seriously begins to examine part of the agenda, and realize there isn’t a lot of “there” there, it naturally leads one to question the rest of the agenda.  Certainly, that was what led me to my passion for gun rights.  The more I studied the issue, the more data that I examined, the more I realized how foolish the arguments against gun rights were.  Then the skepticism expands.  (“If they are that wrong on guns…why wouldn’t we assume they are wrong on global warming?”)   The whole thing then colapses like a house of cards.

As gunnies, we can use this to our advantage.  There are a lot of people taking a very critical look at the left these days.  Now is a great time to encourage friends who are not gunnies to take a look at the gun rights issue.

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One Comment on What use are intellectuals?

  1. Ted on Mon, 26th Jan 2009 8:58 pm

    2. Thanks for the link, and the kind words!

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