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Posted on 02/21/2012 2:07:45 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
[SNIP]
...So all in all, what choice do we have other than to go after the one individual whose horrible vulnerability Orwell pointed out? The one individual upon whom the entire Left-Wing Liberal movement depends, and must depend for its galvanic power -- the liberal intellectual?
And what is an intellectual?
Well, the dictionary definition is one thing, but what we commonly mean by the term isn't a Ph.D. in physics. And neither do we so call those highly educated in such disciplines such as engineering, math, chemistry, quantum mechanics, metallurgy, and medicine intellectuals. Instead, we usually hang the label on those really, really smart people who pursue advanced degrees in social work. Or, for that matter, art history, leftist helpless economics, women's studies, community studies, and education (I'm leaving a lot out here). Although it should be pointed out that David Mamet throws the net much wider with his "increasingly affluent and confused" definition, and "confused" is often a dead giveaway. However, with Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous French intellectual, once describing human history as "a long and arduous road which led to me," perhaps confusion accompanied by an exorbitant sense of self-importance might be a better rule of thumb.
Be that all as it may, almost the first thing we learn about intellectuals when we examine them a bit more closely is that they are not historically important. They didn't for example fight the American Revolution or write the Constitution. They also had little or maybe nothing at all to do with the Industrial Revolution or with English Common Law (except recently in its corruption). Left-Wing Liberal intellectuals didn't write Shakespeare, paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or teach us how to can peas....
[SNIP]
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I was born in the middle of Reagan’s Presidency, though I didn’t learn enough to appreciate him until I came here. School history was next to useless as far as I’m concerned. They taught little I was interested in. And that brings me to a new and I think better way to teach children.
Their "language" was proven to be a fraud. Read about it here.
I’ll borrow Reagan’s famous description of democrats: The problem with intellectuals is that they know so much that isn’t so.
“And what is an intellectual?”
I frequently refer to them here on FR, and elsewhere, as
“overschooled, undereducated adult children”
They spend too many years of their lives in schools becoming indoctrinated, and not enough time in the real world becoming educated.
I think that is the whole ball of wax in a nutshell on a silver platter. Well said.
Great article. Here’s my definition of an intellectual:
If you can’t change your own tire, you might be an intellectual.
If you couldn’t kill and dress out a deer if your life depended on it, you might be an intellectual.
If you don’t know the difference between a box wrench and a crescent wrench, you might be an intellectual.
Can anyone imagine Obama changing a tire?
Feel free to add to the list.
this reminds me of the tv series “connections” where these intelectuals were dismissed as historically irrelevant.
REAL science makes a difference. Not junk science like sociology. Sociology is for those who are too weak minded for a general studies degree.
if you can’t outrun an angry bear/lion/tiger/carnivore and you instead try and engage in peace negotiations then you are an intelectual....(for the 10 seconds of life you have trying)
the fact is that the left defines intelectual as NOT being able to do any real world practical task. IOW not being “handy” is intelectual. Being a male who is oprahfied to uselessness is intelectual.
for 1984 fans... weakness is strength. ignorance is intelect.
“Marx, for the slothful idiot that he was, had a huge ego - as do most of ‘societal transformation’ types of intellectuals.”
Very interesting and a very interesting parallel: Lenin fits this description perfectly, if Solzhenitsyn’s take was right. In “Lenin in Zurich” he describes Lenin as a ruthless megalomaniac. Apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
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