Free Republic

One of the most extraordinary episodes in the intellectual history of the twentieth century—if, indeed, something that lasted half a century or more can properly be called an episode—is the moral and sometimes material support given by much of the western intelligentsia to the Soviet tyranny, a tyranny that made all previous tyrannies seem relaxed, liberal, and almost amateurish by comparison. Men who found the slightest circumscription of their own freedom intolerable raised hosannas to the most systematic and concerted abrogation of personal liberty yet attempted; many were those who strained at gnats to swallow a camel.No doubt the explanation...

A virulent moral blindness has seized hold of a substantial slice of America's educated elite. Convinced they know better, they argue for a shallow, illogical, and horrifying vision of people as disposable. I was wrong last week when I declared that Newsweek's cover showing a baby next to a headline declaring that we're all born racist was evidence that the mainstream media had hit bottom and destroyed itself. It was intellectual arrogance on my part that led me to underestimate the determination of Newsweek's editors to find new deeper bottoms to hit.

The revolt keeps growing, from tea parties to angry town hall meetings across the country, an uprising against the attempts of an elite to force on us an all-powerful State, about as welcome as grandma's cod-liver oil. Examples of revolt go beyond irate callers to radio talk shows. Take for instance the incident at a Frankie Valli concert recently posted on American Thinker, and the disgust and anger in Joe Sheffat's article. Sen. Barbara Boxer encountered it, as did Sen. Claire McCaskill, who made the mistake of asking if she was trusted. The elite seem unable to comprehend that anyone...

The anti-clericalism of the leading Enlightenment thinkers contained within it the potential for a new clericalism more authoritarian and murderous than that which it superseded, with intellectuals as its priests. That the cult of the expert — itself an outgrowth of the Enlightenment's enthroning of human reason above all — should appeal to intellectual elites is unsurprising: It is a form of the revenge of the nerds whose superior qualities were unnoted by the pretty girls in high school. The assumption that "rationality" is a matter easily ascertained, at least by the brainy folks, underlies the preference for centrally planned...

Intelligent idiots, smart fools, multi-degreed morons - lots of monikers could describe a category of individuals dismayingly prominent in the ruling elites of the West. They are the people so divorced from reality, so engrossed in bookish pursuits that - for all their undoubted intellectual accomplishments and often as a direct consequence thereof - they invariably end up with egg on their faces whenever they try to engage in practical activities. Worse yet, they idolize each other, sticking up for one another out of class solidarity. Case in point: a few days ago I watched a gathering of noted media...

Lenin famously said of liberals in the West that they were "useful idiots." A number of really smart (go ahead, ask them) people endorsed Obama only to find out that they were hoodwinked. He's not the guy they fell in love with. It's the morning after, and they've been forced to confront the fact that he's a fraud. A forgery. In John LeCarre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" master spy George Smiley points out that "the more one has paid for a forgery, the more one defends it in the face of all the evidence to the contrary." And, these people...

America voted to fill the halls of Washington DC government with what they consider to be our nation’s “greatest intellectuals,” political progressives. But they had best not confuse intellect with intelligence, or they will be sadly disappointed by the ignorant decisions already evident in the new Washington elite… (snip) Washington DC Needs a Transfusion of Intelligence We’ve had all the intellect we can afford! I refer to the new generation of intellectuals as the “arrogantly ignorant.” They have no idea what they are talking about, but they are damn sure of themselves, just the same. Today’s example of intellect over...

The Center for Public Intellectuals & The University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) April 19th-20th, 2002, Conference [Participants include: William/Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Sen Barack Obama] April 19th-20th, 2002 Chicago Illini Union 828 S. Wolcott This conference is part of the Center's mission of helping to create a more engaged civil society, working towards social change, fostering coalitions between theorists and activists, and combating anti-intellectualism in contemporary culture. It will be both a celebration of ideas and a rigorous examination of the roles and responsibilities that intellectuals play in society. I. Why Do Ideas Matter? (a keynote panel) We introduce the “meta”...

Among the many wonders to be expected from an Obama administration, if Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times is to be believed, is ending "the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life." He cited Adlai Stevenson, the suave and debonair governor of Illinois, who twice ran for president against Eisenhower in the 1950s, as an example of an intellectual in politics. Intellectuals, according to Mr. Kristof, are people who are "interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity," people who "read the classics." It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Adlai Stevenson was...

FReepers have helped me out in the past when I asked about the Frugivores (which I had begun to think only I had ever heard of). Now I'm hoping someone can satisfy my curiosity on a topic both fascinating and gross. Perhaps you remember the old half hour PBS Dick Cavett Show. This is the show where he would spend the time chatting with some intellectual cult figure (eg, Norman Mailer, Richard Gilman, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, etc.). Back in the old days of Carson and Letterman (when he was really funny) I used to stay up later than I...

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama will appear at Carnegie Mellon University Thursday, hosting a round-table conversation on competitiveness and the world economy. The morning panel discussion, which will be closed to the public, includes speakers from industry, labor and the academic world.The participants are to include: Lael Brainard, vice president of the Brookings Institution; Eli Broad, founder of the Broad Foundation; Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of Harlem Children's Zone; Steve Case, chairman and CEO of Revolution Health and former chairman and CEO of America Online; Susan Hockfield, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Federico Pe??a, former U.S....

'Drummers are natural intellectuals' By Gary Cleland Last Updated: 1:26am BST 17/04/2008 Drummers are better known for their beats than their brain power, but research has suggested that they might actually be natural intellectuals. Scientists who asked volunteers to keep time with a drumstick before taking intelligence tests discovered that those with the best sense of rhythm also scored highest in the mental assessments. Born smart? The late Keith Moon, drummer with The Who, could have had natural intellect Prof Frederic Ullen, from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, concluded that there was a link between intelligence, good timing and the...

An intellectual is someone who thinks ideas matter more than people. If people get in the way of ideas they must be swept aside and, if necessary, put in concentration camps or killed. To intellectuals, individuals as such are not interesting and do not matter. Indeed individualism is a hindrance to the pursuit of ideals in an absolute sense. The individual, with his quirks and quiddities, his mixture of good and bad, intelligence and stupidity, longing for justice but anxiety to promote his own selfish interests, does not fit into a utopian community. Hence utopians, if they are in earnest,...

Giant bones challenged 18th-century intellectuals By Dan Hurley Post columnist Today, the valley is dry, dusty and unremarkable, but 250 years ago it was one of the most fascinating spots ever discovered in the North America. From the very first time in 1739 that local Indians led a contingent of French explorers to the salt licks near the Ohio River in what is today Boone County, Ky., the spot raised intellectually troubling questions. European and American scientists understood the importance of salt licks and why thousands of modern buffalo, deer and elk beat broad paths to the marshy lick, but...

WASHINGTON -- There it sits on your nightstand, that book you've meant to read for who knows how long but haven't yet cracked open. Tonight, as you feel its stare from beneath that teetering pile of magazines, know one thing -- you are not alone. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year -- half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven. "I just...

Seemingly arcane historical disputes can often cast a powerful light on the state of our collective soul. It is for that reason that I like to read books on obscure subjects: they are often more illuminating than books that at first sight are more immediately relevant to our current situation. For, as Emily Dickinson put it, success in indirection lies. In 2002, the Australian free-lance historian and journalist, Keith Windschuttle, published a book that created a controversy that has still not died down. Entitled ‘The Fabrication of Aboriginal History,’ it sets out to destroy the idea that there had been...

A few days ago, I suggested that misfits (meaning clever, unfocussed people who don't find a secure place in society) often develop into pretend entrepreneurs in the U.S., and cited a few examples of people I know in this "line of work." Now to the European version, the unemployed intellectual. Where do they come from? Here's my theory. You're a young Frenchman, somewhat like Mr. Dhelft, who we met a few days ago. You dawdle leisurely through university, studying whatever catches your fancy: art history, Chinese calligraphy, recorder, or (as Mr. Dhelft, and thousands like him, did) sociology. There's no...

James Carroll, recently writing in the Boston Globe, wondered if America could finally accept defeat in Iraq, and be the better for it, comparing it to Vietnam: But what about the moral question? For all of the anguish felt over the loss of American lives, can we acknowledge that there is something proper in the way that hubristic American power has been thwarted? Can we admit that the loss of honor will not come with how the war ends, because we lost our honor when we began it? This time, can we accept defeat? To be frank, no. In Mr....

Part One: I remember the anger I felt watching the endlessly repeated images of the towers collapsing. But there's another kind of anger -- a more cerebral one toward the intellectuals of our time who contributed to all that destruction through their hostility toward the mores and traditions of western civilization.Robert Sibley, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Saturday, September 09, 2006 NEW YORK - I still see bodies falling. Standing at my hotel window, overlooking Ground Zero, it's not hard to visualize the flaming towers and the bird-like figures of human bodies plummeting through the air. I especially remember a couple...

The hypocrite always wears a halo. He walks in the light of his own goodness, encircled by the clarity of illuminated virtue. His dark secret is hidden from sight so he can enjoy popular applause for his undiminished radiance. So it is with Nobel Prize-winner Gunter Grass, moralist-in-chief of German letters, controller of the German conscience. He demanded that all Germans "come clean" about their past as the only way to atonement. He was the advocate for remembering and taking full responsibility for personal actions. He beat a tin drum to death. So it was stunning news that now, at...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Some questions even stump Stephen Hawking. The famed British astrophysicist and best-selling author has turned to Yahoo Answers, a new feature in which anyone can pose a question for fellow Internet users to try to answer. By Friday afternoon, nearly 17,000 Yahoo Inc. users had responded to Hawking. Hawking's question: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?" Some of the answers were short -- "get rid of nuclear weapons" -- and others vague -- "Somehow we will." Many were doubtful: "I don't think...

The catastrophe, termed the Russian Revolution, through all the degradations, tribulations and disappointments, has to lead to a new and better awareness. Such an experience in the life of a people cannot but enrich and sharpen our perceptiveness. But a crisis of soul will have to precede this perceptiveness with a readiness for repentance and humility. The light will be begotten after an inward cleansing and ascesis. This -- is a law of spiritual life. And it is needful to be aware, that all the whole thinking portion of Russian society, that which has esteemed itself as the bearer knowingly...

CBN.com – PARIS -- 2006 could prove to be a very dangerous year for Europe, especially for France. Jacques Chirac may have thought that opposing America and Israel would keep France safe from terror, but it has not. Christmas Eve 1994, seven years before 9-11, Islamic terrorists from Algeria tried to fly an Airbus into the Eiffel Tower. They were stopped by French commandos at an airport in Marseilles, where the terrorists were waiting on a full load of jet fuel. They had already packed the plane with dynamite. Europe has lived under the threat of Islamic terror far longer...

A group of left-wing pundits and intellectuals wants to save the Left from itself, but why bother? asks Daniel Finkelstein SO, anyway, there I was on Monday night in Pinner Synagogue giving a speech alongside my mother, as one does. We were attending a Holocaust remembrance service and my mum was telling her survivor's tale, the story of her life as a young girl. I think I know it pretty well, but whenever I hear it, I always discover something I'd missed or hadn't thought about properly before. And so it proved. We'd got to the bit where my mother...

In the aftermath of November’s street fighting, French opinion-makers have pounced on an expiatory victim: philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, a man of integrity who seeks to shed light on events as they happen.  His intelligent analysis of, in his words, the “pogrom against the Republic,” [1] conveyed in an interview with two journalists from Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, has triggered an explosion of intellectual violence against his person, his ideas, his thought process, his very existence. A dishonest patchwork of excerpts from the Haaretz interview, deliberately slanted to make Alain Finkielkraut look like a Le Pen in philosopher’s clothing, was published in the leading French newspaper Le...

With critics charging he misled Americans on the war in Iraq, President Bush says, "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops." Is it right to argue about the reasons for going to war, or should we "put this debate behind us," as the president's national security adviser suggests?

The debate within the Republican Party over Harriet Miers has quickly devolved into a simple question: Is the nominee qualified because of her religious faith, or unqualified by her lack of intellectual heft? On the one side, James Dobson, Miers' fellow parishioners at Valley View Christian Church, and President Bush speak for her heart. On the other, George Will and William Kristol and others who swooned for John Roberts decry her unimpressive legal mind. [...] In this battle, the White House has clearly sided with the churchgoing masses against the Republican Party's own whiny Beltway intellectuals. The Bushies have always...

Click Here The irony of this “thinkers” list is that it does not bear thinking about too closely. The problems of definition and judgment that it involves would discourage more rigorous souls. But some criteria must be spelled out. What is a public intellectual? Someone who has shown distinction in their own field along with the ability to communicate ideas and influence debate outside of it. Candidates must have been alive, and still active in public life (though many on this list are past their prime). Such criteria ruled out the likes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Milton Friedman, who would...

Who are the world’s leading public intellectuals? FP and Britain’s Prospect magazine would like to know who you think makes the cut. We’ve selected our top 100, and want you to vote for your top five. If you don’t see a name that you think deserves top honors, include them as a write-in candidate. Voting closes October 10, and the results will be posted the following month. Criteria The irony of this “thinkers” list is that it does not bear thinking about too closely. The problems of definition and judgment that it involves would discourage more rigorous souls. But some...

During Israel’s dramatic eviction of its settlers, it went almost unnoticed that on Aug. 15, armed men in Gaza kidnapped a soundman who worked for a French state television station. I’ll bet you’ve already assumed the kidnappers were Arab Muslims. Shame on you. And yes you’re right, they were. The week before, three foreign workers were kidnapped by members of Fatah, founded by the late Yasser Arafat. “Fatah” means “conquest by means of holy war.” No matter what our political views, we all agree on two things: 1) Israel and the West on the whole follow the norms of civilization;...

During Israel’s dramatic eviction of its settlers, it went almost unnoticed that on Aug. 15, armed men in Gaza kidnapped a soundman who worked for a French state television station. I’ll bet you’ve already assumed the kidnappers were Arab Muslims. Shame on you. And yes you’re right, they were. The week before, three foreign workers were kidnapped by members of Fatah, founded by the late Yasser Arafat. “Fatah” means “conquest by means of holy war.” No matter what our political views, we all agree on two things: 1) Israel and the West on the whole follow the norms of civilization;...

During Israel’s dramatic eviction of its settlers, it went almost unnoticed that on Aug. 15, armed men in Gaza kidnapped a soundman who worked for a French state television station. I’ll bet you’ve already assumed the kidnappers were Arab Muslims. Shame on you. And yes you’re right, they were. The week before, three foreign workers were kidnapped by members of Fatah, founded by the late Yasser Arafat. “Fatah” means “conquest by means of holy war.” No matter what our political views, we all agree on two things: 1) Israel and the West on the whole follow the norms of civilization;...

January 20, 2005 -- Intellectual capacity in early adulthood is strongly related to subsequent risk of suicide in men, finds a study in this week's BMJ. Few previous studies have assessed the association of measures of intelligence with suicide, and results have often conflicted. Researchers analysed the results of four intelligence tests, performed at conscription into military service, for 987,308 Swedish men. The men were monitored for up to 26 years and suicides were recorded. Better performance on the tests was associated with a reduced risk of suicide. The strongest associations were with the logic test score, where the risk...

“WHEN IDEOLOGY IS YOUR GUIDE, YOU ARE BOUND TO GET LOST.” This is how the author begins and underpins this book. Daniel Flynn believes ideology determines your reaction to issues, ideas and people. Once you have accepted an ideology even smart people may say and do stupid things. Of course in conservative circles demonizing intellectuals is a great tradition. Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals pilloried left wing intellectuals. The danger in pursuing such a strategy is that it may become simple pandering to anti-intellectual bias. Alternatively, arguing against ideology simply prepares an argument for the left. After all, Martin Luther made faith...

At the same time, 1984, as the eminent Harvard professor of economics, J. K. Galbraith was discovering the multitudinous benefits of socialist productive capacity in the USSR, any schoolkid in that evil empire could have told him that had the Soviets taken over the Sahara, in two years there would be a shortage of sand. If Galbraith had spoken with Soviet factory workers out of sight of their overseers, he would have heard them say, "Yes, we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us." But double-domed Lefty Galbraith was immune to facts of everyday existence in the workers'...

Susan Sontag's death brings grief and sadness to all those who were close to her and is thus a very sad occasion. It is only fitting to begin even this anti-eulogy with a proper expression of condolences to those stricken by her passage from the terrestrial vail of tears. So for those who loved Susan Sontag, I hope they find solace in their grief. What looms sadder and more grievous than the attenuation of her lifespan is the meaning Susan Sontag gave to her life. If John Paul Sartre speaks the truth and we really become the summation of all...

December 25, 2004OP-ED COLUMNISTThe Hookie Awards By DAVID BROOKS ome people say that the age of the public intellectuals is over, that there are no longer many grand thinkers like Lionel Trilling or Reinhold Neibuhr, writing ambitious essays for the educated reader. It's true that there are fewer philosophers writing about the nature and destiny of man, but there are still hundreds of amazing essays written every year. In celebration of that fact, and in case you're looking for some mind-expanding holiday reading, I've decided to create the Hookie Awards. Named after the great public intellectual Sidney Hook, they...

Stop Terror Sheikhs, Muslim Academics Demand Staff Writer JEDDAH/NEW YORK, 30 October 2004 — Over 2,500 Muslim intellectuals from 23 countries have signed a petition to the United Nations calling for an international treaty to ban the use of religion for incitement to violence.

John Kerry possessed reason, George Bush possessed faith. That's the consoling critique of the campaign by defeated liberals. But the truth is Kerry displayed neither. Without credible reason or faith, Kerry had nothing to offer Americans except experiments in radicalism. To salvage their self-esteem, liberals are pushing the idea that they have lost the country but retained their reason. It hasn't yet dawned on them that they lost the country because they lost their reason. Their irrational anger and tired theories weren't persuasive. The American people rejected Kerry because of an absence not only of authentic faith but also of...

From the Preface of Civilization and Its Enemies – The Next Stage of History by Lee Harris The subject of this book is forgetfulness. By this I do not mean our tendency to misplace valuable objects, or our inability to recall the name of he boss’s dog, but the collective and cultural amnesia the over comes any group of human beings who have long benefited fro tm the blessings of civilization – an amnesia first observed nearly eight hundred years ago by the Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun, contemplating the rise and fall of those great feats of organized...

In his new book, Intellectual Morons, Daniel Flynn exposes the dangers of blindly following intellectual elites who support and promote idiotic ideas and theories. Chris Banescu, who recently wrote the review of the book, interviewed Flynn about the origins of the material and the impact its revelations will have on our culture. Chris Banescu: What inspired you to write this book? Daniel Flynn: My goal in writing Intellectual Morons is to get more people to think with their brain rather than their ideology. By exposing ideologically-inspired hoaxes and frauds, the book not only rebuts falsehood but helps immunize readers against...

Wars Of Ideas: George W. Bush could learn a thing or two from Ronald Reagan, who faced his own struggle for hearts and minds — and showed how to win. Even Reagan's worst enemies grant that he was a great speaker. But he was more than just a well-trained spokesman for conservative ideas. As we now know from biographies and letters, he was engaged in heart and mind in what he said. He had read much, spoken much and written much. He not only had opinions, but also he had thought them through. A lot of this is beyond the...

We thought it was finished. The ovens are long cooled, the anti-vermin gas dissipated into purifying clouds, cleansed air, nightmarish fable. The cries of the naked, decades gone, are mute; the bullets splitting throats and breasts and skulls, the human waterfall of bodies tipping over into the wooded ravine at Babi Yar, are no more than tedious footnotes on aging paper. The deportation ledgers, with their scrupulous lists of names of the doomed, what are they now? Museum artifacts. The heaps of eyeglasses and children’s shoes, the hills of human hair, lie disintegrating in their display cases, while only a...

Totalitarianism and the Role of Intellectuals By PAUL BERMAN During the long months of buildup to the war in Iraq, President Bush never did succeed in convincing most of the world of the justice or logic of what he proposed to do. Many people freely granted that, after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States had solid reasons to wage war on Al Qaeda. But it was not immediately clear to many why an attack on Saddam Hussein would represent any kind of setback to Al Qaeda. The White House tried to suggest that the highjacker Muhammad Atta...

One of the more enduring contradictions still living in the American intellectual scene is the presence of a strong conservative movement that is intellectual in thrust – a bookish conservatism – and the enduring stereotype that the “right wing” is nothing more than the stupid faction. This contradiction is so engrained that more than a few conservatives actually thrive on it, in the same way a bodybuilder considers himself a “weak wimp” for being able to bench press ‘only’ 200 lbs. You probably know that this leads to a different trap. If a young intellectual pursues excellence using that kind...

I was listening to the West Virginia Metronews "Talkline" radio program this morning and they had a woman involved in Dummycrap politics on the air. This idiot was spouting the jackass party line and the pathetic "We're going to replace Bush in November 2004 over his handling of the war in Iraq." When talk show host Hoppy Kerchival asked her what the Dums proposed to do differently than Bush, she went rambling about "forming coalitions" with the countries that balked on us with Iraq and proposed "sanctions" (how utterly brilliant). Kerchival asked her how having France, Germany, Belgium, Belize, etc...

One Party StateBy Center for the Study of Popular CultureFrontPageMagazine.com | September 3, 2003 Democrats outnumber Republicans 30-1 at Brown; 14-1 at Yale.The Center for the Study of Popular Culture released a report that documents the stunning bias against conservative viewpoints on college faculties and speakers platforms. At 32 elite colleges registered Democrats on the faculty outnumbered Republicans 10-1. At two of the schools – Bowdoin and Wellesley – the ratio was 23-1. Center president, David Horowitz, who designed the investigation said, “The educational and research missions of the University are dependent upon the free exchange of ideas. Academic freedom...

Democrats outnumber Republicans 30-1 at Brown; 14-1 at Yale.The Center for the Study of Popular Culture released a report that documents the stunning bias against conservative viewpoints on college faculties and speakers platforms. At 32 elite colleges registered Democrats on the faculty outnumbered Republicans 10-1. At two of the schools – Bowdoin and Wellesley – the ratio was 23-1. Center president, David Horowitz, who designed the investigation said, “The educational and research missions of the University are dependent upon the free exchange of ideas. Academic freedom can only exist in an environment of intellectual diversity that protects and fosters...

Turbans of the mind are disallowing and disavowing proper intellectual engagement with Islam. Aldous Huxley once defined an intellectual as someone who had found something in life more important than sex: a witty but inadequate definition, since it would make all impotent men and frigid women intellectuals. A better definition would be a freethinker, not in the narrow sense of someone who does not accept the dogmas of traditional religion, but in the wider sense of someone who has the will to find out, who exhibits rational doubt about prevailing intellectual fashions, and who is unafraid to apply critical thought...

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism? by Robert Nozick It is surprising that intellectuals oppose capitalism so. Other groups of comparable socio-economic status do not show the same degree of opposition in the same proportions. Statistically, then, intellectuals are an anomaly. Not all intellectuals are on the "left." Like other groups, their opinions are spread along a curve. But in their case, the curve is shifted and skewed to the political left. By intellectuals, I do not mean all people of intelligence or of a certain level of education, but those who, in their vocation, deal with ideas as expressed in...