Free Republic

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...