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March 01, 2003THE NEW 'TREASON OF THE INTELLECTUALS'Why is there so often an alliance between wordsmith intellectuals-- poets, novelists, playwrights, literary critics, journalists--and anti-democratic, anti-capitalist totalitarians? Not a day passes without a Harold Pinter, Gore Vidal, Amiri Baraka, Susan Sontag or Norman Mailer denouncing America. None of these luminaries uttered a peep of protest when the Taliban systematically destroyed centuries old cultural artifacts. Nor did they cheer the liberation of Afghanistan by force of American arms. Even when one of their own, Salman Rushdie, was threatened with death there was barely a murmur of protest against the Islamo-Nazis and their fatwas. More critical passion has been expended by these cultural luminaries against Donald Rumsfeld's bursts of straight talk, than against the rantings of Middle Eastern sheiks calling for death to all infidels. What accounts for the depth of resentment these beneficiaries of our freedoms express toward the countries that have cosseted them? Remarkably, the failure of socialism and the collapse of the Soviet Union has not altered their hostility to our capitalist society, and in that regard they are very much allied with Islamo-totalitarians around the world who denounce our decadent Western capitalist culture. Where does this sense of aggrieved entitlement and superiority come from? Nozick points to the schools. This is the most important and powerful institution that children enter into outside the family. It is a place that gives the greatest reward to the verbally skilled. There the future wordsmith intellectuals ".. were praised and rewarded, the teacher's favorites. How could they fail to see themselves as superior? Daily, they experienced differences in facility with ideas, in quick-wittedness. The schools told them, and showed them, they were better....To the intellectually meritorious went the praise, the teacher's smiles, and the highest grades. In the currency the schools had to offer, the smartest constituted the upper class. Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards.The wider market society, however, taught a different lesson. There the greatest rewards did not go to the verbally brightest. There the intellectual skills were not most highly valued. Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist Nozick further observes that the schoolroom successes of the verbally skilled take place in the framework of a centrally organized social structure. Rewards are distributed by the central authority of the teacher. In the schoolyard and the hallways, there is a less formal social system. It's more freewheeling and rewards a variety of talents. There, as in the post-school world, the verbally skilled do less well. One senses in so many of our writer- critics of America a yearning for a maximum leader who could restore them to their schoolroom glory. Their past infatuations with Hitler, Stalin and Mao; their continuing affection for Castro and their idealizing of brutal thugs like Arafat, speaks to a yearning to surrender to a powerful authority who will praise and reward them, as happened in the schoolrooms of their childhood. Nozick omits one important psychological factor: verbally gifted individuals can use their skills to avoid the hurly-burly bumps and bruises of competitive daily life. They can retain a sense of omnipotence and grandiosity by virtue of their ability to spin webs of words. They can occupy those imaginary worlds in isolation from their fellow creatures who might possess the competitive and social skills they lack. Such God-like omnipotence and overvaluation of words ("In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God" -John 1:1) supports a sense of grievance that mere earthly rewards, even when they are substantial , are so much less than what Gods deserve. *The entire essay: Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?is well worth reading. Posted at 12:55 PM by
 
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Interesting essay, and a perplexing question. My theory is that otherwise smart journalists, authors, professors have an inability to reason by virtue of the Myers-Briggs NF Idealist personalites. Thus, the "blind spot on the Left."
Posted by: wordwarp on March 1, 2003 03:16 PMDangerously close to absolutely dead on target. Add the resentment those intellectuals have for the popular jocks and other cliques they were left out of, plus the resentment of the other kids for those teacher's pets and we have the reasons that, if you scratch the surface of most intellectuals, you find a seething mass of hatred for ordinary people.
Posted by: Peter W. Davis on March 2, 2003 10:45 AMThere are a few in the intellectual class that are fairly well adjusted. Most of these are people like Dr. Walter Williams of George Mason University, who excelled at sports as well as words.
Peter,
Posted by: Stephen Rittenberg on March 2, 2003 10:51 AMI agree completely. My own education took place as much on the pitcher's mound as in the classroom.
Ah, yes. This seems to credit my main "thesis of the world"...
Right brainers seem to be drawn to the "Leftist explanation of events"...They seem to desire literary interpretations of the day's events...They are the ones who rely on literary interpretations to explain events to them...
Left brainers are more drawn to empiricism. They can enjoy a good theory, but would rather have these theories exposed to the rigories of empiric analyis applied to them...
Posted by: Dr. Laszlo on March 3, 2003 04:55 PMLots of good ideas here. The problem, though, is much broader than "intellectuals" per se...look at lawyers, for example, or Hollywood types.
Perhaps there's a generic issue with those who *manipulate verbal symbols for a living* to the point that they eventually believe there's nothing to reality *but* verbal symbols. It seems that farmers, machinists, and engineers are capable of understanding the underlying realities of, say, the Iraq situation--but the symbol-manipulation class is concerned only that it be discussed using the proper verbal formulae.
Posted by: David Foster on March 3, 2003 07:39 PMAnother interesting caracteristic of intellectuals and pacifists is their insensitivity to violence and killings as long as they are not perpetrated by the West.
For instance they become hysterical about the under two thousand palestinians killed during in the second intifada while unmoved by the two hundred thousand Algerians killed by the Islamists (often in the most sadistic way) and about the two million south sudanese killed by the islamic north and its Al Quaidist allies. I aslo still have to see a leftist demonstration carrying signs: "No Jihad for oil" signs despite South Sudan being oil rich.
After 9/11 the pacifists became hysterical about how wrong it was to retaliate and add to the sufferings of the Afghan people. I won't speak about the fact that doing nothing meant letting Al Quaida prepare another attack, I will just recall that through starving (be it deliberate like during the conquest of Hazarjat, or due to mere carelessness about anything not involving the building of a new mosque), cracking against "unislamic behaviour" and downright massacres in conquered regions like at Mazar, Herat or Bamijan, the taleban and their Al Quaidist allies were killing more Afghans than the US bombs would do. (Notice that the intellectuals didn't stage mass demonstrations against the mass killings perpetrated by the Soviets.
And now In Iraq our intellectuals seem completely unconcerned both about the number of people who would be killed if Saddam gets WMDs and specially nukes, about the number of people who die from starvation or illness due to Saddam diverting the money from "oil for food" program or about the thousands of people who are tortured and killed by Saddam's thugs. But let's have ONE iraki civilian killed by a US bomb gone asrray and they will try to indict George W Bush for war crimes.
Does anyone understand that kind of logic?
Posted by: JFM on March 6, 2003 11:42 AMThe argument is compelling but, IMO, wrong. I dissent.
The reason many intellectuals prefer the left has to do with a host of things, but it starts not in acceptance and entitlement, but in rejection.
An intellectual's excellence or enthusiasm in class is paid back a thousandfold in peer rejection if you don't get some street smarts real fast.
I think it's this rejection that draws intellectuals away from their troglodyte tormenters and toward a utopian vision, a better world. Their sense of entitlement is they're entitled to set things right.
Later, for the leftist intellectual, this need for control gets twisted up and they come to identify with their childhood tormentors, like Joseph Stalin or Saddam Hussein, and will be loyal to them. That involves a rejection of self and they compensate for the powerful internal conflict by turning to the bottle.
Or it could just be that writers and intellectuals love their work, but the economy doesn't give a rat's ass, so they have to choose between an overcrowded, overtalented, competitive, underpaying field of work and other work that they (falsely) see as unrewarding. So naturally they're drawn to ideas about changing the world.
Posted by: IB Bill on March 6, 2003 05:42 PMGood points! I would say the utopian intellectual does indeed identify with his tormenters and rationalizes it by arguing that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. But, as Nozick says, the sense of aggrieved entitlement stems from the early classroom overvaluation of verbal skills. My highly skilled plumber gets paid better than most journalists--and rightly so.
Posted by: Stephen Rittenberg on March 6, 2003 05:55 PMKnew I should've been a plumber!
My favorite plumber joke: A lawyer has to stay home one day to wait for the plumber to come fix the toilet. Plumber shows up, and the job turns out to be simple. It only takes him 15 minutes, and writes up a bill: $100.
The lawyer sees the bill and says, "Wow. I'm an attorney and I don't make $400 an hour."
The plumber replies, "That's all right. I didn't make $400 an hour when I was a lawyer, either."
Posted by: IB Bill on March 6, 2003 09:01 PMI have a hard time valuing an argument against "wordsmith intellectuals" as being not especially worthwhile when it is itself put forward by a man that would seem to be a "wordsmith intellectual" par excellence.
Posted by: Bryan on April 1, 2003 07:02 AMAt any rate this behavior does not seem to be confined to wordsmith intellectuals does it?
I'm thrilled. I've finally stumbled on a forum that insightfully discusses a question which has disturbed me for decades - the cause of the facile anti-Americanism of the so-called intellectual class.
One of the reasons this question evokes such a strong response in me is that I am something of an odd duck in this regard. I am involved in wordsmithing myself, as I slog along beginning my second decade of work in editing a language reference dictionary.
I suspect that I was inoculated against the disease of leftism by the supreme good luck of studying engineering as an undergrad. In the Army I learned Russian from teachers who had experienced the horrors of Communism firsthand. I was dismayed to hear the skepticism of some of my fellow soldiers, that is, some Arts and Sciences majors, who pooh-poohed the testimony of real world witnesses to the reality of the Soviet regime. Some were deeply suspicious of the views of those who had seen the truth.
I feel compelled to share with you an episode that occurred not long ago. The NAACP sponsored a talk by Paul Robeson, Junior in connection with the publication of his biography of his father. When I asked him how anyone could justify a life dedicated to promoting a regime which had murdered forty million of its people, this son of Stalin's trusted mouthpiece replied "It was only thirty million."
Among people of this ilk, I suppose this makes him something of a truth teller!
Posted by: Francis Buchwalder on April 2, 2003 10:41 AMGood discussions, but I take issue with it being said that typing as an NF on the MBTI means one is not inclined to rely on logic and reason. This is simply not true. I am an NF, and believe me, logic and reason are 100% what I rely upon when coming to conclusions. I know plenty of NTs who are leftist, and plenty of NFs who are more to the right- but I will agree with the fact that NFs are way more inclined to be idealistic and at times impractical when dealing with real world issues. It's annoying as hell to be sure, but to imply that NFs are by nature irrational is really a falsehood. I also know plenty of NFs who are scientists. The MBTI is only a scaffolding for a personality- it does not dictate how a personality will manifest.
Posted by: ilex093 on April 7, 2003 03:25 PMThe MBTI is extremely complex, and really can't be used to typecast individuals, simply due to the complexity of it. The test is 100 questions, not 4 as seen on the internet, and only licensed professionals are allowed to administer it.
I just wanted to take the time to clear up a potential misunderstanding about NF types.
Thus, the "blind spot on the Left."
In Glasgow there was an old Gaelic derived expression "Corry-fisted Sullivans" which meant the people who leaned so far to the left and could only see out of one eye and had a very narrow vision indeed. '
Many intelectuals are "corry-fisted Sullivans" and unlike me do not recognize that they live OFF the surplus of our modified free enterprise society. Creating wealth, working hard and efficiently are not things that come by accident but by discipline and hardwork.
Posted by: Ricardo Munro on June 1, 2003 11:50 AMI believe true intellectuals are on the right. While the left seems to prefer attacking everyone's ideals, while having practically none of their own, the right seems to be more willing to stand up for their ideals, unashamed and without fear of retribution.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but all I've seen on the news lately is attempts to discredit Bush and his decision to go to war based on a couple of lines in one of his speeches. How mature is that? Can't they find something else to go after? Even Clinton has called for an end to these BS attacks on Bush.
Posted by: David on July 24, 2003 02:40 PM