Intellectuals and Society
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- ISBN13: 9780465019489
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The influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but also takes a very different form from that envisioned by persons like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not persons power holders accept the all-purpose vision or the particular policies privileged by intellectuals. Even government leaders with disdain or contempt for intellectuals have had to bend to the climate of opinion shaped by persons intellectuals.
Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how regularly intellectuals have been proved not only incorrect, but grossly and disastrously incorrect in their prescriptions for the ills of society—and how small their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by persons views.
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Sowell is either dishonest or seriously missing the level of intelligence we should expect from such a prominent voice in the wilderness. And not to single him out, I would say this about most of the modern conservative thinkers, many of whom rely on Sowell for much of their disinformation battle.
What Sowell should have addressed were frozen ideologues of all persuasions, not intellectuals. He targets intellectuals because more regularly than not people who get an education and evolve emotionally tend to turn away from rigid conservatism.
Sowell, ironically, is the very type of intellectual he is writing about. After years of listening to conservatives on the radio and TV and reading their twisted writings and presentations of raw data it has become clear to me that they factually project their own character flaws into their conception of liberals and progressives.
The entire premise that intellectuals only have to impress additional intellectuals is a fabrication. Is Glenn Beck advising Sowell or is it the additional way around? One thing I’m certain about is that the loudest echo chamber in the political arena is on the right. Hannity, Rush, Beck, Sowell, etc. factually all say the same things in a race to impress each additional. On the street level most well intentioned conservatives will factually repeat what they heard their gurus say and the creative ones will blend a small Beck with Rush or Hannity with Levin and present it as if it was original thought and worthy of deep concern for our nation.
What motivates a man to write a book on the fake assumption that “liberal” intellectuals only have to talk to each additional for validation and, as implied, must not want to test their theories in the real world?
Liberal intellectuals would like nothing more to test their thoughts out in the real world and ironically it’s the conservatives who are most reliable for blocking the implementation of what intellectuals postulate!
There is a basic truth that has to be stated as a agreed; every step forwards in the journey of mankind, from the arts to addressing the hard realities of life, came from the human minds ability to dream and then to adapt, to test and then to adjust.
For example, liberalism 1.0 had many triumphs and some social failures. Liberals do not deny the failures but why do the conservatives deny the overwhelming successes? And now, due to the characterizations of persons failures as a sweeping indictment on all of liberalism we have not had much success at correcting the course because of the cynicism our conservative friends have been selling to half this nation for decades.
It’s clearly been the conservative’s commitment to a broken government in the name of their brand of intellectualism that has bankrupted this nation financially and mentally. They have, in my estimation, served to prove only that they should not ever be allowed a majority until their ideology gets a makeover. Until then putting them in power is a guarantee for their own negative self fulfilling prophesies!
We see in many Northern European countries, and indeed our own history between 1940 and 1970, that a government of excellent intentions can meet our expectations and function reasonably well even if it isn’t perfect.
So how do you go from conservative incompetence to forming an entire ideology founded on giving up excellent intention & fairness? The thought shouldn’t be to give up on building the world a better place or deferring public policy to the primitive instincts of the worst in us. That’s a terrible ideology because the worst of us, as history has demonstrated can take place, tend to gain power!
Here’s an analogy, we didn’t learn to glide by manufacturing accident. A 747 didn’t just come about as a byproduct of doing something else. It was built on decades of human aspirations, dreams, failures and hard work. But if at any point along the way we allowed thinkers such as Sowell to control the aviation industry or a point company guess what?
We wouldn’t have a 747 and/or that point company would be long gone!
We need our intellectual imagination and just as importantly, we need it to be driven by positive excellent ethical intentions unless you are an anarchist pretending to be of sound mind.
Heck, you can take my 747 illustration all the way back to flight itself. Man dreamed of flying for centuries. Had fake intellectuals such as Sowell ruled the day then dreamers would have, as a replacement for of dreaming, turned their attention to cynicism and what we can’t or should judge we can do.
The conservative says: scenery didn’t give us wings so why are we attempting to outsmart scenery?
And from this I could list every step man has ever taken, every leap forwards learned, etc. Along the way there have been the Sowell’s of the day attempting to kill proposed progress midstream not because we can’t make it but because they don’t judge we should plot or intend anything that the market doesn’t bless us with naturally.
This makes no sense; if enough “intellectuals” or any group of deep thinkers puts into the universe an thought to achieve a worthy goal guess what? We’ll test it empirically in the real world and course right in real time. This isn’t 1975 anymore; the same high equipment that makes Wal-Mart so well-organized could be applied to government if there was a national will to do so.
But once again, how do we get there with 24/7 cable news & radio pundits dumbing people down?
On a social level I’ll give you a couple more examples of intent, of men who had an thought, an intention, and used government to facilitate their heroism; Abe Lincoln and MLK. I guess the fact that we have transcended the limits of persons eras with intention was just a fluke or a coincidence according to Mr. Sowell!
He should know better than to limit our future possibilities just because his generation succeeded in some of their intentions and failed in others. Every generation has the obligation to do what is right and needed in their world even if previous generations have failed. Something is either right or incorrect based on a whole host of considerations such as, but not limited to; ethics, empathy, social stability, “promoting the all-purpose welfare” as it relates to the world today, democracy, freedom, happiness, the needs of our people who must now compete in a global market, etc. For Sowell to imply that we should give up building progress in areas that his generation failed is incorrect; like an ancient grumpy dog we should just snub him and get on with doing the work we need to do.
History does indeed prove Sowell incorrect. From the light bulb above me to the liberation and freedom of the common man, I see examples where we proposed something excellent and succeeded against nearly all odds, including the cynicism of men who have infected every area of human activity.
When I turn a light on all I know it works. I’m not reminded of the thousands of attempts to get it right every time I turn on the switch. But I do thank persons who persevered. To say we can’t also intend for excellent things in the culture or use government to help achieve persons ends is ridiculous. Many of our greatest breakthroughs were the result of government research and investment that was sold or licensed to corporations. Private industry is not regularly willing to invest in the future if a revenue result isn’t anticipated to in the fleeting term pipeline.
And how about We the People; we wouldn’t be the nation we are if government didn’t mandate K thru 12 education or finance the building of our University system which, sorry to say, has tripled tuition’s over the last decade. You can see where the conservatives have led us with all these tax cuts to the wealthy that firm data tells us did not make jobs unless you live in China!
Sowell and most of the conservatives in print and media are Ebenezer Scrooge’s with a different facade! It would serve us all is we took a deeper psychological look at what really drives the modern conservative but I’m not going to go there right now except to say that I have no doubt conservatism is more of an emotionally driven ideology than the fact driven. And when men such as Sowell carve our careers based on intellectualizing and rationalizing the unbalanced inner core of negativity into something of virtue I cringe.
Mr. Sowell is the very type intellectual he writes of; all his thoughts are made for fellow conservative “intellectuals” and media folks such as Rush or Hannity, men who have not done a thing with their lives that relates to the average man. Listening to these men wax poetic about their rise to stardom as a template for all of us is akin to millionaire rock stars or athletes telling everyone that if they just practice they will make it too! Don’t misunderstand me, I’m all about living out one’s dreams and am glad these things are possible for any of us in the natural world but there are algebraic and market probabilities that will limit most people from ever climbing that high. These men, from their vantage point, are just not in a realistic position to be advising the additional 300 million of us on public policy issues; they are all the equivalent of the very “intellectuals” Sowell writes about according to his framing.
Isn’t it also ironic that there is an entire industry of conservatives who have never done anything real in their lives but have managed to make millions “intellectualizing and talking” to each additional and the rest of us through the media about what works in the real world? Or how about the many conservative media gurus who have publicly acknowledged using drugs for years and now that they’ve come back from the brink they want to order the world as if we are all broken or on drugs and are in need of a tough like approach!
Back to the theme of this book; Mr. Sowell’s main contribution here is giving comfort to people predisposed to negativity by demonstrating how to intellectually rationalize cynicism & sociopathologies.
Considering Mr. Sowell’s observations I guess it’s no surprise what we find when we look at the data of a government that does not serve the people well; it runs huge deficits, promotes policies that have shipped jobs to China, has sold out its core to corporations that use the media to propagandize the public, etc.
Does it mean anything to note that EVERY one of these problems and many more have come about from a government that has been led by people with a predominantly conservative ideology for the last 30 years!
Now that is, my dear friends, the only saving grace of Mr. Sowell’s Freudian slip of a book. I shall thank him for revealing to us why we made such a huge error as a nation by throwing out decades of hard learned economic & human lessons in trade for the INTELLECTUAL theories of a bunch of 30 something year ancient conservatives who rose to positions of influence from the reflect tanks of the 1980’s.
I reflect, in all fairness, we should talk about that bunch of intellectuals too. And since they’ve been running the place and reasonably frankly still do through intense political propaganda, well you can take it from here…
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This book should be titled, “Why the people I don’t like are incorrect.” Because his definition of who the intelligentsia really are shifts depending on who supports his views. The non- intelligentsia range from Hoover to a supreme court judge who doesn’t mind talking about car tire treads. Where-as the intellectuals range from The newspaper USA-Today, Television news, some democrat guy (sorry I’m Chinese so I don’t know these people) are all discussed as intellectuals. His “intellectual- class” is defined at the start but none of the examples really fit that definition.
Ridiculous…. I want my money back.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Way too verbose and complex. I usually like Sowell’s books but not this one. I had to take a pass not even half way through it. It just didn’t hold my attention, repetitious to boot.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Intellectually dishonest in that it is not honest about its one-sidedness; the “Intellectuals” mentioned in the title are left-leaning intellectuals – whom the leader is ideologically opposed. There is nothing incorrect with it really being one-sided, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter write similar books, but at least they’re upfront about them being so. An example of its one-sidedness: the leader discusses at part the filtering and obfuscation of information in the media by leftist intellectuals by their use of “verbal virtuosity” (tangentially, as all his citations are of written examples the “verbal”, this word is misapplied), such as the labeling of Herbert Hoover as a proximate cause of the severity of the Fantastic Depression. Sowell does not even mention such instances by intellectuals on the right (e.g. Bush 43’s administration’s fearmongering before the Iraq invasion, Bush 41’s fake aver to enrage the public behind the first Gulf War that Iraqi soldiers were dumping infants out of incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals, and Reagan’s aver that welfare queens were driving around in Cadillacs and wearing fur coats.
It is also inexcusably poorly argued (as most biased books tend to be) Examples included, Sowell’s discussion of judicial restraint and judicial activism. He posits that term judicial activism has been misused by liberals to refer to when Supreme Court deems a law passed by a duely elected Legislature as unconstitutional. Rather, he says, it is when a judge goes beyond the “unadorned English meaning” of the law to rationalize a certain result, and judicial restraint is just the opposite. But if this is what it means Malbury v. Madison (which customary the Court’s power to rule laws unconstitutional) is judicial activism as this power was never explicitly agreed to the Court by the Constitution. What is more, instances of so-called, by Sowell, judicial restraint by conservative judges have to be supported by officially authorized reasoning, which is an interpretation of the officially authorized text, which can be viewed either as restraining or liberal, depending on one’s point of view – so his analysis is non-sensical. Also, the most egregious example of results oriented choice, Bush v. Gore (where the U.S. Supreme Court said it knew Florida law better that the Florida Supreme Court) is not even mentioned (probably because the leader desired its outcome). Also, he refers to a well loved study which concluded whites applicants are agreed loans more regularly that blacks even though they have similar incomes. He attempts to undermine this scientific measuring of institutional racism by arguing that there are many additional dimensions, besides income, that are considered. Then, belabors this uncontroversial point with a baseball analogy. He does not chat about what the additional dimensions would be or if the study took them into consideration – he is an economist after all, one would reflect he would have something more substantial to say.
It is hypocritical in that, even though Sowell falls into his definition of an intellectual, he does not apply his criticism of them to himself just like he does not apply them to persons on the right he identifies with. It is even sloppily edited. There are quotations lacking citations and citations in improper format.
As far as excellent points, all I can say is that if one is looking for insight into what conservatives today generally judge and why (but misguided), this book provides one with an excellent understanding.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I establish this book to some extent disappointing. Sowell broadens the definition of “intellectual” so much in this book the word becomes having no effect. He criticizes “intellectuals” like Jane Fonda, Ted Turner, Walter Cronkite, and Hillary Clinton. A better title would have been Liberal Politicians and Society. This was not a book up to the intellectual (yes, I’m using that word) standards of Sowell’s previous work.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5