Specifically it asks, in so many words, is Rush Limbaugh an
intellectual ?
.
BTW, the author, Mr. Ace, says that conservatives --not
necessarily Republicans,
probably only a small percentage of Republicans-- are
more intellectual than
liberals, also a small percentage of Democrats. This seems
to be about right
although it is useful to add that at different times in our
history the converse
has been true.
.
What, then, is an intellectual ? Someone who is at home in
the world of ideas,
who is critical-minded about those ideas, places high
priority on thinking through
issues based on original research or original logical
deduction or induction, and
has a vocabulary to express ideas which is at the high end
of the scale because
he ( could be she ) needs those words for the sake of
nuance and shades
of meaning.
.
Don't be fooled by $ 5 words, though. Faux intellectuals,
or wannabe intellectuals,
in common with stuffed shirt academics, tend to be overly
erudite and make use
of a lot of polysyllabic words. That's a dead giveaway for
not really being
intellectual. Any good intellectual mostly uses simple
words, its just that,
like a good tradesman, if he needs a specialized tool its
is handy and can
be pulled out of the toolbox at a moment's notice.
.
If you need to use the word
"antidisestablishmentarianism," even if the need
only comes up once in twenty years, there it is, right next
to the claw hammer
and your set of phillips screwdrivers. And, O yeah, it
helps, if you are
is not in your blood, that's what I'd like to know.
.
an intellectual refers to his favorite philosophers now and
then.
to others, and likes the ideas of his favorites a heck of a
lot.
They, too, are in his blood. They are part of who he is.
.
Rush Limbaugh seems not to know about or care about any
philosophers.
the wrong conclusions-- but that's about it..
.
As for George Will, a certified intellectual, is there any
doubt that he
an impressive list of his favorite philosophers without any
hesitation
if you asked. Burke. Locke. De Maistre. St. Thomas Aquinas.
Torquemada.
And so forth. Or maybe, if you count theologians ( which
you should )
he would include Barth, Tillich, GK Chesterson, and
Niebuhr.
Plus Yogi Berra.
.
This is the idea. Limbaugh wouldn't know a philosopher even
if
Immanuel Kant bit him on the ass.
.
December 10, 2012
Joe Scarborough: God-Damn Those Political Talk Show Hosts
Who Run Other People Down Just To Increase Their Influence,
Buff Their Brand, and Juice Their Ratings
Scarborough says a few things that I almost agree
with.
I'm a bit astonished at his lack of self-awareness, though.
This guy's brand consists almost entirely of being a "bully"
(as he terms it) for the northeastern moderate wing of the
Republican Party, constantly insulting rivals and millions
of voting citizens.
I don't begrudge the moderate wing its own bully, but his
diagnosis here is so filthy
with opportunism and self-interest it's offensive.
He got booted off the air because
people weren't listening to his radio show and he was
losing in the ratings to competitors. And he seems to be
doing nothing but trying to get payback for that (for his
own failure to connect with an audience) and buffing his own
brand.
I do not believe all this crap about the Republican Party
needing to be more controlled by/influenced by/led by
intellectuals to succeed.
Let's think about this.
Here's what I do believe: I believe Republicans should be
more intellectual, generally. Actually, I think all people
should be more intellectual, generally.
I think conservatives especially should be more
intellectual, or more... admittedly intellectual.
Let me explain: I think most readers of this site are
actually intellectuals to one degree or another. Anyone
who's quoting Hayek? Congratulations, you're an
intellectual.
If you're strongly interested in ideas and you read a fair
amount, and you enjoy abstract thinking and arguing about
concepts and principles, you're an intellectual.
Now, conservatives hate this designation and they run from
it. I am generalizing from my own experience, here: I never
wanted to think of myself as an intellectual. I think I
tried to hide my intellectualism in the guise of anti-intellectualism,
but that is still basically an intellectual position.
Conservatives don't hate intellectualism, per se. They hate
faux intellectualism, which is certainly the dominant
form of "intellectualism" that exists in the current age.
(Let me just throw in a broad guess and say that's probably
the dominant form of intellectualism in any age.)
And this faux intellectualism, this faux sophistication,
generally takes the guise of a faux thoughtfulness -- see
Bob Costas -- or pettifogging sophistry.
So people run from the label and don't self-identify that
way. Those who do identify as intellectuals, and
adopt the Cultural Signifiers of the Intellectual Tribe,
tend not to be terribly thoughtful and not actually, oh,
what's the word I'm looking for? Not that smart. So the
self-identifying intellectuals -- most of them, the...
bitter clingers, if you will, to a false, contrived shallow
signification of intellectualism, have damaged the brand.
But let's face it, who are we kidding? Empire of Jeff, for
example, uses the same sort of Lowbrow guise as I do but,
you know, he's smart. He's read a book. His idea of fun is
to go online and read arguments and respond to arguments.
So, you know, dick jokes and all that but I'll call him out
as an intellectual.
Most of the people on this site are. Including the folks
who didn't go to college, who are largely autodidacts to one
degree or another.
I could also put in a brief argument here (generalizing
from personal experience) that men, especially conservative
men, tend to view self-improvement type things as
fundamentally womanly (real men are what they are and don't
need improving!), which is a not-very-helpful attitude on a
purely personal level, and which ultimately contributes to
this idea that identifying as someone who likes learning
things is a bit soft and "liberal," but that's just a
suspicion. Again, generalizing from my own previous
attitudes (which I'm trying to wring out of my system). And
this attitude stems from those who urge self-improvement
type things generally being, what's the word, idiots.
Anyway, I think most people here are intellectuals to a
fair extent and probably would not admit that even if I
juiced them up with sodium pentathol. And that's fine. I
get, as I did that for all my life. Those who claim to be in
the club of intellectuals tend to make the club look fairly
lame.
But is Scarborough right that anti-intellectualism,
especially that espoused by other "talk radio hosts"
dragging the party down?
Is Rush Limbaugh an intellectual, by the broad definition
I've just suggested? Is Mark Levin? Is Glenn Beck?
Yes, of course. By the broad definition I've suggested,
they are primarily idea-oriented and argument-oriented and
therefore intellectuals.
Now they're not full-on intellectuals, at least not in
their day jobs. They're pop intellectuals -- people who
popularize intellectual ideas. Which is, ultimately, how the
great majority of the public gets their exposure to
intellectual ideas. The public does not read Steven
Hawking's actual papers. They would not understand them. (As
I wouldn't.) To the extent the public knows about Steven
Hawking's ideas they know them from his pop science book and
the occasional news story about him written in a pop science
fashion, which means no math, no definitions, no rigor, but
a lot of hyped up metaphors.
"Think of chaos theory as a ball of yarn twisted into knots
by a billion subatomic epileptic kittens," or whatever. Not
really "science." It's a meaningless sentence. Tells you
nothing. You're actually dumber for having read it.
Anyway, point is, the conservative movement has a fair
number of pop intellectuals, and those are generally the
sort of intellectuals that engage the general public. And
ultimately, it's not that Rush Limbaugh is
"anti-intellectual" and Joe Scarborough is "intellectual;"
it's that they're both pop intellectuals, and they just
happen to disagree. Joe Scarborough just happens to be
more.... yes, liberal. By inclination and also by
requirement for continued employment.
Now as a personal matter I've now quit the
anti-intellectual habit and like anyone who's quit recently,
I'm a bit of an annoying evangelist for it. Just like an
ex-smoker is very annoying about quitting smoking.
And so, as a personal matter, I'm currently big on advising
people to become smarter, as I'm trying to do that myself. I
would advise dumb people to become smarter, and smart people
to become smarter, and genius level people to become
smarter.
But while I'd say this is good personal advice, as "quit
smoking" and "try Adkins" are good bits of personal advice,
do this advice really have anything to do with winning
elections?
Adelei Stephenson was, I understand, a self-identifying
tribal-signifying intellectual. He got demolished. I know
little of Barry Goldwater, but I get the sense he was
something of an intellectual (certainly he inspired
later intellectuals in the conservative movement). He got
demolished, too.
Romney, as I often said with some worry, was strongly
self-identifying as a rationalist and as a thinker, and he
doubled-down on intellectualism/rationalism with his VP pick
of another strong rationalist/intellectual. They lost.
Note Obama -- obviously a self-styled intellectual --
picked for his VP a dummy.
Let's not mince words here. We're among friends. You're all
pretty smart.
Most people are not that smart.
As a definitional matter, they cannot be that smart. We
define "smart" as "more clever than the average person" so
by definition most people will have only an average bit of
cleverness, and a fair number of people will have less than
that, and about an equal number will have more than that.
So, a majority of people are either of average intelligence
or lower. They're not particularly intellectual. And the
ones who are kind of dumb but fancy themselves intellectuals
are almost all in the Democratic Party. And they're welcome
to them.
So two closely related points about Scarborough's claim:
1, it's bullshit. He's no more an intellectual than
Limbaugh is, but is trying to claim People Should Listen To
Me Because I'm Smart and an Intellectual. Well, so is
Limbaugh. The difference between them is not status
(intellectual vs. non-intellectual) but simply preference in
policy.
Claiming a policy should be selected due to the status
of the person advancing it is a phony argument and an
anti-intellectual move in and of itself. Ideas rise or fall
by their own worthiness. The status of the person offering
the idea is, logically speaking, irrelevant.
This is the nasty, self-serving thing Scaroborough does
that I really find offensive, and, in fact, is the chief
reason that self-identification as Intellectual has fallen
out of favor among many conservatives -- because every time
we see the Intellectual Card played, it's in service of
knocking a conservative as "dumb."
Maybe it would be a good idea to reclaim intellectualism
for the actual intellectuals. I guess maybe that's why I'm
writing this.
2, as a personal matter, sure, more people should just
admit they enjoy the life of the mind (and those who haven't
given that a shot should try it and see if it doesn't suit
them). But as far as winning politics, intellectualism has
never, ever been a strong bet.
And this doesn't just apply to candidates; many people
venerate Irving Kristol but few people actually read
him. Far more people read or listen to the pop
intellectuals, like Limbaugh, which is the way it always
has been and always will be.
There's nothing wrong with pop intellectuals. They're quite
necessary. Although I goofed on the way dumb reporters
describe chaos theory, with epileptic subatomic kittens and
yarn made of spacetime or whatever, let's face it, that's
about my own level of understanding of chaos theory. Without
the kittens, I've got nothing. Honestly, my knowledge of
Chaos Theory comes almost exclusively from Jeff Goldblum in
Juraissic Park.
But ultimately politics is about reaching the common man,
and from what I've seen, while the common man certainly
doesn't want a dummy in high office, the common man
tends to get suspicious of anyone who is too obviously
intelligent, or, perhaps, just finds that someone who
tribally signifies as Intellectual is not part of
his own tribe and ergo does not "share my values."
I think every political movement needs an intellectual
wing. But what I think it needs even more of is a populist
wing.
Scarborough is a dummy if he thinks that people of middling
to low intelligence -- and a low interest in political
ideas, especially -- are suddenly going to go kookoo for the
Republican Party if we all just start acting very
intellectual and make it clear that the intellectuals are in
charge.
The Democrats won seats in the Senate in 2012. Is Harry
Reid an intellectual? Does he present himself that way? Does
he come off as if he has an IQ north of 94?
No, he doesn't.
I don't have a simple prognosis here because it's not a
simple situation -- certainly not as simplistic as the
supposed intellectual Scarborough suggests. Yes, a Movement
Based on Ideas needs some ideas and it needs some
intellectuals to work those ideas. And it also needs some
popularizes of those ideas, who can move easily between
higher- and lower-level pitches. And it needs, frankly, some
pure populists. Joe Biden types.
There was a Republican judicial nominee whose intelligence
was questioned (as they always are, unless they're obviously
highly intelligent, in which case they are portrayed as
Scheming Intellectual Devil-Men). Someone attempted to
defend his nomination with the inelegant argument that less
intelligent people need some representation too.
Well, they do. And sometimes less intelligent people grow
suspicious of more intelligent people (and vice versa-- a
favorite intellectual passtime is to fret that the
supposedly-dumb average conservative citizen is going to
mass-murder some folks because his favorite NASCAR driver
lost a race to a girl).
Sorry, but all I see here is Scarborough playing the
Intellectual Card in the exact manner that has poisoned
conservatives against the notion of intellectualism -- once
again arguing that intellectualism is inherently liberal.
It's not. In fact, I think I could make a pretty strong
case that liberalism generally succeeds because it requires
less thought, less abstract thought I mean,
than conservatism. Conservatism tends to win only when
liberal thought has produced such horrific results that it
becomes, temporarily, an option requiring just as little
thought as the liberal option.
Like when crime is increasing dramatically and liberals
keep arguing that we need to be softer on criminals. In such
situations, the conservative response doesn't really take a
great deal of higher-level abstract thought -- the average
guy who doesn't think much about politics can decide "That's
total bullshit" without needing to read conservative
theorists.
Well, I have rambled on. But this is a major pet peeve of
mine: Those, like Costas and Scarborough, who pose as
thoughtful while offering thoughtless bromides.
I keep saying this: If you want to be considered an
intellectual, start doing some intellectualizing. Start
thinking. Start questioning that gut-level, often
self-interested reflexive notion that first pops into your
head. The automatic burbling that just happens to be in your
own political or personal interest. ("If only more people
watched my show (and coincidentally gave me higher ratings
and higher status) we wouldn't be in this mess in the first
place...")
Instinct and gut are frequently right, but I wouldn't trust
them. And anything that's self-serving and advances your own
cache over your rivals? I definitely would scrutinize the
heck out of that before offering it up as an Unshakable
Piece of Conservative Thinking. There's a chance it's right,
but more likely, it's just people doing what they do,
offering up ill-considered self-serving pablum.
I don't mind Scarborough arguing for a more moderate,
liberal Republican Party. I would agree with him very
strongly that the party is reducing its appeal by too many
purity tests. And the average political actor in the party
is coming off -- as odd as this sounds -- as "too
political." (I know, that makes no sense, but I think it's
true.)
But let's have less of this self-conceit, eh? If you were
as intellectual as you imagine, you wouldn't have sounded
like such an idiot.
Let's kind of try addressing each other as equals in
intellect and see how that discussion might go.
