“But more importantly, it comes out of the fact that, during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abbatoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.”
Via Instapundit.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools…. being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practise such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practise them.
Intellectualism failed? Not at all. The goal of the Marxist politically correct “intellectuals” is to bring down Western society, and they’ve been having some success at it. That a handful of alleged thinkers who reject reason can do all this without weapons shows the power of ideas — including bad ones as in this case — not their impotence.
The only way to reverse things is to fight bad ideas with good ones. You can’t rely on tradition or spirits in the sky for that, you need to bring in the heavy artillery, which takes reason to its utmost:
“I am challenging the traditions of 2000 years” — Ayn Rand
Once upon a time, a 17 year old illiterate country girl somehow managed to lead the French army in repeated victories over the English, then crowned the King of France, and ended the hundred years war. She was captured and put on trial where she demonstrated superior reason and wisdom over her captors. Her legacy is mocked or ignored by modern feminists and ‘enlightened’ intellectuals because she defended the traditions which began 2000 years ago.
“Whatever thing men call great, look for it in Joan of Arc, and there you will find it.”
– Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc – Mark Twain
Go ahead, bring on your heavy artillery; you will be defeated by better minds.
“Authority is inferior to reason because it deals with opinions about the truth, rather than with the truth itself; whereas reason concerns the subject itself, and comes to a conclusion.”
-Peter Abelard 1079-1142
In the 20th Century “intellectualism” became a paying gig, and many poseurs and evil men tried to get in on the deal.
Also the Soviet Union became aware of the possibility of using Intelectualism as a weapon, which they pursued.
Joe;-nv53;-anselm;-The Phantom;–Thank you for providing the wisdom of the ages. The post-industrial intellectuals became increasingly divorced from the realities of an ordinary (read-Not an acadamic) person’s existance, the intellectuals ran away in their thoughts to the nirvana of the intellectuals-Tenure. Cheers
So open minded their brains fell out.
Yes listening to insulated/isolated intelligentsia in making public policy has been disastrous, but what is more disastrous or dangerous is government taking instructions from this cloistered clan rather than from the electorate as per the operational plan for representative democracy.
When government’s strayed form taking policy directives from the constituent plurality and went to a cloistered minority of special interests to design public policy, we got dystopian.
I’m not quite sure what your point is. Joan of Arc lived in the early 1400s; the destruction of philosophy via Kant and Hegel didn’t start until the late 1700s.
Ayn Rand defended human life, reason, truth and justice like no one else did, so in that regard there are no “better minds” than hers. For the record, she referred to Joan of Arc as history’s most tragic figure.