Les Jones

Politics > Ace on Jeff Goldstein and Liberal Intellectual Vanity

Ace of Spades:

The left, to a man, considers itself to be educated and enlightened. It matters not how little actual schooling a particlular leftist may have had, nor how unintelligent the person might be. They all consider themselves intellectuals of sorts. If they dropped out of college after one semester, they just think of themselves as autodidacts whose genius could not be stimulated by the ossified and bourgeois teaching of the academy. If they're just plain stupid or crazy -- like, say, Charlie Sheen -- they indulge in farcial conspiracy-theorizing, reassuring themselves that they are intellectual because they know things others do not. They are one of the chosen few brave enough to see past the web of lies and glimpse the arcane truth behind, say, the implosion of the World Trade Center (a SEAL team planted those charges, you know?).

This conceit, usually wholly undeserved, of practically every leftist in the world is what makes leftism so intoxicating for the intellectually insecure, and what makes leftists so easily led and manipulated. It's an intoxicating doctrine for those who wish to conceive of themselves as intellectual and brilliant, for it provides an instant short-cut to the equivalent of an MIT education. If you simply believe these things we tell you to believe, you are one of Us, one of the Intellectually Elite, one of the Cultural Vanguard. Just as giving oneself to Christ, and believing in His power, and accepting the need for and gift of His redemption, instantly makes one "saved" and enters one's name in the Book of the Heaven, so too does accepting leftist tropes and core beliefs make one one of the Secular Elect.

OK, so that's probably an overly broad stroke, but in my experience it's true of a kind of unexamined intellectual vanity that one more often sees on the left than on the right (which is more prone to religious vanity). It's true there are some smart people on the left, but there are smart people on all sides, and assuming you're smart based on whether you always pull D or always pull R is simplistic. (And if you always pull the lever for one party you're a stooge who isn't thinking.)

It's true that there are lots of people (but not, apparently, John Kerry) who are smarter than George W. Bush. But the Bush adminstration grasped that when you're pushed you push back and that bullies only respect strength, which is a basic fact of life not grasped by many people who consider themselves intellectuals.

PS I had no idea Jeff Goldstein was a professor even after years of reading the guy.