The Pretense of Knowledge
David Brooks, the New York Times’s simulacrum of a conservative, is getting a lot of attention for his condescending NYT article (but I repeat myself) on the Tea Party movement. He moans about how His Kind of People, you know, The Right Kind of People, just don’t get the kind of respect they deserve from the Great Unwashed:
The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.
The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.
The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.
A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.
The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation. [Now where in God’s name could they ever have gotten that idea? Some people!]
Excuse me while I wipe this tear from my eye.
I’ve been at research universities for 25+ years as a PhD student and faculty member, so I’ve been immersed in the “educated class” for virtually my entire adult life. I know all about the David Brookses of the world. Hell, David Brooks and I became members of the “educated class” at the same place and almost the same time: he is AB Chicago ’83, I am AB Chicago ’81.
So, perhaps arguing against personal interest and being a traitor to my class, let me enlighten my fellow Chicago alum on why vast swathes of the American populace are rebelling at his ilk.
The Jacksonian version, courtesy of my grandfather*: “They are as useless as tits on a bull.” (Also sometimes rendered as “as useless as tits on a boar,” depending on his mood.)
If that bovine (or porcine) reference puzzles the denizens of the Upper West Side whose closest encounter with livestock has come at the grocery store, perhaps something more literary–more educated–might be in order. Might I suggest the following readings:
- Hayek, The Pretense of Knowledge.
- Paul Johnson, Intellectuals.
- And, a brand new book by Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society. (Knowledge and Decisions and The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy are also on point.) National Review’s Uncommon Knowledge is running a series of interviews with Sowell about his new book.
In fact, my grandfather was too kind. If only they were just useless. But as Hayek, Johnson, and Sowell mercilessly demonstrate, self-styled “intellectuals” and “the educated class” have been, for the most part, positively pernicious because of their hubristic belief in their own powers, and their own righteousness. We are currently experiencing a gale of destructive destruction at their hands. A lot of people may not be able to articulate exactly what’s wrong in ways that David Brooks would find convincing, but they have enough common sense to know something is wrong, to understand the basic contours of what’s wrong, and to know who is to blame.
And David, if you think that condescension from the likes of you is going to do anything but (a) make them laugh at your buffoonery, or (b) just get them more POd, think again.
And if you think (as you clearly insinuate) that the Great Unwashed are agin’ it (global warming, abortion, gun control, big guvmint, multilateralism) just cuz’ yer fur it, don’t flatter yourself. They’re agin’ it because they know BS when they smell it, and because they don’t like getting it shoved in their faces. Put differently, it’s not that they don’t like your ideas because they don’t like you. It’s that they don’t like you because of your ideas–and the consequences of putting them into action.
One year of the rule of the self-styled intellectuals has made it abundantly clear to a strong majority of the American populace that it has put the nation on the road to ruin, and they’re not about to accept that meekly.
And thank God for that.
* Lest you think him an anti-intellectual reactionary, my grandfather, though of matchless Jacksonian heritage (he was a Hatfield, through his mother), was nonetheless a highly educated and well-read man. He was, however, almost completely self-taught, due to the educational handicaps of being born poor in Appalachia at the turn of the last century. Moreover, his intellect was relentlessly practical. He learned electronics in the Navy (in which he enlisted after lying about his age to escape a dysfunctional home life and a likely future in the coal mines or shooting oil wells in the back of beyond West Virginia), and then went to work as a lineman for Illinois Bell, eventually working his way up through the ranks to become head of the North Division of Chicago for “The Telephone Company”–as it was then. He actually had to use his mind to make things, you know, work and stuff; unlike with most intellectuals, he bore the consequences of failure. He also had an intense interest in history, of all sorts. In short, although not a member of “the educated class” by any measure, he was far wiser about the world than most of those who, pace Hayek, delude themselves with the pretense of knowledge.
“One year of the rule of the self-styled intellectuals has made it abundantly clear to a strong majority of the American populace that it has put the nation on the road to ruin,”
Any wars initiated that cannot be won? Nope.
Is the only way he can conceive of financing two wars is with tax cuts? Nope.
Was he in power as Greenspan blew the housing bubble? Nope.
Was he the one in power when Dubya said “This sucker could go down”, referring to the US economy, last September? Nope.
Was he the one who said “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” as an argument for financing two wars by means of tax cuts? Nope.
Clearly, yet more fact-free partisan spleen-venting from SWP. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
Comment by rkka — January 6, 2010 @ 5:51 am
rkka–
I see that your whataboutism is not confined to matters Russian, but extends to US politics as well. Just about as convincing here as there. Intellectually lazy and unconstructive.
Re wars initiated that cannot be won. Well, the “war of choice” has been won. Imperfectly, but no victory is ever perfect. Iraq is a perfect illustration of Churchill’s dictum that the US will do the right thing, after trying everything else first. And, standing in September, 2001, did you think it was correct, let alone politically possible, not to initiate war in Afghanistan?
Re Greenspan, deficits, etc. You are aiming at the wrong target. If you think that a libertarian/Friedman devotee endorsed Greenspan’s monetary diarrhea or his pretense that he had the knowledge to fine tune the economy, or was on board with the direction of US policy across administrations post-Reagan (and even during Reagan) you aren’t thinking clearly. (Not that that would surprise me.)
The fact that previous administrations and Congresses f*cked up is no reason to give Obama a pass, except in the two-wrongs-make-a-right, whatabout Bush world of Obama and lackeys like you. Sunk costs are sunk. The fact that errors were committed in the past is no excuse for compounding them, or making even more egregious errors going forward. The word “Bush” is not a magic incantation that immunizes anyone who invokes it from accountability for their actions today. You want to live in the past–go ahead.
Oh, and BTW: If there’s nothing to see here, WTF do you keep hanging around?
Craig, this reminds me of a great passage in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, where Schumpeter describes intellectuals as “people who wield the power of the spoken and the written word” but are distinguished by “the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs.” Their “critical attitude” arises “no less from the intellectual’s situation as an onlooker — in most cases also as an outsider — than from the fact that his main chance of asserting himself lies in his actual or potential nuisance value.”
I put that one, and some other funny quotes, in this little piece:
http://mises.org/story/2318
Comment by Peter G. Klein — January 6, 2010 @ 12:41 pm
Peter–
Great quote. I was thinking of including something from Schumpeter in the original post (the perhaps clunky phrase “destructive destruction” was a nod and a wink in his direction). Your quote is perfect.
I’m re-reading Schumpeter now. Believe it or not, I first read him as a senior in HS, and then re-read him as a freshman in college. He had a big impact on me. We are to a considerable degree living out CS&D today.
Do you really want Rule of the Intellectuals (?) to be replaced by Rule of Michael Vilkin (and similar)?
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — January 6, 2010 @ 4:32 pm
No, S/O. I am favor of less Rule period, by anybody. But I do find Rule of the Intellectuals to be particularly dangerous because they combine ignorance with arrogance. They are ignorant of the fact that they are, in fact, ignorant of the things that matter. Firm in the delusions of their knowledge and competence, they wreak havoc. It’s the whole Sorcerer’s Apprentice thing.
“rkka–
I see that your whataboutism is not confined to matters Russian, but extends to US politics as well. Just about as convincing here as there. Intellectually lazy and unconstructive.”
Intellectually lazy would be saying ‘Obama’s put us on the road to ruin in just a year’ while refusing to recognize that we have been on precisely that road for far longer than that. IMO, the real “point of no return’ on that road was referenced by a point you chose not to explicitly address. It was Dick Cheney saying “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” to argue for more tax cuts while we had 2 wars to finance that indicated our fate was sealed.
“Re wars initiated that cannot be won. Well, the “war of choice” has been won. Imperfectly, but no victory is ever perfect. Iraq is a perfect illustration of Churchill’s dictum that the US will do the right thing, after trying everything else first.”
Um, no. A reading of the materials available on the Iraq Status of Forces Agreement shows that it amounted to Maliki telling Bush to butt out while he prepares for additional sectarian cleansing of Sunnis. The requirement that all US military operations, except for immediate self-defense, be coordinated with the Iraqi government, and the specification of a withdrawl schedule for US forces that can only be altered on a decision of a joint Iraq-US committe, is especially telling on this point.
http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/128352.pdf
Of course, it’s not his fault Bush really had no leverage to negotiate with, since the legal basis for the presence of US forces in Iraq, UNSCR 1790, was gonna turn back into a pumpkin on 1 January 2009 if he couldn’t get *some* agreement out of Maliki.
“And, standing in September, 2001, did you think it was correct, let alone politically possible, not to initiate war in Afghanistan?”
A punitive expedition at least was indeed inevitable, and if left at that its objectives would have been achievable. Further, a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan could possibly have succeeded if undertaken while the security situation was favorable and while the US retained Afghan and international goodwill.
But p*ssing all that away on Iraq put Afghanistan in the ‘unwinnable’ category.
“Re Greenspan, deficits, etc. You are aiming at the wrong target. If you think that a libertarian/Friedman devotee endorsed Greenspan’s monetary diarrhea or his pretense that he had the knowledge to fine tune the economy, or was on board with the direction of US policy across administrations post-Reagan (and even during Reagan) you aren’t thinking clearly. (Not that that would surprise me.)”
I said nothing of your thinking on these points. They are indicators that the US has been on the road to ruin for far, far longer than a year.
“The fact that previous administrations and Congresses f*cked up is no reason to give Obama a pass, except in the two-wrongs-make-a-right, whatabout Bush world of Obama and lackeys like you.”
Moi, a guy who has said here that sending any available number of US troops to Afghanistan isn’t gonna cut it and that we should bring ’em home, and that the global economy is headed for the rocks, is an Obama lackey? Heh- there ya go, politicizing everything again.
“Sunk costs are sunk. The fact that errors were committed in the past is no excuse for compounding them, or making even more egregious errors going forward. The word “Bush” is not a magic incantation that immunizes anyone who invokes it from accountability for their actions today.”
Sure. Criticize all ya want. Just make sense when you do. When you say senseless stuff like ‘One year of the rule of the self-styled intellectuals has made it abundantly clear to a strong majority of the American populace that it has put the nation on the road to ruin’ expect to get called on it, because it looks more like politicized, destructive spleen-venting than constructive criticism based on facts and analysis. Especially since when crybaby Newtie shut down the Big, Bad, Federal Government that American populace you talk about found out that it really, really likes a lot of the stuff the BBFG does.
Comment by rkka — January 6, 2010 @ 6:21 pm
“The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit.” V.I. Lenin.
Comment by So? — January 6, 2010 @ 7:39 pm