Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete F.
Victimized as usual
Just what is this then if not anti-intellectual:I agree more with what W. F. Buckley said: "I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2000 people on the faculty of Harvard University."
Is it because they have degrees, where they work, live or just what would make them worse than any 2000 people in Boston other than that they are intellectuals?
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Your not being very intellectual here. Buckley didn't prefer the 2000 regular folks because the Harvard faculty was intellectual. That would have been a condemnation of himself. Buckley was one of the greatest intellectual forces of conservative philosophy.
He trusted average Americans to know what was best for themselves (especially in a time when American individualist values were still admired) over the elitist opinions of academics in the aloof ivory towers of universities which had shifted from their founding ideology of American individualism and self government to the Progressive view of government by experts. The average American increasingly bore the brunt of this top down expert way, and surprise, the guys on top increasingly got better off.
These universities were informing the minds of those they were breeding to be the next lawyers, politicians, journalists, educators, and "thinkers" who would continue the process of changing our constitutionally based system of government into the Progressive model of an administrative state wherein We The People were no longer the boss of our own lives and the government the servant, but, on the contrary, it would be the other way around.
Which was supposedly for the good of the common man, who was not "educated" nor informed well enough about what really was best for society. It was the task of these "educated" graduates to transform this country into what was to be the best governed and free one because it would be ruled by those with expert knowledge on how it should be done. Freedom was no longer to be some undisciplined and ignorant exercise of individual "rights." Freedom was to be what government rulers and expert administrators would allow in order for society to function in a way which suited their idea of "good."
And, by today, the people would be happy. And feel free. How else could they be and feel when living under the enlightened creation of the best Progressive minds.
So here we are. Happy as a lark. Except for half the population (and rising) of ill educated, political illiterates, depending on the experts to solve the best way to sustain their lives. And most of the other half worrying if the experts will eff up what middling lives they have. And don't look behind the curtain where the small cadre of economic and political rulers are expertly pulling and pushing regulatory strings and levers trying to maintain their power by somehow, or however, keeping the whole thing from blowing up.
Buckley understood how destructive to the practice of individual freedom Progressive political ideology would be. And how it could turn a nation of basically self-governing individuals into one of government directed collectives. His notion is not anti-intellectual. It is a mixture of pragmatism, common sense, and critical thinking which applies it all to who best knows how to live one's own life.
It is not an anti-intellectual viewpoint of the right. The "right" has no shortage of college educated people. Nor would those 2000 Bostonians in the telephone directory that Buckley would trust (some of whom could have college degrees) all be on the right. In fact, being from Boston, most would probably lean more left.
And my view is certainly not anti-intellectual. I have two college degrees and credits for more. And I certainly don't feel victimized if I think that I am not dumber than you.
So it's not "because they have degrees, where they work, [or] live" as you say. It's because they are out of touch with the heart and soul of who a free people really are. And a free people would rather govern themselves and elect government servants who think and live like them than by those who have an ill founded belief that they are better because they think they are more "intellectual."