The left: still dying (was Re: European Unions)

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Sun Apr 8 12:37:21 PDT 2001



>From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>
>Justin writes:
>
>>I just love American left anti-intellectualism. Who needs a buncha
>>pointy heads sayin things good plain folk cain't unnerstan, anyway?
>
>It makes sense *for the Right* to put out anti-intellectual
>propaganda ...

Why? Somebody just the other day posted to the list a comment indicating that the right now commands the high grounds of intellectual effort, what with conservatives' ample funding of bulging-brain think tanks, etc. I think the comment is absurd, since conservative "thinking" is never more than sophistry, served up by cartoonish figures like, say, Myron Magnet. (If you want a good laugh, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29108-2001Apr2.html)

As for supposed lefist "anti-intellectualism," we have to maintain the always -- throughout the ages -- critical distinction between true intellectual achievement and idle pedantry. E.g., Pope: "the bookful blockhead ignorantly read, with loads of learned lumber in his head," "words are like leaves, and where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found," and so on.

Carl _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com



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