>>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)
Prominent right-wing intellectuals have backing from private sources & are often ensconced in think tanks. Left-wing intellectuals, in contrast, are quite often employed in higher education: e.g., Noam Chomsky, Grace Chang, Patricia Hill Collins, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, bell hooks, Mimi Ambramovitz, Andrew Ross, Edward Said, Howard Zinn, so-called "academic Marxists" like Pat Bond, Robert Brenner, John Bellamy Foster, Martha Gimenez, David Harvey, Richard Lewontin, Manning Marable, James O'Connor, Michael Perelman, Adolph Reed, Jr., Alan Wald, Ellen Wood, and so on, and so forth. The Right won't suffer much in terms of intellectual production when higher education & the public sector in general are selectively cut back, because their main bread doesn't come from it, but the Left (who work mainly in the humanities & social sciences) do -- and the Right knows *that*.
Besides, the Right's true targets are *public funding* for higher education (& the public sector in general) & *working-class students' access* to it -- their anti-intellectualism is mainly a *means* to an end. It's like attacking lawyers in order to make criminal justice harsher, accomplish the "tort reform," etc. Some leftists don't seem to understand *this strategic thinking*.
>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.
You can't make such a distinction by issuing a blanket dismissal of "academy," "academic books," so-called "academic Marxists," etc. That's absurd.
Name names if you want to criticize idle pedantry & explain why. Be prepared to be challenged in return if you name names incorrectly.
This whole thread started with DP's gratuitous attack on Engels (of all intellectuals on the Left!!!), who can't be accused of "idle pedantry" & was not even a dreaded "academic."
Yoshie