[lbo-talk] New CBS Poll: Bad News For Kerry

[Carl Remick]

>From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
>
>The extent of US parochialism
>and philistinism is nothing new - volumes have been written about it
>(cf. Richard Hofstadter, _Anti-Intellectualism in American Life_ :
>Knopf, 1963), but as far as I can tell - there are not that many
>attempts to use it as an explanatory factor in today's politics.
>Perhaps one reason is the intellectual delusion that developed since the
>Great Deal that holds an idealized image of "the people" as an
>essentially progressive force.

Yes, believing in the progressiveness of The People is as pernicious an 
intellectual delusion as intellectuals believing intellectuals constitute an 
effective leadership cadre.  Whenever I think of intellectuals as a social 
vanguard I think of Aldous Huxley's comical, squabbling Alphas.  And, along 
with The People, I laugh.

Carl