> So my question is, what circumstances or personality traits make these
> intellectual "gardener's dogs" fervently protecting what they will not eat
> themselves? That is, how does one become a dogmatic theologian or an
> economist manufacturing legitimacy for the rich and powerful without
> sharing
> the spoils their wealth and power?
Morality is a matter of subjective commitment, and intellectuals can only commit themselves to ideas that are actually lying around. (They, of course, pride themselves on the innovations and modifications they make to those ideas, but completely original thinkers end in the madhouse, not academe. How would one even communicate her ideas?) I don't think Power to the People is inherently more rational a commitment than Power to the People Who Already Have Power, and the those who benefit from the latter almost definitionally have more leverage over the ideas currently in currency. And, of course, the opportunity to become an intellectual is not evenly distributed among the various strata of society.
Why contemporary Western intellectuals skew to the left of contemporary Westerners generally is in greater need of explanation, I think. I suspect it's mostly a matter of being the group who consciously chose to avoid the world of business. Those who won't do, teach.