Fun With Equivocation
Thomas Sowell Edition
or
Dumb Are Good

Well, there's this, from Thomas Sowell at NRO.

People treat the National Review as if it were a serious publication because it's just about the least insane of the conservative journals of opinion. But it isn't serious, and it hasn't been for some time.

Here are Sowell's points, in a nutshell:

People say that the GOP is anti-intellectual. But some people who have the mannerisms of the intellectual are not, in fact, very knowledgeable at all! And some people who don''t have those mannerisms are knowledgeable! And some people with Ph.D. s are stupid!

Therefore...huh?

So let's go over a few points, shall we? To address them in careful detail would take hours, so I hope you'll forgive me for cutting to the chace.

Ahem.

Part of the problem here has to do with the ambiguity of 'intellectual,' especially in the context of 'anti-intellectual.' Roughly, 'intellectual' can mean:

(1) Someone who is learned, or who lives the life of the mind, or who is devoted to thinking about complex matters.
or
(2) A pretentious ass; an effete--probably literary--dilettant; e.g. a tiresome sesquipedalian.

So in the first sense, scientists are intellectuals; in the second sense, not.

Now, in the first sense, it's good to be an intellectual; in the second sense, not.

I know a lot of intellectuals in the first sense; but, despite being in academia, I don't know very many of the second kind. Oh, I encounter 'em sometimes, and I hate 'em as much as you do. I just don't run into them very often.

The problem with the GOP is that it has become anti-intellectual in the second sense of 'intellectual.'

But Sowell tries to avoid the charge by a crude equivocation. Goes like this:

(i) People are complaining that the GOP has become anti-intellectual!
(ii) But intellectuals are bad!
.---------------------------------------------------------------------
(iii) The GOP is good!

But this really means:

(i) People are complaining that the GOP has become anti-intellectual(1)!
(ii) But intellectuals(2) are bad!
.---------------------------------------------------------------------
(iii) The GOP is good!

So, even ignoring any other problems with this inference, it's based on an equivocation, and, so, is not more valid than:

Only man is rational
No woman is a man
.--------------------
No woman is rational

The relevant points become particularly clear when we look at the term 'anti-intellectual' instead of 'intellectual.' To say that someone is anti-intellectual is clearly to say that they are opposed to intellectualism in the first sense of 'intellectual.' No one uses 'anti-intellectual' to mean doesn't like effete literary snobs. The widespread worry about the contemporary GOP is not that they seem to be dead set against effete literary snobdom. The problem is that they seem to be dead set against any kind of learning or thinking.

And see, that's a problem.

Sowell writes:

Adlai Stevenson was certainly regarded as an intellectual by intellectuals in the 1950s. But, half a century later, facts paint a very different picture.

Historian Michael Beschloss, among others, has noted that Stevenson “could go quite happily for months or years without picking up a book.” But Stevenson had the airs of an intellectual — the form, rather than the substance.

What is more telling, form was enough to impress the intellectuals, not only then but even now, years after the facts have been revealed, though apparently not to Mr. Kristof.

That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves.

As for reading the classics, President Harry Truman, whom no one thought of as an intellectual, was a voracious reader of heavyweight stuff like Thucydides and read Cicero in the original Latin. When Chief Justice Carl Vinson quoted in Latin, Truman was able to correct him.

Yeah, see, nobody is defending people who put on intellectual airs. (Though whether that's an accurate description of Stevenson I have no idea. Way before my time.) People are worried because the GOP seems to be saying that it's wrong to actually be learned or intelligent. Everybody hates a phoney. Almost nobody can stand intellectuals in the second sense. ("Intellectuals" like the founder of a certain shitty political publication I could name, were I inclined to commit the tu quoque fallacy. Oh, I say! I seem to have gotten off a good one, what? Ha ha! How droll...)

As for Truman--everybody I know admires him, and I'd admire him more were I to find out from a reliable source that he read Cicero in Latin.

Thing is, it's not at all clear that the contemporary GOP would admire him. Imagine if we'd found out that Obama sat around reading, say, Thucydides in Greek. Imagine what Sarah Palin would have to say about that. "Weeell, I guess that might be important if we were going to be fighting the Grecians or the Martians or something, but what we need is common people who understand the problems of Joe Sixpack, not some airy fairy stuff about a bunch of dead homos, you betcha. I guess Greek is kinda like English, except it's not good for anything important." Imagine Powerline! Imagine the Corner! Imagine how this would show how out of touch Obama was! And a Socialist!

See, that's more or less the problem. We just had an election in which the Democratic candidate basically had to conceal the fact that he taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago, because he knew that the GOP would use that against him. This is not some abstruse pointy-headed subject like philosophy; this is an important subject directly relevant to the Presidency. And it comes as we watch the Current Occupant shredding the constitution. And yet Obama basically had to conceal his (good) intellectual (i.e. intellectual(1)) credentials, because any sign of book-learnin' or actual mental activity of any kind will be used against you by the GOP.

See, Mr. Sowell, that's the problem.

And no amount of lame sophistry can conceal the fact that your favored party has become anti-intellectual--in, let's be clear, the sense that they seem downright opposed to intelligence.