Intellectually Bankrupt

Sunday 20 November 2011 - Filed under Uncategorized

James Taranto on the “intellectualism” of the left:

The left’s embrace of a “movement” based on nonsense is a symptom of its own intellectual bankruptcy. Drew Westen–best known for his massive New York Times op-ed in August calling on President Obama to govern by telling fairy tales, has more comedy gold in an online Times piece in which he puzzles over why Obama has so often delayed the taking of decisions and implementation of policies, ranging from the Keystone XL pipeline to ObamaCare. He toys with the idea that it is a psychological defect:

Decades ago, psychoanalysts identified a particular personality style common among high-achieving men (although not limited to them), and in recent years researchers have been hot on its trail. People with this style (not narcissism, although that would be a good guess) prefer to see themselves as logical and rational, uninfluenced by emotion, and to think in abstract and intellectualized ways, as if emotions were irrelevant or inconsequential to decision making–when in fact they are essential to it. Whether that describes this president I cannot say, although he has been described by a close aide, and similarly by others, as “the most unsentimental man I’ve ever met.”

“A second possibility,” he writes, “is that the president either doesn’t know or doesn’t want anyone else to know what he believes”:

During the 2008 election, I remember listening incredulously to focus groups as swing voters would repeatedly say about a man they had watched for two years, “I don’t know who he is.” Now I understand what they meant. No modern American president has ever managed to make it through nearly three years in the White House with so few people really having any idea what he believes on so many key issues–let alone what his vision for the country is.

Isn’t the real explanation pretty obvious? Obama has multiple degrees from Ivy League colleges and spent a good deal of his career as a part-time professor. At Columbia, Harvard and the University of Chicago, he absorbed the politically correct nostrums of the academic left. But he didn’t pick up much by way of critical thinking skills (although at least he doesn’t scream at banks).

He didn’t have to learn how to think, since he was thinking all the “right” thoughts anyway. So he came to office with lots of ideological preconceptions but no ability to adapt or innovate. As a result, he is simply in over his head intellectually–at the mercy of allies, opponents and events.

Having taught at one of our nation’s Research One institutions, I can testify to the idea that one can get by without ever having to challenge the literature of the left. Many of us defined our jobs as indoctrinating so as to de-indoctrinate everything our students had been taught up until they went to college. We felt that our job was to scrub the education given them by their parents and their preachers. The entire course was based around liberal literature, written by liberal authors, about liberal subjects, and students were expected to learn the liberal lessons taught in them. If one could more or less regurgitate what had been discussed in class, one would likely do fine. The only trains of thought that were actively criticized and critiqued were those brought in from students’ outside perspective.

The overt liberal indoctrination was sick to me then and is even more so now (that I am am an outsider myself). It was one of the major reasons I left the academy.

2011-11-20  »  madlibertarianguy