<p><a href=“http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-intellectuals_18edi.ART1.State.Edition1.3d79ddb.html[/url]”>http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-intellectuals_18edi.ART1.State.Edition1.3d79ddb.html</a></p>
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<p>Are you implying that people who read, have debates, study, etc are the only ones that make mistakes or are slaves to fashion.</p>
<p>At least we try and tink about the future, unlike some who only think about where they will go when they
die</p>
<p>As for fashion, I am sorry, but trucker hats?</p>
<p>If people did not take chances and think about the future, we would still have segregation, cause without vision, right or wrong, without imagination, we are lost</p>
<p>So we don’t have flying cars, big whoop</p>
<p>But without dreaming and hoping, we would be in caves</p>
<p>So, whatever that author thinks, by calling names, as if being intellectual was a bad think, the author shows his own lack of vision</p>
<p>Trucker hats? How marvelously open minded and intellectual you are. If my choices were self named intellectuals or guys in trucker hats, I would most likely hang with the guys in the hats. </p>
<p>I didn’t write the article. I found it interesting, and being open minded and well read, I posted it to see what others thought, without comment.</p>
<p>Sounds like George Bush…</p>
<p>"Ideologies vary a good deal, but among the things they have in common is that they all require great selectivity with respect to empirical evidence. That which supports the ideological creed is readily assimilated and emphasized; that which conflicts with it is either noisily rejected or quietly filtered out and ignored.</p>
<p>This process can be sustained for a very long time, even in the face of mountains of contrary evidence. The ideological cast of mind is necessarily hostile to genuine inquiry and critical thinking to the testing of hypotheses, the search for and serious evaluation of counter-evidence, the revision or abandonment of key assumptions. For it is in the nature of ideology that the truth is considered to be already known. "</p>
<p>I’m not quite clear what the point of the article was - don’t listen to the big bad intellectuals because they can’t predict history? - especially the big bad liberal ones?</p>
<p>Since you asked, here’s what I took from the article…</p>
<p>1) There are far too many variables in most real world problems. Even the most intellectual fail to consider them all, and therefore fail to accurately predict the outcome.</p>
<p>2) Most groups tend to think somewhat alike, be they intellectuals, college professors, truckers, or policemen. These groups will usually believe the facts that support their position and discount those that don’t. The particular leaning of the group is irrelevant; they all do it. </p>
<p>3) Intellectuals get more press than truckers and therefore have more influence, but without much (if any) more credibility on many issues.</p>
<p>I didn’t get a particularly political slant from the article. I haven’t taken a position personally yet.</p>
<p>Owen Harries is a former neoconservative from what I can find on a google search - maybe he has changed his ways.</p>
<p>Gee, lizschup, we don’t have any preconceived notions, do we?</p>
<p>A simple truism wherein the simplicity is the truth:</p>
<p>I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 members of the Harvard faculty.
William F. Buckley</p>
<p>Yet, it is probably too good to be true.</p>
<p>Gee, I’d prefer something other than Boston :)</p>
<p>Why, are the truckers in Boston insufficiently rugged and virile? do they ride with an English saddle (effete cowboys)? Bandit, your regionalism, though charming, is blunt…not to put too fine a point on it;)</p>
<p>I have no problem being recognized for my regionalism :)</p>
<p>I had no clue who he was before I read the article. It has a political bent which is too malign intellectuals. </p>
<p>Anti - intellectualism has been an effective but disingenuos tool of the Republican right since they arm themselves with intellectuals from Bill Kristol to Don Rumsfeld. Anti - intellectualism keeps the uninformed rigid in their stupidity.</p>
<p>One question-what is an intellectual? What definition doe the author use? It seems, at first glance, an “intellectual” is just anyone who has been proved wrong.</p>
<p>I also believe my intellectually trained physician(s), financial advisor(s), faith leader(s), and my soon to graduate engineering son, all to be quacks. But what do I know, I’m only a duck (oregon). </p>
<p>I guess its what positional relation you are to the intellectual: Either on top or on the bottom. Mr Harries, thinks he is on top.</p>
<p>Here’s one thing intellectuals have predicted with unfailing accuracy since Plato: wholesale dismissals of all things “intellectual” will always be a favorite tool of demagogues.</p>
<p>And while we’re at it, let’s remember a few intellectuals whose political moves turned out to be remarkably prescient. I’ll start: Thomas Jefferson.</p>
<p>Good start…</p>
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<p>WOW! Talk about a misreading!</p>
<p>What Plato/Socrates really believed/wrote was that the wise man was the one who knew he did not know; that is, the wise person is the antithesis of the Know it all, i.e. self described intellectual.</p>
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Yes, America has truly turned out to be an agrarian society run by romanticized and self-sufficient farmers.
Moreover, though George Washington was no ones intellectual ([postmodern quotes;)] having turned down the authority of president for life, as he did–this alone would have disqualified him from the ranks of the intellectuals), and though he did, with some guilt, own slaves he did not see fit to bed and impregnate them (sexual harassment in the work place was, perhaps, beneath his non-intellectual dignity) unlike Jefferson whos guilt was not quite up to the task.</p>
<p>FountainSiren,</p>
<p>You are setting up a false dichotomy. Wisdom comes with reflection, experience and an ability to bend. It doesn’t matter whether one is intellectual or not to have wisdom. </p>
<p>I also don’t think “know it all” is an apt definition of intellectual. In Webster’s it is defined as “developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience.”</p>