Thomas Sowell, an economist and icon for the conservative movement, warned that the “road to hell is paved with Ivy League degrees.” That nine-word quip has more insight than a 5,000-word diatribe in The New York Times about what is wrong with the world today and how it is all your fault because you refuse to listen to the people who pretend to be experts on cable news.
The supposed philistines are told that we must heed the wise gatekeepers of allowable opinion because they know better than the common folk. They have the credentials from some of the finest institutions in the world, surrounded by conforming pundits, politicians, and professors who avoid straying from the index card of acceptable thought. Due to our fear of being denounced by the intellectuals and accused of ignorance, we dismiss our common sense. We choose to listen to the inane ramblings of someone who possesses a Ph.D. in LGBT studies or a master’s in humanities. These members of the intellectual class convince everyone that two plus two equals five or that Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation is a form of colonialism.
If we are to be ruled by somebody, perhaps it would be more suitable, as William F. Buckley said, “to be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.”
Ominous Parallels From Berlin
In the aftermath of World War I, Berlin resuscitated and overhauled intellectualism. It became the chief cosmopolitan city of Europe, a metropolis populated by the upper class of society and a booming middle class. Despite still reeling from the costs of the war, the Germans rediscovered a modicum of prosperity – both financially and intellectually. Berlin’s Roaring Twenties birthed new art, philosophy, cinema, and music. Decadence was the order of the day. This led to a furrowing of the brow by the students of the New Objectivity, a movement that reflected the harshness of reality. A brand of nihilism, if you will.
Martin Heidegger
As true of preceding and succeeding generations, the youth of this period sought meaning and purpose that they could not find in cabarets, drugs, and prostitutes. The 20- and 30-somethings over the next two decades were the neoteric ubermensch who dismissed petty, trivial, and individual concerns. Serious types who wanted to be part of something important, something greater for civilization. “The philistines may fret, but tomorrow belongs to us.”
The new generation of intellectuals became entrenched in political activism, civil service, and, worst of all, higher education. When the National Socialists rose to power, one of their initial acts was an invasion of German academia, notably Frankfurt University. The Nazis believed that if they transformed the Frankfurt campus, it would control the overall academic industry. In addition to widespread anti-Semitism, universities adopted concepts that were antithetical to the decades-old integrity of German intellectualism. Martin Heidegger, an influential philosopher at the time, contended that Germany needed its soul to be cleansed, and socialism would provide it, adding that freedom of expression, inquiry, and thought was a selfish and iniquitous concept. In May 1933, Heidegger told his students:
“The Führer himself and he alone is the German reality, present and future, and its law. Study to know; from now on, all things demand decision, and all action responsibility. Hail Hitler!”
It is estimated that approximately one-fifth of teachers lost their jobs within the first couple of years of the Nazi government because of their opinions. Others left their positions and fled the country. Does this sound familiar?
Tomorrow’s Intellects Today
We live in a time when Americans are more educated than ever before. Children are chained to government-owned desks, sentenced to 13 years under the iron fist of administrators and activists. After they have finished their elementary and secondary education, they enroll in college or university, where they are indoctrinated with victimhood, hypersensitivity, Marxism, and irascibility. With this brainwash-induced militant petulance, students channel their rage by being offended, either on their own or on behalf of others. If you dare question their feelings, be prepared to pay the ultimate price, be it a Two Minutes of Hate session or the loss of your livelihood.
The budding intellects, who will become the thought leaders of tomorrow, demand that you accept their opinions as facts. Men can get pregnant, segregation is virtuous, and minorities need white leftists to stand up for them and speak on their behalf. Disagree? Well, you are Literally Hitler ™. Or, depending on how non-compos mentis a graduate student or CNN intern is feeling in his or her fit of rage, you might be worse than Hitler.
As Liberty Nation recently reported, yesterday’s graduating class warned us of today’s temper tantrums on college campuses, in the workplace, and on the city streets. They have invaded newsrooms, faculties, and Corporate America. They are demanding everyone to forget the principles of Western civilization and instead embrace toxic ideologies fabricated in an incomprehensible but peer-reviewed paper comprised of ten-dollar words and labyrinthine paragraphs.
The intellectual class inside America’s universities and in the nation’s revered institutions are the anti-intellectuals, prattling and peddling nonsense that defies logic. Conservative and libertarian media have done an excellent job exposing the asinine subjects that progressives take seriously, whether it is a discussion of how mathematics is a form of bigotry or a 200-page book musing on how all white people are racist.
Instead of being responsible adults and informing the young intellectuals of how insane their pontifications are, we take them seriously. We should instead mirror Buckley’s eloquent flippancy and tell the whippersnappers with piercings, tattoos, skinny jeans, and a rancid odor, “I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”
Woke Intellectualism
Are we living in an era of woke intellectualism where smart people take on dumb ideas because they seem profound on the surface?
The individuals who uphold the values of the Age of Enlightenment or the folks who possess common sense are a dying breed in our brave new world where men menstruate and free money creates prosperity. They will be coerced into stepping aside by the useful idiots, the foot soldiers of cultural Marxism. Debate and dissent will not be tolerated because genuine intellectualism’s fate has already been decided. It must make way for the woke non-binary grad student who is working on a Ph.D. in lesbian dance theory and desires to work as a re-education anchor at MSNBC. If you fail to keep quiet and acknowledge your privilege, then you are an uneducated and uninformed racist, misogynist, and homophobic cretin who must be cast away like a leper.
This is a woke intellectual’s world now, and you are not permitted to be cerebral. And maybe that is the whole point of this crusade in the war on common sense, facts, and science. Since leftists demand egalitarianism (sort of), they want everyone to be an intellectual, which means tossing reason and reality down the rabbit hole. That is 4D wokeness! Well played, millennials – well played.
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Read more from Andrew Moran.
