Can 'We the People' be Intellectuals?

How many times have I as a libertarian-minded advocate for individual liberty and free markets been in an argument with liberals, progressives, statists, whatever you choose to name them, and heard that my ideology is too simplistic, too impractical, etc.?  Of course, these are the nice versions of what usually comes out of their collective mouths:  idiot, fascist, racist, hick, redneck, and the glorious list of intellectual vocabulary marches on and on into pure brilliance.  Oftentimes the liberal progressive breaks out into über-intellectual speak as illustrated in the following clip: 



I doubt I am the only one to experience such slights from the high-minded, high-browed intellectuals of our day.  So, when David Brooks defines the people who attend tea parties as being against the educated class, what he really means is "you're an idiot if you support limited, constitutional government and free markets."  He's just trying to state it nicely, perhaps even surreptitiously.  After all, we probably don't even understand that he is insulting us, because, well, we're not educated enough.

In fact, he defines being educated as follows: 
The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

So, if you disagree with the supreme intellectual that David Brooks so obviously is, automatically you are not educated.  That means that people such as the founding fathers, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, and all those who stood against tyranny were all uneducated.  Why?  Because they weren't moderate enough for David Brooks's bleeding soul.  Imagine if the founding fathers had been moderate.  We wouldn't have even had our limited experience with liberty and capitalism.

David Brooks seems to be on the eternal quest for approval and acceptance into a group of people self-defined as intellectuals.  As moderate as he thinks he is, even he stands on the outside of this group.  What is this group?  When one thinks about why academics, journalists, etc. support big government and statist policies, it is no doubt clear: self-interest.  If an intellectual accepts free markets and individual liberty, then what role does he or she have to play in society?  Where does his prestige come from?  One look around college campuses or major media outlets or even government bureaus will be enough to discourage the free in mind and prove this point.  There might as well be a sign hanging over college campuses, "No Free Markets or Free Minds Allowed."  On the other hand, if an intellectual supports state solutions, people listen to him.  His influence grows and grows.  He receives research grants, job opportunities with the government, government contracts, and, God forbid, he even becomes a politician.  If he chooses to recant his positions, his influence falls in direct proportion.  One of the greatest examples of this is John Stossel, who won 19 Emmy's while taking up pro-regulation stances but suddenly became the bane of journalism when he figured out that free markets and competition take care of these problems much more efficiently and justly:

The question remains.  Can we as liberty-seeking individuals be intellectuals?  Many educated people, including myself, do not stand with David Brooks.  We see him as the extremist, the one who cannot imagine society without a massive state and "sensible" policies that bleed the citizenry dry.  We are unlike him.  We do not seek prestige and approval from slavemasters.  We seek to lead free lives.  We believe that the individual is the sole arbiter of his own future.  We believe that we have an absolute right to the fruits of our labor.  We believe that no other man or entity can or should usurp that right without our consent.  I do not share all of the values of the tea partiers, but we are brothers in arms.  We are the ones who recognize that we know how to run our own lives and finances better than bureaucrats thousands of miles away.  We are the ones who know how to solve our own problems better than the David Brookses of the world, who damage our liberty with their pen and paper from their intellectual towers on high.  We are a threat to his kind, and he knows it.  Therefore, he insults us.  We seek liberty and emancipation from his kind.  We are the People.

Posted by Michael at 1/7/2010 2:20 PM
Categories: uncategorized
 

What did you think of this article?




Trackbacks
Trackback specific URL for this entry
  • No trackbacks exist for this entry.
Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Leave a comment

Submitted comments will be subject to moderation before being displayed.

 Enter the above security code (required)

 Name

 Email (will not be published)

 Website

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.