Beware the cult of 'intelligence'
Politics is always contentious and is seldom about everybody “getting along.” That is because people have honest differences of opinion. Naturally, people try to think of ways to prevail over opposition. The latest tactic of the political left is to lay claim to being “smart.”
The “smart” tactic sometimes goes by that title or by some variation that suggests that opposing views are not smart. The most straightforward of such claims concerns the growth of cities. In contrast to what has been called urban sprawl, environmentalists and (truly) no-growth folks call their policies “smart growth.”
Whether is better to welcome growth or limit it within a municipality’s boundaries is a decision every community has to make and over which people will disagree. But when one side of the controversy labels their proposals “smart,” they are exhibiting arrogance rather than a willingness to debate the issue on the merits. Any citizen who takes exception to “smart” growth has to labor under the unstated slander that he is not too bright.
A variation on the claim of smartness is the liberals’ preference in international relations for “soft power” over “hard power.” This is another way of saying that diplomacy is better than war. In most cases that is surely true, but sometimes circumstances leave us little choice but to resort to armed force, as President Obama recently reminded us regarding al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Intellectuals who live by the word have an inherent suspicion of those who have mastered the art of war. With their verbal facility, they can put down those who resort to “brute force” as dullards, as Democratic Senator John F. Kerry did a few years ago when he said that those who don’t get a good education were liable to wind up in Iraq.
And as President George W. Bush doggedly fought on in Iraq (and ultimately triumphed by means of Gen. David Petraeus’ “surge”), he is seen by many abstract thinkers as the not-so-bright cowboy who overlooked the superior choice of “soft power.” Thank goodness Obama did not permit his feelings to interfere with his knowledge of the facts in Afghanistan.
Most people think that a gifted speaker, as Obama is, possesses great intelligence, in contrast to less-than-gifted speakers like George Bush and Sen. John McCain. But they were right about Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, which Obama has been forced by circumstances to acknowledge in the latter conflict, as one hopes he will ultimately concede about the former.
The chief source of formidable (or at least formidable-looking) intelligence these days is academia. Obama did well at Columbia and Harvard, and denizens of those leading institutions of higher learning are proud to have “one of their own” in the White House.
Here is an example. I attended a meeting of the National Social Science Association last spring in which one of the professers expressed his opinion that Obama would be one of our nation’s greatest presidents, like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. He gave as the main reason the fact that Obama was “one of us.”
However, neither Washington nor Lincoln ever went to college and had very little formal instruction of any kind. Both were, in fact, prodigies whose early achievements paved the way for their ultimate rise. Jefferson had an excellent formal education by means of tutors and at William and Mary, whereas Roosevelt was an average student at Harvard. If there is a direct link between a college education and great political achievement, the evidence here is mixed, at best.
All of these men were spared the political indoctrination which now is the curse of far too many institutions of higher learning. Unfortunately, Barack Obama was not. George W. Bush went to Yale, but he resisted the withering academic assault on constitutional principles, political institutions, free markets, Biblical religion, and even marriage and family.
The intellectuals’ “ideal” of equality of condition (as distinguished from equality of rights) has been the basis for their concluding that America is an imperialist, oligarchic, racist, sexist and homophobic society. Because people who have been taught these lies about America have been granted degrees, their natural inclination is to believe that those who don’t think as they do are not very smart.
As one who loves and his benefited from higher education, I’m the last person to denounce it. But intellectual honesty forces me to admit that intelligence is too valuable to be left to the intellectuals. Intelligence is as intelligence does.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Richard Reeb taught political science, philosophy and journalism at Barstow College from 1970 to 2003. He is the author of “ Taking Journalism Seriously: ‘Objectivity’ as a Partisan Cause” (University Press of America, 1999). He can be contacted at rhreeb@verizon.net.
