Thursday, June 05, 2008

Why I'm An Anti-Intellectual

Rick Hills:
Being anti-intellectual is not the same as being anti-intellect. My beef is with a particular social class -- the 'intelligentsia' -- and not with the practice of using one's intellect to reflect on experience. In my experience, intellectuals (as a class) are ideologically intolerant, easily offended by ordinary humor, and pretentious in their prejudices, which they disguise as universal truths.
Ouch!!!

Read the whole thing.

(HT Instapundit)

2 comments:

thinking said...

I agree that certainly some people of intellectual achievement do display an unbecoming arrogance.

That being said, though, I would argue that one has to be careful to stereotype an entire "social class" of people. There are many intellectuals who exhibit great grace and humility.

In practice, though, it is hard for most people to differentiate perfectly between anti-intellectual and anti-intellect. That is the downside of such a point of view.

At this point in time in our country, if anything, I think we could use a bit more encouragement of intellectualism.

Kevin said...

Thank you for this!!! In irony of timing, you posted this the day the Telegraph posted:

Working classes 'lack intelligence to be doctors', claims academic

So I thought the contrast was just so beautiful!