Monday.....Miscellaneous.....Intellectuals And Society (2)

"May or may not" seems to be the theme of Thomas Sowell's second chapter in his book Intellectuals and Society. According to Sowell, the various skills of the intellectuals can be used either to foster intellectual standards or to circumvent those standards, and he gives examples. Landmark treatises on mathematics from Bertrand Russell also came with his advocacy of unilateral disarmament in the 1930s and suggestions to disband Britain's army, navy and air force. Similar pronouncements came from linguist Noam Chomsky. George Bernard Shaw is quoted, You Americans are so fearful of dictators. Dictatorship is the only way in which government can accomplish anything, and in 1935, It is nice to go for a holiday and know that Hitler has settled everything so well in Europe. The author says that a superior ability in one area tends to make some intellectuals believe that this wisdom applies to all areas. Quoting a biographer of John Maynard Keynes, He held forth on a great range of topics, on some of them which he was thoroughly expert, but on others of which he may have derived his views from a few pages of a book that he happened to glance. The expertise and statistical data of a few, valued over the greater mundane knowledge of the millions, led many countries to economic disaster in the twentieth century through central planning. He lumps judicial activism into this problem. There is a tendency of some intellectuals to, not only look down on this mundane knowledge of the many, but to apply labels such as prejudices or stereotypes to it. Sowell acknowledges the value of experts but sees problems when these experts are used as mere window dressing in politics. A striking example is given; a judicial conference in the 1960s saw the testimony of a retired police commissioner who testified that the court' recent expansions of criminals' legal rights undermined the effectiveness of law enforcement. This was the mundane wisdom of one who was involved. In attendance were Supreme Court Justices Warren and Brennan who sat stony-faced according to a New York Times account. A law professor rose to bring ridicule on the police commissioner and the justices roared with laughter. Such was the trustworthiness of the expert. Sowell concludes the chapter with what he calls a "One Day at a Time" Rationalism where confidence in their own abilities to reason is so great that they believe they can come to sound conclusions, at any time, only by looking at the immediate consequences. Two examples are given, one by an eminent French political scientist who in 1938 asked Is it worthwhile setting fire to the world in order to save the Czechoslovak state, a heap of different nationalities? Sowell points out that the larger question was whether someone who was threatening to set fire to the world if he didn't get his way was someone who should be appeased and went on to write that six years earlier Winston Churchill emphasized that every concession which has been made, to Germany, has been followed immediately by a fresh demand. In the last paragraph of the chapter, Thomas Sowell put into words something that has floated around my mind for years and his one-day-at-a-time rationalism helps in systematizing this. I'm going to, with the author's help, put this in my own words. When we experience a disaster of some sort, such as a hurricane or Southern California wildfire that the author used, the administration in office at the time has no choice but to commit vast sums of money, as Sowell writes, to enable people who live in these places to rebuild in the known path of these dangers. A notation on this at the bottom of the page stated that the money used in rebuilding New Orleans would have been more than enough to relocate every New Orleans family. Yet the potential of future flood disaster remains. Had we not legislated as we did, we would have been criticized as uncaring by the intellectuals, and in using a one-day-at-a-time rationalism, the soundness of these ideas is immediately verified. Is this not what we have done, and continue to do, with the bailouts?