Score: 4 / 5
Category: History, Politics
Recommended
My Thoughts: This book is basically a long drawn out way of saying "intellectuals have lost their balls and become the lapdogs of powerful special interests." The information is interesting but sometimes repetitive, and it doesn't need to be nearly as long as it is.
The point he is trying to make is valid. For the better part of our history (something also talked about in "Idiot America") America was renowned for our "cranks" (crazy people with crazy ideas), but we never submitted to being ruled by cranks. It was the unwritten duty of the "liberal class" (the intellectuals) to pick through the crazy and keep any nuggets of worthwhile information they presented. Over the past 40 years, during the conservative take over, intellectuals have largely abandoned that duty, instead becoming the talking heads for and giving credibility to some of the most outrageous ideas one can imagine.
Perhaps his best example is of Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is perhaps one of the few great intellectuals left in America, yet he is often villified even by those who agree with him because he speaks out against the kinda of crank BS that has become mainstreamed. The media only makes it worse. In a field that used to be an intellectual stronghold, media outlets have become propaganda machines for one party or the other, or worse (CNN) they report without any investigation at all. The intellectual class has largely been corrupted and pressed into the service of large corporate, political, and special interests, and as a result we are becoming a country controlled by the cranks.
A good book. A little dense and at times repetitive, but worth reading for the point the author is trying to make. All intellectuals should take the advice and start speaking out against the cranks and the special interests. The Liberal class can live again!
By it on Amazon
Common Sense
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