September 27, 2025 • 41 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Barry Show. Welcome to the Bonus Podcast. I
have spoken many times about the sort of death of truth,
the end of truth as we know it. Of trust,
the idea that you could send your kid to school
and trust that your values would be taught to your children.
(00:23):
We already know that that can't be taken for granted.
It's not to say that every school is perverting your child,
but plenty are the idea that you could trust your
doctor when you asked a medical question, and that they
would not be beholden to Big Pharma or on some
sort of commission that would drive their decision making. The
(00:46):
idea that you could trust I don't know CNN, you
know this reliable news source, and RFK Junior tells us
this week in a hearing that Anderson Cooper's twenty dollars
a year is probably eighty percent paid for by big Pharma. Well,
whoever's paying the bills is calling the shots. That's how
(01:07):
this works. So trust has been eroded, and that's unfortunate.
I think that that makes it harder to get a
conviction on a bad guy in a criminal case. Where
we've lost trust in the FBI under Jim Comey, I
(01:31):
think we're less likely to believe somebody who claims they
were the victim of racism, which does occur, but we're
less likely to believe them because of all the false
claims of Black Lives Matter and Antifa and their ilk.
The death of trust, the death of respect. But at
(01:52):
some point we have to open our eyes. We've been
told that we have to trust the experts on everything
from climate chain COVID. Well, we've seen how that worked
out for mister COVID, I mean for mister science. Anthony
Fauci he said, don't wear masks, They're dumb. You just
(02:12):
get that schmuts all over you. And then he said, oh,
do wear masks, and then wear them when you walk
into a restaurant, but take them off when you reach
your table. It was also silly, and people allowed themselves
to get yanked around.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Thomas Soul wrote a book about these so called experts,
called Intellectuals and Society years ago. When he wrote the book,
he sat down with Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institute.
And if you haven't figured out already, it is a goal,
a stated clear goal of our show to amplify the
writings and words of Thomas soul. We think he's a genius.
(02:55):
He sits down with Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institute
and they discuss why so many disasters of our time
have been committed by experts or intellectuals. You may remember
FDR's brain Trust, which, according to later studies, prolonged the
Depression by several years. The Great Depression didn't need to
be the whiz kids at the Pentagon under Macnamara who
(03:19):
managed to mess up the Vietnam War, drag us into it,
and then drag it out, destroying a generation's hopes and dreams.
You can run through an impressive list of things or
disasters brought to you by people with very high IQs.
That was the basis of intellectuals and society.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Give this a listen.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Be sure to
follow us on Twitter at twitter dot com forward slash
unc Knowledge. That's twitter dot com forward slash unk Knowledge.
Doctor Thomas Soule has taught economics, intellectual history, and social
polers at such institutions as Cornell, UCLA and Amherst. The
(04:04):
author of more than a dozen books, Doctor Sowell is
now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution his newest work,
Intellectuals and Society. Tom will begin with a quotation then
candidate Barack Obama in July two thousand and eight. Quote
It's like these guys Republicans take pride in being ignorant.
(04:28):
They should go talk to some experts and actually make
a difference. Close quote.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, talking to experts does make a difference. Many of
the great disasters of our time have been committed by experts.
You may remember FDR's Brain Trust, which according to later studies,
prolonged the depression by several years, The Whiz Kids, and
the Pentagon under McNamara, who managed to mess up the
(04:57):
Vietnam War. You can run through an list of things
of disasters brought about by people with very high IQs.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
All right, segment one, the species of the intellectual. When
you refer to intellectuals in Intellectuals and Society, whom do
you mean?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I mean people whose in products are ideas. There are
other people with great intelligence whose end products are things
like the salt vaccine.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
A research scientist is not necessarily an intellectually, that's rights.
An engineer isn't necessarily an intellectual.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
That's right, because the engineer is judged by the end
product of which is not simply ideas. If he builds
a building that collapses, it doesn't matter how brilliant his
idea was, or he's ruined. Conversely, if an intellectual who's
brilliant has an idea for rearranging society and that ends
(05:53):
in disaster, he pays no price at all.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I see. Let me quote Intellectuals in Society quote. The
fatal miss step of intellectuals is assuming that superior ability
within a particular realm can be generalized to superior wisdom
or morality overall. Chess grand masters, musical prodigies and others
who are as remarkable within their respective specialties as intellectuals
(06:15):
within theirs seldom make that mistake. Explain that why would it? Well,
let's take an example. Noam Chomsky, whom you write about
in Intellectuals in Society, whose work in linguistics in the
first place, I can't understand it, But as best I
can tell, everyone who exactly, everyone who understands his technical
work within the field, within his discipline of linguistics, considers
(06:37):
him one of the great figures of the twentieth century,
and his work in politics absurdity.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
The same could be said of Bertrand Russell and his
landmark works on mathematics, and other people on other fields.
But they step outside their fields. And when you step
outside your level of specialty, sometimes that's like stepping off
a cliff.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
And why is it that intellectuals, that is to say,
people whose end product is ideas should succumb to that
temptation more than, to use your example, a chess grand master.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Because a chess grand master can be world famous for
doing absolutely nothing more than winning chess tournaments and making displays,
as many of them do, of playing five chess games
simultaneously while blindfolded.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
So Bobby Fisher had no need to opine on the
politics of the day because he was getting rich and
famous and making a brilliant career for himself within his
narrow profession.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
But intellectuals what they well, they languished an obscurity.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well, the whole question of when is someone well known
or not came up during the visit of Jim Flynt
from New Zealand here a few years ago. He's one
of the world's authorities on IQ tests. People you know
in India know about jimp plan people in England. He's
going he made world tour. But I doubt if the
(08:07):
people in the next block from where he lives knows
who he is, no know who he is?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I see, all right? It is far easier to content Again,
I'm quoting from intellectuals in society. It is far easier
to concentrate power than to concentrate knowledge. Yes, what bearing
has that got on the influence that intellectuals have over
society as a whole.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Because they believe that since knowledge is concentrated in people
like themselves, what needs to be done is, in a
quote from from President Obama, is to put more power
in the hands of the experts.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
So the intellectual temptation is to say, look, we already
know everything that's right. If only we also had the power,
the power, everything would be just fine. Yes, And what's
wrong with that view? Why isn't that a sensible view?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
One They don't know everything. They don't know one tenth
of everything. In fact, I argue that they probably don't
know one percent of the consequential knowledge in a society.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Consequential knowledge is is a concept that runs through This
book explained that.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Concept knowledge whose presence or absence has consequences, serious consequences.
I mean, I was once in a plane that was
coming down for a landing in the Ithaca Airport, and
suddenly the pilot gunned the motor and went up again
because someone in the control tower had reminded him that
he had lowered his landing gear.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So that was consequential knowledge.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yes, I just delighted that that person had had his
eyes open and his mind on his work.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
So the notion here is that the kind of knowledge,
the kind of consequential knowledge required to prove effective in
governing a nation such as the United States, with the
biggest economy in the world three hundred million people. You
can put together quite a large group of professors, and
they're still not going to possess the knowledge that would
enable them to run general motors, for example, or to
(10:05):
run the nation's healthcare system for example.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Absolutely. In fact, one of the things that has happened
all around the world in the twentieth century was that
all sorts of countries have tried central planning. Now, the
guys who run the central plan they usually have advanced
degree from prestigious institutions. They have mountains of statistics sitting there,
and they have all the experts of the country out there,
beck and call. And yet when you take the power
(10:30):
out of their hands and return to the market, then
all the hundreds of millions of people who don't have
any of those things usually end up with a higher
rate of growth and a more rapidly rapid decline in poverty.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Because consequential knowledge, by its nature, tends to be diffused,
widely diffused.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yes, Segment two, Intellectuals and Economics, we've already touched on this.
Two quotations. Number one, Paul Krugman quote, rising income inequality
isn't new, but what happened under Bush was something entirely unprecedented.
For the first time in our history, so much growth
was being siphoned off to a small wealthy minority that
(11:07):
most Americans were failing to gain ground even during a
time of economic growth. Close quote. Second quotation doctor Thomas
Sole in Intellectuals and Society quote the statistics that the
intelligentsia keeps citing are much more consistent with their vision
of America than the statistics they keep ignoring. Close quote.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
That's a tough one to encapsulate, but the basic confusion
is between statistical categories and flesh and blood people. It's
true that if you look at the percentage of the
income that went to the top twenty percent of some
year a and then later on a decade later, you'll
find that that percentage has gone up, and you say, well,
(11:49):
that shows this parity between the people.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
The rich are getting richer, rich you're getting richer.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
But when you follow statistics generated by the Intel Revenue Service,
which can follow particular individuals over time, you find the
people who are in the bottom twenty percent of taxpayers
in the first year, their income is nearly doubled by
this late later period, while the income of the people
who are initially at the top is increased by last
(12:15):
and you get down to the very top is actually
gone down, so that people are simply moving between these
brackets from year to year, And the number of people
who are in the bottom twenty percent, let's say nineteen
seventy five, who are still there in nineteen ninety one
is five percent of them. Really twenty nine percent of
them who already gotten all the way to the top.
Absolute majority are in the top half. And so you're
(12:38):
comparing what happens to these abstract categories rather than what's
happening to actual flesh and blood people.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
So there's an enormous amount of churn in dynam.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
My gosh, almost everybody's own personal life. I mean, look
at what were you making when you were twenty years
old compared to what you were making.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
When you were forty negative. I was spending my parents'
money when.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I was talking you.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
You are right, okay, So why would the intellectuals? What
you've just made is an intellectually rigorous case. Why would
an intellectual, as you use the term, be loathed to
look at that intellectually rigorous argument? Beloath to examine the
data the way you did.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Well. He's happy with the data that he got. Why
would he examine? Why would he go further? He looks
at the numbers. The numbers say what he thinks it
should say. Hey, that's it, huey d And he moves
on to the next great.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Crusade, intellectuals and society. Once again, the very phrase income
distribution is tendentious. Wealth can be created only after capital
and labor have reconciled their competing claims and agreed to
terms on which they can operate together in the production
of wealth. Close quote income distribution. The very phrase is tendentious.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
How come income is not distributed and newspapers are distributed,
Social Security execs are distributed, and one time milk was distributed.
Income is not distributed. People earn it directly from those
to whom they provide some good or service. And the
argument made by many people you see, is that it's
(14:12):
a question of capital and labor have conflicting interest and
dividing up the income. Right. No, No, there is no
income to divide up before they first reconcile their conflicting
interests and decide on what terms they're going to produce
that income. There is no pre exist, there's no manner
from heaven for them to fight over.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
You make the point what I'm coming to is the
economic crisis that we went through eighteen months ago. But
we'll start with the Great Depression, where all discussions of
economic crises should start, probably, And you make the point
that there are two large features of the Great Depression.
One was the stock market crash, and the other was
the enormous government intervention, which began under Herbert Hoover and
(14:56):
continued and expanded under FDR. But Begander began quick In
other words, yes, and so you say, so you have
two large facts here. It's a very good question which
actually caused or prolonged the Great Depression, And it's a
question that very few intellectuals actually examine.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Well. One way of examining it would be just look
at the time period the stock market crish occurred in
October nineteen twenty nine. Now there's data on unemployment month
by month. Two months after the stock market crish, unemployment
peaked at nine percent. It then began to decline irregularly
(15:31):
until about six point three percent by June and nineteen.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Thirty, indicating the economy was attempting to recover.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yes, in June nineteen thirty, the government stepped in with
his first massive intervention with a smooth Hawley tariff, passed
despite a public appeal by more than a thousand economists
from leading universities saying don't do it. They did it anyway.
It shows how much influence economists have. Wellin six months
after that, unemployment hit double digits for the first time,
(16:00):
and it never came down for the remainder of the decade,
even for one month. And so the stock market crash
brought you up to nine percent, and that was starting
to fizzle out. The government steps in to help, and
I had that his double digits, and he eventually got
got up to a peak of twenty five percent, and
(16:20):
it didn't fizzle out until the end of the decade.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
All right, listen to a list, and then I'll ask
you a question. Chairman of the Fed. Benjamin Bernanki BA
at Harvard, PhD at MIT, Professor of Economics at Princeton,
Director of the National Economic Council, Laurence Summers undergraduate degree, MIT,
doctor at Harvard younger't tenured professor of Economics and Harvard History,
eventually President of Harvard. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner ab Dartmouth,
(16:43):
m A. Johns. Hopkins. He's the underperformer in the group.
How did this group of intellectuals acquit themselves in handling
this the nation's economic crisis in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Well, first of all, they didn't handle it. The politicians
handled it.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And so even if you were to say that these
guys really could have done a great job had they
had the unbridled power and so forth, they don't have
the unbridal power. One of the problems with experts is
that experts are hired by other people, and so you
never know what the expert would have done. In fact,
there was an article in the Wall Street Journal sometime
back that the policies that are being followed in Washington
(17:17):
are the direct opposite of the policies that Summers advocated
when he published before he got to watch it, right, right,
So we should never assume that experts are just people.
They're supplying information to politicians who are trying to do good.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So surely, though the intellectuals had some the notion that
the government should step in is a hangover from the
understanding of what took place during the New Deal, right, Oh, yes, okay,
So in other words, the intellectuals the politicians are acting
within it, within a world of options that intellectuals have
(17:52):
created over the decades. Yes, right, and are you impressed
by that? The intellectual framework? No?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
All right?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Segment three Intellectuals and Vision. Intellectuals and Society. The vision
around which most contemporary intellectuals tend to coalesce, has features
that distinguish it from other visions prevalent prevalent in other
segments of contemporary society or among elites or masses in
earlier times. Close quote what is the vision to which
(18:24):
contemporary intellectuals subscribe.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
That intellectuals should influence and not control, the kinds of
decisions that are made in society, and more especially, that
they should promote the transfer of decisions from the masses
to those who have quote more intellect and what I'm given,
(18:49):
how I conceive of knowledge being its distribution. That would
mean transferring decisions from where there's ninety nine percent of
the knowledge to where there's one percent of the knowledge.
I guess that background is not at all surprising that
things like central planning simply don't produce as good results
as allowing all the millions of people to react in
the marketplace.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
All right, let me ask you a question that came
in from Twitter. Travis eight one four. All these questions
are limited to one hundred and forty characters, So get ready,
it's coming at you, but it'll go fast. Why does
the liberal progressive mindset have such a stranglehold within the
intellectual academic world. Why should the vision that you just
(19:31):
described be so prevalent among intellectuals.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Well, among the many reasons, most academic intellectuals have no experience,
no serious experience outside the academy. I remember I once.
I was once an economists for AT and T when
it was the world's largest corporation, and when I returned
to the academic world, they welcomed me as the prodigal sun.
(19:56):
You see, had returned from the evils of corporate America,
the true nirvana of academia. And not only do they
have no experience, they have every incentive to believe that
they are brighter than the other people, and no more
than other people, because they've been told that all their lives.
I mean, you've become a top intellectual because you've passed
(20:19):
through all these successive filters, You've gotten into the best colleges,
you've gotten into the best graduate.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Schools, or even from second grade on, the teachers are
responding to you as a kid who passes tests.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yes, yes, and so you have all of that in
your background.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
You write in Intellectuals and society. If you happen to
believe in free markets, judicial restraint, traditional values, and other
features of what you call the tragic vision, there's no
personal exaltation arising from those beliefs. If but to before
social justice and saving the environment puts you on a
higher moral plane. Yes, So the question here is Can
(20:57):
it really be that simple that intellectuals across the American
landscape tend to embrace the vision that you've described, surely
out of self flattery and self pleading.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yes it is, don't bet. Human beings have an enormous
power of rationalization. Think of all the absurd things that
have been believed throughout all of history, and I guess
the one common denominator is that those absurd things typically
were very flattering to those who believed them. They had
the one true faith. They were the van go out
(21:34):
of the proletariat. You know, you just run through the
whole list of the things.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
By the way, I've been reading some marks, I can't
understand how anyone ever took that seriously. I mean, ever
took it seriously.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Well, what are you reading?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Sentence by sentence? It's oh, well, I actually began with
the communist manifesto that he in angles.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Oh it's a magnificent If you want a model for propaganda,
it is. It is the mass.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
But there's no there's actually absolutely no contact with actual
economic reality.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
No, there's no need for that is as many people
are showing, you can become president of the United States
with no contact with economic reality.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
All right, two quotations intellectuals and society quote. The intelligency
often divide people into those who are for change and
those who are for the status quo. Candidate Barack Obama,
we are the change we have been waiting for, Yes, Tom.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
People who say things like this. Actually, if there's sayings
he being new, this is what was being said back
in the seventeen nineties and ever since then. You know
that there's nothing older than the idea that this is new.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
And Thomas Pain, we have it in our power to
make the world over it.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, you are, But in point of fact, there's again
this is one of those totally unquestioned, unsubstantiated statements. John
Dewey was saying, you know, that made the same thing
some sixty years ago, that those of us who are
for change have to fight against those who are for
(23:11):
the status quote. Now, the people he was talking about
people like Adam Smith. Adam Smith was not for the
status quote. Of course, as I mentioned in the book,
why would Adam Smith spend the whole decade writing a
nine hundred page book to say how contented he was
with the way things were? I mean, when you spend
a decade writing a nine hundred page book. Something is
(23:31):
bugging you, you know, I mean, And anyone who ever
bothered to read Adam Smith would see that he is
pretty ticked off about a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Once again, two quotations. You quote at a number of
points in the intellectuals in society, you quote Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes. Here's one of them, as Justice Oliver Wendel
Holmes said, the word right is one of the most
deceptive of pitfalls and a constant solicitation to fallacy. That's
quotation one. Here's quotation two. Barack Obama quote, healthcare should
(24:05):
be a right for every American.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Close quote, Well, there's the fallacy. No, it's uh, the
word right. It's amazing and in one sense I can
I can't just simply cannot explain it. People say we
have a right to affordable housing, decent healthcare, we're right
to all kinds of stuff. And the question is where
(24:30):
did this right come from?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
By the way, it is literally the case that I
heard on the radio the other day. One of the
questions in healthcare is plastic surgery, whether it'll be taxed
or But I literally heard someone say that women have
a right to botox treatments. You just thought i'd mentioned
that for you.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yes, well, but that's no more arbitrary than all the
other things that are called rights. Right now, we were
going to have this trial of these terrorists in a
quote of law, which is absolutely unprecedented and absolutely absurd.
And the question did that right come from was It's
not in the constitution. It is certainly not in the
Geneva Convention. It's just that by loose thinking people say, well,
(25:09):
prisoners of war get treated that what Yes, they're not
prisoners of war. The Geneva Convention said what prisoners of
war were. People who were adhered to the Geneva Convention
get the protections of it. But during the Second World War,
when some German soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge
put on American uniforms infiltrated the US line and they
were captured, it was simply lined up against the wall
(25:29):
and shot and killed right there. And it was not
something secret. The army filmed it, and I've seen the
films on the History Channel. There was no question. If
you don't play by the rules, you don't get the
protection of the rules. It's that simple, right.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
This leads us to segment for Intellectuals and War from
Intellectuals in Society, discussing the role intellectuals played between the
two World wars.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
One of the most remarkable developments of the nineteen twenties
was an international movement among intellectuals promoting the idea that
nations could get together and publicly renounce war. What were
they thinking, I.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Guess they weren't thinking. They were reacting. They were reacting
to the horrors of the First World War, which most
of those intelectuals had supported by the way, uh and
now and now they decided to know that was so awful.
Ways we renounced war. There's no thought that, yes, you
can renounce war. That does not stop your neighbor from
building up the biggest army in the world and coming
in and killing you. It's much much like this. It's
(26:30):
much like the thinking about gun control. You know that
you say, well, listen, I don't think people should have guns. Hey,
I wish people didn't have guns. But the fact is
that passing the law does not stop them from having guns.
It just makes you defenseless. One of the things I
think I mentioned in there passing is that in Britain,
the burglary rate is far higher than the United States
(26:50):
and were over. British burglars do not cate the place
before they go in. Now, if you're in the United
States and you're gonna bust it at someone's house that night,
you made me met by a hale of books. And
Britain they have made burglary a safe occupationist like it's
like Ohsha for burglars. Right.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Vietnam, Intellectuals and society again, among the many implications of
the war in Vietnam was that it once again illuminated
the role of the intelligentsia in influencing the policies of
a society and the course of history. Close quote. We
didn't lose the war. The intellectuals surrendered on our behalf.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yes. In fact, the communists themselves in later years admitted
that there was no way they could have defeated the
United States on the battlefield, and in fact that the
Tet Offensive, which was the turning point that the communist
guerrilla movement was virtually wiped out in the South. But
the intellectuals saw that as a victory for the communists
and that the war was unwinnable and once a democratic
(27:49):
country decides that the war is unwinnable, it becomes unwinnable.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Right now, Tom, what's the Vietnam raises a point that
just has to be addressed, and that is the special
place of intellectuals in the Democratic Party. Isn't that fair point?
That the Democratic Party became, at least as regards the
Vietnam War, became wholly influenced by the intellectual opinion. Correct?
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yes, how come? But it's also true true that Nix was,
And it's not because here's the thing. Machiavelli thought of
intellectuals as influencing events by influencing the rulers and changing
their minds. That no, that isn't the role. As Vietnam
clearly showed. Neixon didn't care a damn for the intellectuals, right,
(28:35):
but they created a climate of opinion in which if
he continue that war he would pay too high a
political price. So he threw South Vietnam to the wolves,
signed the negotiated agreement, and they love it. Negotiated agreements.
It doesn't matter what it says, so long as you've
signed and you win the Nobel Prize. Who cares if
a few million people get killed in the aftermath.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
What's the transmission mechanism from intel s actual opinion to
the larger climate of opinion. This is where the media
comes in.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Oh there are many, Oh yeah, there are many transmission belts.
I mean the schools, all from from the elementary school
right up through the graduate schools. The media. Now increasingly
the treaches, even treasure that we think of as a
conservative are out there pushing the liberal agenda.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Intellectuals in the Cold War again, intellectuals and societies. You're
talking about Edward Kennedy, Senator Edward Kennedy was a leading
voice for the nuclear freeze, joined by many other prominent
political figures and by many in the media. Close quote. Now,
this nuclear freeze movement reaches its most potent moment just
as Ronald Reagan is setting in place the policies that
(29:47):
actually the war and the Cold War? Yes, how come?
Why why do they? Why do they?
Speaker 2 (29:55):
But this goes way way back to at least the twenties.
The idea and arms race is wrong, and not only wrong,
but it's dangerous that that will lead to war. And
of course the counter evidence again, like so many things
that intellectuals believe, it is not subjected to any kind
of empirical test because between the two World Wars, we
(30:17):
had all these arms agreements and renunciations of war. And
although that just encouraged the Access power to feel that
they could win this war because the West was too
gullible to arm themselves to defend themselves.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Tom, we're talking about the Cold War. What do you
make of it? That Harry Truman who puts in place
the containment, the fundamental structures of containment that remain in
place for over four decades. Harry Truman takes office, was
vice president for less than a year before taking office,
(30:54):
assumes the Soviet Union is our ally because that was
study and has within a year he discovers that, in fact,
they have aggressive intentions. He changes and constructs America containment.
In my judgment, he's a kind of heroic figure. I
would argue, and I think you agree with this, And
then at the one so he begins our position in
the Cold War. He stands up to the Soviets, and
(31:14):
Ronald Reagan is the one who ends it. Now here's
let me tell you about this. The educational background. Harry
Truman finished high school. Yes, Ronald Reagan's college degree comes
not from some ancient eastern university such as those where
you studied, but from little Eureka College set in the
farming towns of central Illinois. Is that significant?
Speaker 2 (31:37):
It may well be because they didn't have to fight
off all the nonsense that they would have been taught
at these very prestigious institutions.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Intellectuals in Iraq you quote. In intellectuals in society, you
quote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, New York Times
columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman quote, to understand what's
happening in a rock follow the oil money, which already
knows that the surge has failed.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yes, so.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
The surge worked. Of course Paul Kruman was just playing wrong.
So what did he think he was doing?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Trying to explain other people is very tough, I mean
in some senses. I mean I am often baffled. Why
did Larry Sombers, you know, try to hang on at Harvard?
The man had millions he could he could have stood
up and said what he thought. The whole notion of
people being independently wealthy is very shaky for me, because
(32:40):
there are people out there where with multi millions who
are afraid to speak thereby right. And there are other
people who can barely make the rent, who will say,
you know, just just what they're thinking, right, all right?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Segment five intellectuals and the rest of us Again, intellectuals
in society. There is a spontaneous demand from the larger
society for the end proper acts of engineering, medical and
scientific professions. But the demand for public intellectuals is largely
manufactured by the public intellectuals themselves. Yes, explain that how
do they manufacture demand for their own services?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Well, one thing is by making alarming predictions offering solutions
to our problems. And if they didn't do that, if
Nam Chomsky had just kept on stated and linguistics, neither
of us probably would have ever heard of Knam Chomsky.
He would have been just as famous around the world
(33:34):
among linguists, but nobody else would have heard of him.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
What do you make of global warming?
Speaker 2 (33:41):
I think it's a classic example of the need for crusades.
Now people of many people are shocked by these emails.
I'm not at all shocked by them. I read the
original UN study years ago, and I was just curious
as to how they were going to deal with the
question that the temperatures went up first, and then there
was the increase in carbon dioxide, right, because you can't
(34:04):
say that A causes B if B happened first. And
so I read this and I could see there they
were tiptoeing through the tuloops and the way they phrased
things and so forth. They couldn't confront that. And now
we're finding out that they knew Dawn well, they couldn't
deal with all the evidence.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
So it fits the pattern of a group of intellectuals
science climate scientists who are have a very narrow competency
suddenly proclaiming that there's a crisis scaring the rest of us,
thereby creating a demand for their services, not as science
climate scientists alone, but as a kind of high priestly
(34:42):
caste that can tell us all how to live and
save the entire planet, and in the meantime generate billions
of dollars worth of government programs to fund their research initiatives.
And so are you it's a racket.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yes, all right, But again you have to take account
of ability of human beings to rationalize. I'm sure there
are scientists out there who believes some are much of
what they're saying and there are other line of scientists
who believe the opposite, But the ones who are pushing
global warming are doing their damness to make sure that
those who believe the opposite don't get heard in the public.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
So wouldn't there shouldn't there be some large ish body
of climate scientists who say the data really does suggest
that we're headed into trouble here. But precisely because my
saying so as a climate scientist will look like special pleading,
we as a community of scientists, should be even more
(35:39):
careful about being completely transparent pushing the data out to
the public. They should overcome the hurdle that it looks
like self pleading. Why isn't that taking place?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
There's no pay after that? All right? Imagine yourself as
an assistant professor in some department where the where your
senior colleagues who are going to vote on your pay,
among other things. I have millions of dollars in grants,
hand it out to promote global warming, and you say
just what you've just now said, and they'll say that's
this guy is incorrigible.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
All right, Tom, What explains the exceptions During the nineteen thirties,
intellectual after intellectual after intellectual visits Russia and says this
is the land of the future. Oh, and Malcolm Muggridge
and a handful of others, but a tiny number of
other intellectuals say no, it isn't. Stalin is a Barbarian.
After the Great Depression, the tireeconomics profession is dominated by
(36:33):
John Maynard Keynes. And then along comes Milton Friedman, and
he just won't have it. What explains these these exceptions
within among intellectuals who stand up.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
That's for another book, for somebody else to write. In
the end the preface, I mentioned that I will have
very little to say about Milton Friedman, not because he's
not one of the most important people in the twentieth century,
but because he has such an exception to the general
pattern that I'm trying to explain. I believe it is
someone else to figure out the exceptions.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
All right, let me try to ask you to figure
out one other, one other exception. I'm going to go
at you one more time on this one. Listen to this.
Barack Obama holds degrees from Colombia and Harvard and taught
at the University of Chicago. Thomas soul, who, like Barack
Obama emerges from the African American experience in this country.
BA from Harvard, m A from Colombia, PhD from Chicago,
(37:27):
and has taught at Howard Brandeis, U, C l A, Cornell,
and Amherst. What accounts for the difference in visions between
Barack Obama and Thomas soul Oh.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
My gosh, you were I mean, this is like trying
to account for every sparrow's fall.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
I mean, we two pretty consequential sparrows.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Well here is at least, but no, you can't. It's
it's hard enough to account for general patterns. When you
get down to the individual. You would have to know
so much more than any of us has ever known
or will probably know for the next thousand years at least.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
All right, Bill Buckley quote, I would rather be governed
by the first four hundred names in the Boston Telephone
Book than by the faculty of Harvard close quote very
nice encapsulation of the impulse. You'd hope that most Americans
would show to be suspicious of the experts. When Bill
Buckley made that remark in the nineteen sixties, roughly nine
(38:26):
percent of Americans held college degrees. Today the figure is
twenty nine percent and rising. Because roughly half of high
school graduates go to college, the first four hundred names
in the Boston telephone Book today are likely to include
a large number of Harvard graduates and Harvard professors. The
question here is simple, are we becoming a nation of intellectuals?
Speaker 2 (38:51):
I hadn't thought of that it would be. It's a
chilling thought because we're becoming a nation of people who
are propaganda from elementary school right on through to the
graduate school in a certain vision of the world. And
only the ones who, for one reason or another, either
experience or insight or whatever leads them to say, wait
(39:13):
a minute, only those are the ones that we have
to depend on.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Last question. If you had a sentence or two to
say to the cabinet assembled around President Obama, and this
cabinet holds glittering degrees from one impressive institution after another,
if you could beseech them to be conduct themselves in
one particular way between now and the time they all
(39:38):
leave office, what would you say?
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Actually, I would say only one word, goodbye, because I
know there's no point talking to them. It's like asking
you what would I say to the head of the mafia,
and to get him to give up crime. There wouldn't
be a thing I could say to him. All right,
he would say, give up crime. I make a thousand
times what you do? Why should I give up crime?
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Doctor Thomas Soule, author of Intellectualist in Society. Thank you
very much and happy New Year.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Thank you and happy to you.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
I'm Peter Robinson for Uncommon Knowledge in the Hoover Institution.
Thanks for joining us.
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(40:36):
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(41:00):
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(41:32):
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The Michael Barry Show. Welcome to the Bonus Podcast. I
have spoken many times about the sort of death of truth,
the end of truth as we know it. Of trust,
the idea that you could send your kid to school
and trust that your values would be taught to your children.
(00:23):
We already know that that can't be taken for granted.
It's not to say that every school is perverting your child,
but plenty are the idea that you could trust your
doctor when you asked a medical question, and that they
would not be beholden to Big Pharma or on some
sort of commission that would drive their decision making. The
(00:46):
idea that you could trust I don't know CNN, you
know this reliable news source, and RFK Junior tells us
this week in a hearing that Anderson Cooper's twenty dollars
a year is probably eighty percent paid for by big Pharma. Well,
whoever's paying the bills is calling the shots. That's how
(01:07):
this works. So trust has been eroded, and that's unfortunate.
I think that that makes it harder to get a
conviction on a bad guy in a criminal case. Where
we've lost trust in the FBI under Jim Comey, I
(01:31):
think we're less likely to believe somebody who claims they
were the victim of racism, which does occur, but we're
less likely to believe them because of all the false
claims of Black Lives Matter and Antifa and their ilk.
The death of trust, the death of respect. But at
(01:52):
some point we have to open our eyes. We've been
told that we have to trust the experts on everything
from climate chain COVID. Well, we've seen how that worked
out for mister COVID, I mean for mister science. Anthony
Fauci he said, don't wear masks, They're dumb. You just
(02:12):
get that schmuts all over you. And then he said, oh,
do wear masks, and then wear them when you walk
into a restaurant, but take them off when you reach
your table. It was also silly, and people allowed themselves
to get yanked around.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Thomas Soul wrote a book about these so called experts,
called Intellectuals and Society years ago. When he wrote the book,
he sat down with Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institute.
And if you haven't figured out already, it is a goal,
a stated clear goal of our show to amplify the
writings and words of Thomas soul. We think he's a genius.
(02:55):
He sits down with Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institute
and they discuss why so many disasters of our time
have been committed by experts or intellectuals. You may remember
FDR's brain Trust, which, according to later studies, prolonged the
Depression by several years. The Great Depression didn't need to
be the whiz kids at the Pentagon under Macnamara who
(03:19):
managed to mess up the Vietnam War, drag us into it,
and then drag it out, destroying a generation's hopes and dreams.
You can run through an impressive list of things or
disasters brought to you by people with very high IQs.
That was the basis of intellectuals and society.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Give this a listen.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Be sure to
follow us on Twitter at twitter dot com forward slash
unc Knowledge. That's twitter dot com forward slash unk Knowledge.
Doctor Thomas Soule has taught economics, intellectual history, and social
polers at such institutions as Cornell, UCLA and Amherst. The
(04:04):
author of more than a dozen books, Doctor Sowell is
now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution his newest work,
Intellectuals and Society. Tom will begin with a quotation then
candidate Barack Obama in July two thousand and eight. Quote
It's like these guys Republicans take pride in being ignorant.
(04:28):
They should go talk to some experts and actually make
a difference. Close quote.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, talking to experts does make a difference. Many of
the great disasters of our time have been committed by experts.
You may remember FDR's Brain Trust, which according to later studies,
prolonged the depression by several years, The Whiz Kids, and
the Pentagon under McNamara, who managed to mess up the
(04:57):
Vietnam War. You can run through an list of things
of disasters brought about by people with very high IQs.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
All right, segment one, the species of the intellectual. When
you refer to intellectuals in Intellectuals and Society, whom do
you mean?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I mean people whose in products are ideas. There are
other people with great intelligence whose end products are things
like the salt vaccine.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
A research scientist is not necessarily an intellectually, that's rights.
An engineer isn't necessarily an intellectual.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
That's right, because the engineer is judged by the end
product of which is not simply ideas. If he builds
a building that collapses, it doesn't matter how brilliant his
idea was, or he's ruined. Conversely, if an intellectual who's
brilliant has an idea for rearranging society and that ends
(05:53):
in disaster, he pays no price at all.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I see. Let me quote Intellectuals in Society quote. The
fatal miss step of intellectuals is assuming that superior ability
within a particular realm can be generalized to superior wisdom
or morality overall. Chess grand masters, musical prodigies and others
who are as remarkable within their respective specialties as intellectuals
(06:15):
within theirs seldom make that mistake. Explain that why would it? Well,
let's take an example. Noam Chomsky, whom you write about
in Intellectuals in Society, whose work in linguistics in the
first place, I can't understand it, But as best I
can tell, everyone who exactly, everyone who understands his technical
work within the field, within his discipline of linguistics, considers
(06:37):
him one of the great figures of the twentieth century,
and his work in politics absurdity.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
The same could be said of Bertrand Russell and his
landmark works on mathematics, and other people on other fields.
But they step outside their fields. And when you step
outside your level of specialty, sometimes that's like stepping off
a cliff.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
And why is it that intellectuals, that is to say,
people whose end product is ideas should succumb to that
temptation more than, to use your example, a chess grand master.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Because a chess grand master can be world famous for
doing absolutely nothing more than winning chess tournaments and making displays,
as many of them do, of playing five chess games
simultaneously while blindfolded.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
So Bobby Fisher had no need to opine on the
politics of the day because he was getting rich and
famous and making a brilliant career for himself within his
narrow profession.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
But intellectuals what they well, they languished an obscurity.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well, the whole question of when is someone well known
or not came up during the visit of Jim Flynt
from New Zealand here a few years ago. He's one
of the world's authorities on IQ tests. People you know
in India know about jimp plan people in England. He's
going he made world tour. But I doubt if the
(08:07):
people in the next block from where he lives knows
who he is, no know who he is?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I see, all right? It is far easier to content Again,
I'm quoting from intellectuals in society. It is far easier
to concentrate power than to concentrate knowledge. Yes, what bearing
has that got on the influence that intellectuals have over
society as a whole.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Because they believe that since knowledge is concentrated in people
like themselves, what needs to be done is, in a
quote from from President Obama, is to put more power
in the hands of the experts.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
So the intellectual temptation is to say, look, we already
know everything that's right. If only we also had the power,
the power, everything would be just fine. Yes, And what's
wrong with that view? Why isn't that a sensible view?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
One They don't know everything. They don't know one tenth
of everything. In fact, I argue that they probably don't
know one percent of the consequential knowledge in a society.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Consequential knowledge is is a concept that runs through This
book explained that.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Concept knowledge whose presence or absence has consequences, serious consequences.
I mean, I was once in a plane that was
coming down for a landing in the Ithaca Airport, and
suddenly the pilot gunned the motor and went up again
because someone in the control tower had reminded him that
he had lowered his landing gear.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So that was consequential knowledge.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yes, I just delighted that that person had had his
eyes open and his mind on his work.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
So the notion here is that the kind of knowledge,
the kind of consequential knowledge required to prove effective in
governing a nation such as the United States, with the
biggest economy in the world three hundred million people. You
can put together quite a large group of professors, and
they're still not going to possess the knowledge that would
enable them to run general motors, for example, or to
(10:05):
run the nation's healthcare system for example.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Absolutely. In fact, one of the things that has happened
all around the world in the twentieth century was that
all sorts of countries have tried central planning. Now, the
guys who run the central plan they usually have advanced
degree from prestigious institutions. They have mountains of statistics sitting there,
and they have all the experts of the country out there,
beck and call. And yet when you take the power
(10:30):
out of their hands and return to the market, then
all the hundreds of millions of people who don't have
any of those things usually end up with a higher
rate of growth and a more rapidly rapid decline in poverty.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Because consequential knowledge, by its nature, tends to be diffused,
widely diffused.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yes, Segment two, Intellectuals and Economics, we've already touched on this.
Two quotations. Number one, Paul Krugman quote, rising income inequality
isn't new, but what happened under Bush was something entirely unprecedented.
For the first time in our history, so much growth
was being siphoned off to a small wealthy minority that
(11:07):
most Americans were failing to gain ground even during a
time of economic growth. Close quote. Second quotation doctor Thomas
Sole in Intellectuals and Society quote the statistics that the
intelligentsia keeps citing are much more consistent with their vision
of America than the statistics they keep ignoring. Close quote.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
That's a tough one to encapsulate, but the basic confusion
is between statistical categories and flesh and blood people. It's
true that if you look at the percentage of the
income that went to the top twenty percent of some
year a and then later on a decade later, you'll
find that that percentage has gone up, and you say, well,
(11:49):
that shows this parity between the people.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
The rich are getting richer, rich you're getting richer.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
But when you follow statistics generated by the Intel Revenue Service,
which can follow particular individuals over time, you find the
people who are in the bottom twenty percent of taxpayers
in the first year, their income is nearly doubled by
this late later period, while the income of the people
who are initially at the top is increased by last
(12:15):
and you get down to the very top is actually
gone down, so that people are simply moving between these
brackets from year to year, And the number of people
who are in the bottom twenty percent, let's say nineteen
seventy five, who are still there in nineteen ninety one
is five percent of them. Really twenty nine percent of
them who already gotten all the way to the top.
Absolute majority are in the top half. And so you're
(12:38):
comparing what happens to these abstract categories rather than what's
happening to actual flesh and blood people.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
So there's an enormous amount of churn in dynam.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
My gosh, almost everybody's own personal life. I mean, look
at what were you making when you were twenty years
old compared to what you were making.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
When you were forty negative. I was spending my parents'
money when.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I was talking you.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
You are right, okay, So why would the intellectuals? What
you've just made is an intellectually rigorous case. Why would
an intellectual, as you use the term, be loathed to
look at that intellectually rigorous argument? Beloath to examine the
data the way you did.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Well. He's happy with the data that he got. Why
would he examine? Why would he go further? He looks
at the numbers. The numbers say what he thinks it
should say. Hey, that's it, huey d And he moves
on to the next great.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Crusade, intellectuals and society. Once again, the very phrase income
distribution is tendentious. Wealth can be created only after capital
and labor have reconciled their competing claims and agreed to
terms on which they can operate together in the production
of wealth. Close quote income distribution. The very phrase is tendentious.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
How come income is not distributed and newspapers are distributed,
Social Security execs are distributed, and one time milk was distributed.
Income is not distributed. People earn it directly from those
to whom they provide some good or service. And the
argument made by many people you see, is that it's
(14:12):
a question of capital and labor have conflicting interest and
dividing up the income. Right. No, No, there is no
income to divide up before they first reconcile their conflicting
interests and decide on what terms they're going to produce
that income. There is no pre exist, there's no manner
from heaven for them to fight over.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
You make the point what I'm coming to is the
economic crisis that we went through eighteen months ago. But
we'll start with the Great Depression, where all discussions of
economic crises should start, probably, And you make the point
that there are two large features of the Great Depression.
One was the stock market crash, and the other was
the enormous government intervention, which began under Herbert Hoover and
(14:56):
continued and expanded under FDR. But Begander began quick In
other words, yes, and so you say, so you have
two large facts here. It's a very good question which
actually caused or prolonged the Great Depression, And it's a
question that very few intellectuals actually examine.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Well. One way of examining it would be just look
at the time period the stock market crish occurred in
October nineteen twenty nine. Now there's data on unemployment month
by month. Two months after the stock market crish, unemployment
peaked at nine percent. It then began to decline irregularly
(15:31):
until about six point three percent by June and nineteen.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Thirty, indicating the economy was attempting to recover.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yes, in June nineteen thirty, the government stepped in with
his first massive intervention with a smooth Hawley tariff, passed
despite a public appeal by more than a thousand economists
from leading universities saying don't do it. They did it anyway.
It shows how much influence economists have. Wellin six months
after that, unemployment hit double digits for the first time,
(16:00):
and it never came down for the remainder of the decade,
even for one month. And so the stock market crash
brought you up to nine percent, and that was starting
to fizzle out. The government steps in to help, and
I had that his double digits, and he eventually got
got up to a peak of twenty five percent, and
(16:20):
it didn't fizzle out until the end of the decade.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
All right, listen to a list, and then I'll ask
you a question. Chairman of the Fed. Benjamin Bernanki BA
at Harvard, PhD at MIT, Professor of Economics at Princeton,
Director of the National Economic Council, Laurence Summers undergraduate degree, MIT,
doctor at Harvard younger't tenured professor of Economics and Harvard History,
eventually President of Harvard. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner ab Dartmouth,
(16:43):
m A. Johns. Hopkins. He's the underperformer in the group.
How did this group of intellectuals acquit themselves in handling
this the nation's economic crisis in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Well, first of all, they didn't handle it. The politicians
handled it.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And so even if you were to say that these
guys really could have done a great job had they
had the unbridled power and so forth, they don't have
the unbridal power. One of the problems with experts is
that experts are hired by other people, and so you
never know what the expert would have done. In fact,
there was an article in the Wall Street Journal sometime
back that the policies that are being followed in Washington
(17:17):
are the direct opposite of the policies that Summers advocated
when he published before he got to watch it, right, right,
So we should never assume that experts are just people.
They're supplying information to politicians who are trying to do good.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So surely, though the intellectuals had some the notion that
the government should step in is a hangover from the
understanding of what took place during the New Deal, right, Oh, yes, okay,
So in other words, the intellectuals the politicians are acting
within it, within a world of options that intellectuals have
(17:52):
created over the decades. Yes, right, and are you impressed
by that? The intellectual framework? No?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
All right?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Segment three Intellectuals and Vision. Intellectuals and Society. The vision
around which most contemporary intellectuals tend to coalesce, has features
that distinguish it from other visions prevalent prevalent in other
segments of contemporary society or among elites or masses in
earlier times. Close quote what is the vision to which
(18:24):
contemporary intellectuals subscribe.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
That intellectuals should influence and not control, the kinds of
decisions that are made in society, and more especially, that
they should promote the transfer of decisions from the masses
to those who have quote more intellect and what I'm given,
(18:49):
how I conceive of knowledge being its distribution. That would
mean transferring decisions from where there's ninety nine percent of
the knowledge to where there's one percent of the knowledge.
I guess that background is not at all surprising that
things like central planning simply don't produce as good results
as allowing all the millions of people to react in
the marketplace.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
All right, let me ask you a question that came
in from Twitter. Travis eight one four. All these questions
are limited to one hundred and forty characters, So get ready,
it's coming at you, but it'll go fast. Why does
the liberal progressive mindset have such a stranglehold within the
intellectual academic world. Why should the vision that you just
(19:31):
described be so prevalent among intellectuals.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Well, among the many reasons, most academic intellectuals have no experience,
no serious experience outside the academy. I remember I once.
I was once an economists for AT and T when
it was the world's largest corporation, and when I returned
to the academic world, they welcomed me as the prodigal sun.
(19:56):
You see, had returned from the evils of corporate America,
the true nirvana of academia. And not only do they
have no experience, they have every incentive to believe that
they are brighter than the other people, and no more
than other people, because they've been told that all their lives.
I mean, you've become a top intellectual because you've passed
(20:19):
through all these successive filters, You've gotten into the best colleges,
you've gotten into the best graduate.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Schools, or even from second grade on, the teachers are
responding to you as a kid who passes tests.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yes, yes, and so you have all of that in
your background.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
You write in Intellectuals and society. If you happen to
believe in free markets, judicial restraint, traditional values, and other
features of what you call the tragic vision, there's no
personal exaltation arising from those beliefs. If but to before
social justice and saving the environment puts you on a
higher moral plane. Yes, So the question here is Can
(20:57):
it really be that simple that intellectuals across the American
landscape tend to embrace the vision that you've described, surely
out of self flattery and self pleading.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yes it is, don't bet. Human beings have an enormous
power of rationalization. Think of all the absurd things that
have been believed throughout all of history, and I guess
the one common denominator is that those absurd things typically
were very flattering to those who believed them. They had
the one true faith. They were the van go out
(21:34):
of the proletariat. You know, you just run through the
whole list of the things.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
By the way, I've been reading some marks, I can't
understand how anyone ever took that seriously. I mean, ever
took it seriously.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Well, what are you reading?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Sentence by sentence? It's oh, well, I actually began with
the communist manifesto that he in angles.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Oh it's a magnificent If you want a model for propaganda,
it is. It is the mass.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
But there's no there's actually absolutely no contact with actual
economic reality.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
No, there's no need for that is as many people
are showing, you can become president of the United States
with no contact with economic reality.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
All right, two quotations intellectuals and society quote. The intelligency
often divide people into those who are for change and
those who are for the status quo. Candidate Barack Obama,
we are the change we have been waiting for, Yes, Tom.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
People who say things like this. Actually, if there's sayings
he being new, this is what was being said back
in the seventeen nineties and ever since then. You know
that there's nothing older than the idea that this is new.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
And Thomas Pain, we have it in our power to
make the world over it.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, you are, But in point of fact, there's again
this is one of those totally unquestioned, unsubstantiated statements. John
Dewey was saying, you know, that made the same thing
some sixty years ago, that those of us who are
for change have to fight against those who are for
(23:11):
the status quote. Now, the people he was talking about
people like Adam Smith. Adam Smith was not for the
status quote. Of course, as I mentioned in the book,
why would Adam Smith spend the whole decade writing a
nine hundred page book to say how contented he was
with the way things were? I mean, when you spend
a decade writing a nine hundred page book. Something is
(23:31):
bugging you, you know, I mean, And anyone who ever
bothered to read Adam Smith would see that he is
pretty ticked off about a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Once again, two quotations. You quote at a number of
points in the intellectuals in society, you quote Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes. Here's one of them, as Justice Oliver Wendel
Holmes said, the word right is one of the most
deceptive of pitfalls and a constant solicitation to fallacy. That's
quotation one. Here's quotation two. Barack Obama quote, healthcare should
(24:05):
be a right for every American.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Close quote, Well, there's the fallacy. No, it's uh, the
word right. It's amazing and in one sense I can
I can't just simply cannot explain it. People say we
have a right to affordable housing, decent healthcare, we're right
to all kinds of stuff. And the question is where
(24:30):
did this right come from?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
By the way, it is literally the case that I
heard on the radio the other day. One of the
questions in healthcare is plastic surgery, whether it'll be taxed
or But I literally heard someone say that women have
a right to botox treatments. You just thought i'd mentioned
that for you.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yes, well, but that's no more arbitrary than all the
other things that are called rights. Right now, we were
going to have this trial of these terrorists in a
quote of law, which is absolutely unprecedented and absolutely absurd.
And the question did that right come from was It's
not in the constitution. It is certainly not in the
Geneva Convention. It's just that by loose thinking people say, well,
(25:09):
prisoners of war get treated that what Yes, they're not
prisoners of war. The Geneva Convention said what prisoners of
war were. People who were adhered to the Geneva Convention
get the protections of it. But during the Second World War,
when some German soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge
put on American uniforms infiltrated the US line and they
were captured, it was simply lined up against the wall
(25:29):
and shot and killed right there. And it was not
something secret. The army filmed it, and I've seen the
films on the History Channel. There was no question. If
you don't play by the rules, you don't get the
protection of the rules. It's that simple, right.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
This leads us to segment for Intellectuals and War from
Intellectuals in Society, discussing the role intellectuals played between the
two World wars.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
One of the most remarkable developments of the nineteen twenties
was an international movement among intellectuals promoting the idea that
nations could get together and publicly renounce war. What were
they thinking, I.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Guess they weren't thinking. They were reacting. They were reacting
to the horrors of the First World War, which most
of those intelectuals had supported by the way, uh and
now and now they decided to know that was so awful.
Ways we renounced war. There's no thought that, yes, you
can renounce war. That does not stop your neighbor from
building up the biggest army in the world and coming
in and killing you. It's much much like this. It's
(26:30):
much like the thinking about gun control. You know that
you say, well, listen, I don't think people should have guns. Hey,
I wish people didn't have guns. But the fact is
that passing the law does not stop them from having guns.
It just makes you defenseless. One of the things I
think I mentioned in there passing is that in Britain,
the burglary rate is far higher than the United States
(26:50):
and were over. British burglars do not cate the place
before they go in. Now, if you're in the United
States and you're gonna bust it at someone's house that night,
you made me met by a hale of books. And
Britain they have made burglary a safe occupationist like it's
like Ohsha for burglars. Right.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Vietnam, Intellectuals and society again, among the many implications of
the war in Vietnam was that it once again illuminated
the role of the intelligentsia in influencing the policies of
a society and the course of history. Close quote. We
didn't lose the war. The intellectuals surrendered on our behalf.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yes. In fact, the communists themselves in later years admitted
that there was no way they could have defeated the
United States on the battlefield, and in fact that the
Tet Offensive, which was the turning point that the communist
guerrilla movement was virtually wiped out in the South. But
the intellectuals saw that as a victory for the communists
and that the war was unwinnable and once a democratic
(27:49):
country decides that the war is unwinnable, it becomes unwinnable.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Right now, Tom, what's the Vietnam raises a point that
just has to be addressed, and that is the special
place of intellectuals in the Democratic Party. Isn't that fair point?
That the Democratic Party became, at least as regards the
Vietnam War, became wholly influenced by the intellectual opinion. Correct?
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yes, how come? But it's also true true that Nix was,
And it's not because here's the thing. Machiavelli thought of
intellectuals as influencing events by influencing the rulers and changing
their minds. That no, that isn't the role. As Vietnam
clearly showed. Neixon didn't care a damn for the intellectuals, right,
(28:35):
but they created a climate of opinion in which if
he continue that war he would pay too high a
political price. So he threw South Vietnam to the wolves,
signed the negotiated agreement, and they love it. Negotiated agreements.
It doesn't matter what it says, so long as you've
signed and you win the Nobel Prize. Who cares if
a few million people get killed in the aftermath.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
What's the transmission mechanism from intel s actual opinion to
the larger climate of opinion. This is where the media
comes in.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Oh there are many, Oh yeah, there are many transmission belts.
I mean the schools, all from from the elementary school
right up through the graduate schools. The media. Now increasingly
the treaches, even treasure that we think of as a
conservative are out there pushing the liberal agenda.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Intellectuals in the Cold War again, intellectuals and societies. You're
talking about Edward Kennedy, Senator Edward Kennedy was a leading
voice for the nuclear freeze, joined by many other prominent
political figures and by many in the media. Close quote. Now,
this nuclear freeze movement reaches its most potent moment just
as Ronald Reagan is setting in place the policies that
(29:47):
actually the war and the Cold War? Yes, how come?
Why why do they? Why do they?
Speaker 2 (29:55):
But this goes way way back to at least the twenties.
The idea and arms race is wrong, and not only wrong,
but it's dangerous that that will lead to war. And
of course the counter evidence again, like so many things
that intellectuals believe, it is not subjected to any kind
of empirical test because between the two World Wars, we
(30:17):
had all these arms agreements and renunciations of war. And
although that just encouraged the Access power to feel that
they could win this war because the West was too
gullible to arm themselves to defend themselves.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Tom, we're talking about the Cold War. What do you
make of it? That Harry Truman who puts in place
the containment, the fundamental structures of containment that remain in
place for over four decades. Harry Truman takes office, was
vice president for less than a year before taking office,
(30:54):
assumes the Soviet Union is our ally because that was
study and has within a year he discovers that, in fact,
they have aggressive intentions. He changes and constructs America containment.
In my judgment, he's a kind of heroic figure. I
would argue, and I think you agree with this, And
then at the one so he begins our position in
the Cold War. He stands up to the Soviets, and
(31:14):
Ronald Reagan is the one who ends it. Now here's
let me tell you about this. The educational background. Harry
Truman finished high school. Yes, Ronald Reagan's college degree comes
not from some ancient eastern university such as those where
you studied, but from little Eureka College set in the
farming towns of central Illinois. Is that significant?
Speaker 2 (31:37):
It may well be because they didn't have to fight
off all the nonsense that they would have been taught
at these very prestigious institutions.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Intellectuals in Iraq you quote. In intellectuals in society, you
quote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, New York Times
columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman quote, to understand what's
happening in a rock follow the oil money, which already
knows that the surge has failed.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yes, so.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
The surge worked. Of course Paul Kruman was just playing wrong.
So what did he think he was doing?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Trying to explain other people is very tough, I mean
in some senses. I mean I am often baffled. Why
did Larry Sombers, you know, try to hang on at Harvard?
The man had millions he could he could have stood
up and said what he thought. The whole notion of
people being independently wealthy is very shaky for me, because
(32:40):
there are people out there where with multi millions who
are afraid to speak thereby right. And there are other
people who can barely make the rent, who will say,
you know, just just what they're thinking, right, all right?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Segment five intellectuals and the rest of us Again, intellectuals
in society. There is a spontaneous demand from the larger
society for the end proper acts of engineering, medical and
scientific professions. But the demand for public intellectuals is largely
manufactured by the public intellectuals themselves. Yes, explain that how
do they manufacture demand for their own services?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Well, one thing is by making alarming predictions offering solutions
to our problems. And if they didn't do that, if
Nam Chomsky had just kept on stated and linguistics, neither
of us probably would have ever heard of Knam Chomsky.
He would have been just as famous around the world
(33:34):
among linguists, but nobody else would have heard of him.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
What do you make of global warming?
Speaker 2 (33:41):
I think it's a classic example of the need for crusades.
Now people of many people are shocked by these emails.
I'm not at all shocked by them. I read the
original UN study years ago, and I was just curious
as to how they were going to deal with the
question that the temperatures went up first, and then there
was the increase in carbon dioxide, right, because you can't
(34:04):
say that A causes B if B happened first. And
so I read this and I could see there they
were tiptoeing through the tuloops and the way they phrased
things and so forth. They couldn't confront that. And now
we're finding out that they knew Dawn well, they couldn't
deal with all the evidence.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
So it fits the pattern of a group of intellectuals
science climate scientists who are have a very narrow competency
suddenly proclaiming that there's a crisis scaring the rest of us,
thereby creating a demand for their services, not as science
climate scientists alone, but as a kind of high priestly
(34:42):
caste that can tell us all how to live and
save the entire planet, and in the meantime generate billions
of dollars worth of government programs to fund their research initiatives.
And so are you it's a racket.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yes, all right, But again you have to take account
of ability of human beings to rationalize. I'm sure there
are scientists out there who believes some are much of
what they're saying and there are other line of scientists
who believe the opposite, But the ones who are pushing
global warming are doing their damness to make sure that
those who believe the opposite don't get heard in the public.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
So wouldn't there shouldn't there be some large ish body
of climate scientists who say the data really does suggest
that we're headed into trouble here. But precisely because my
saying so as a climate scientist will look like special pleading,
we as a community of scientists, should be even more
(35:39):
careful about being completely transparent pushing the data out to
the public. They should overcome the hurdle that it looks
like self pleading. Why isn't that taking place?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
There's no pay after that? All right? Imagine yourself as
an assistant professor in some department where the where your
senior colleagues who are going to vote on your pay,
among other things. I have millions of dollars in grants,
hand it out to promote global warming, and you say
just what you've just now said, and they'll say that's
this guy is incorrigible.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
All right, Tom, What explains the exceptions During the nineteen thirties,
intellectual after intellectual after intellectual visits Russia and says this
is the land of the future. Oh, and Malcolm Muggridge
and a handful of others, but a tiny number of
other intellectuals say no, it isn't. Stalin is a Barbarian.
After the Great Depression, the tireeconomics profession is dominated by
(36:33):
John Maynard Keynes. And then along comes Milton Friedman, and
he just won't have it. What explains these these exceptions
within among intellectuals who stand up.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
That's for another book, for somebody else to write. In
the end the preface, I mentioned that I will have
very little to say about Milton Friedman, not because he's
not one of the most important people in the twentieth century,
but because he has such an exception to the general
pattern that I'm trying to explain. I believe it is
someone else to figure out the exceptions.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
All right, let me try to ask you to figure
out one other, one other exception. I'm going to go
at you one more time on this one. Listen to this.
Barack Obama holds degrees from Colombia and Harvard and taught
at the University of Chicago. Thomas soul, who, like Barack
Obama emerges from the African American experience in this country.
BA from Harvard, m A from Colombia, PhD from Chicago,
(37:27):
and has taught at Howard Brandeis, U, C l A, Cornell,
and Amherst. What accounts for the difference in visions between
Barack Obama and Thomas soul Oh.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
My gosh, you were I mean, this is like trying
to account for every sparrow's fall.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
I mean, we two pretty consequential sparrows.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Well here is at least, but no, you can't. It's
it's hard enough to account for general patterns. When you
get down to the individual. You would have to know
so much more than any of us has ever known
or will probably know for the next thousand years at least.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
All right, Bill Buckley quote, I would rather be governed
by the first four hundred names in the Boston Telephone
Book than by the faculty of Harvard close quote very
nice encapsulation of the impulse. You'd hope that most Americans
would show to be suspicious of the experts. When Bill
Buckley made that remark in the nineteen sixties, roughly nine
(38:26):
percent of Americans held college degrees. Today the figure is
twenty nine percent and rising. Because roughly half of high
school graduates go to college, the first four hundred names
in the Boston telephone Book today are likely to include
a large number of Harvard graduates and Harvard professors. The
question here is simple, are we becoming a nation of intellectuals?
Speaker 2 (38:51):
I hadn't thought of that it would be. It's a
chilling thought because we're becoming a nation of people who
are propaganda from elementary school right on through to the
graduate school in a certain vision of the world. And
only the ones who, for one reason or another, either
experience or insight or whatever leads them to say, wait
(39:13):
a minute, only those are the ones that we have
to depend on.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Last question. If you had a sentence or two to
say to the cabinet assembled around President Obama, and this
cabinet holds glittering degrees from one impressive institution after another,
if you could beseech them to be conduct themselves in
one particular way between now and the time they all
(39:38):
leave office, what would you say?
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Actually, I would say only one word, goodbye, because I
know there's no point talking to them. It's like asking
you what would I say to the head of the mafia,
and to get him to give up crime. There wouldn't
be a thing I could say to him. All right,
he would say, give up crime. I make a thousand
times what you do? Why should I give up crime?
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Doctor Thomas Soule, author of Intellectualist in Society. Thank you
very much and happy New Year.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Thank you and happy to you.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
I'm Peter Robinson for Uncommon Knowledge in the Hoover Institution.
Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
If you like the Michael Berry Show and Podcast, please
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(40:36):
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(41:00):
Voices Jingles, Tomfoolery and Shenanigans are provided by Chance MacLean.
Director of Research is Sandy Peterson.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Emily Bull is.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
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