Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society

The author of more than a dozen books, Dr. Sowell is now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. In his newest work, Intellectuals and Society, he will discuss why so many disasters of our time have been committed by experts or intellectuals. You may remember FDRs Brain Trust which according to later studies is a prolonged the depression by several years. The wiz kids at the pentagon under McNamara who managed to mess up the Vietnam War, you can run through an impressive list of things, of disasters brought about by people with very high IQs

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News & Politics

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• HooverInstitutionUK
• Intellectuals
• society
• mistakes
• experience
• poverty

[amunderdog]

I think you have confused Intellectual and Philosopher

Dr. Sowell = Philosopher

[astroboomboy]

His arguments are self-defeating as he himself is a public intellectual. What he has a problem with is that most intellectuals don't share his set of ideas and values.

It is also outright wrong to assume that public intellectuals only are those with ideas as their end product. Those most outspoken against policies in regards to climate change are scientists in the natural sciences.

Regards to Noam Chomsky he is wrong. He became quite famous outside of linguistics before his political writing

[AstroAntaAposAnarch]

@0atheist You are jumping the gun a bit. True, he is an Intellectual himself, but unlike the other public Intellectuals he is referring to, particularly the ones who incite panic about global warming(which personally I can't see why it's such a big deal), he is simply explaining his opinions on the subjects and not trying to maneuver his way into power.

I know squat about running a modern business. Does that mean I can't express myself on the topic on how to manage one.

[0atheist]

Economist (public Intellectual himself) is a climate change denier; Rants about how public intellectuals shouldn't stray outside their own speciality.

Just a conspiracy theorist who's built a career catering to the right wing / libertarians looking for confirmation bias (hats off, it's worked for him)

[htiberian]

I have to disagree with Dr. Sowell on Vietnam and Iraq, these were illegitemate wars and a libertarian would rightly oppose them. Also, if you don't try a terrorist in court, then how do you know he's a terrorist.

[pretorious700]

@chris7777777777777 sorry Chris, Ron Paul's foreign policy is the ONLY one that makes any sense.

[AstroAntaAposAnarch]

Even if the top percent were always in the top percent, I'd don't understand why the government thinks they should have to pay more in taxes. People work hard for that extra money and now you want to take it away from them? Isn't America, ideally, the land of Opportunity? Isn't that one of the reasons people came here in the first place, to become more prosperous than where they were before? It just hacks me off. Why can't everyone pay the same amount, no more and no less.

[blueafghanistan]

I love this dude,

[pragmatismnotidealis]

Intellectuals and society was the first book I read by Sowell. Life hasn't been the same since.

[nutbagbrew102]

why does Ron Paul seem to be running ahead of others in Iowa - all Ron Paul is doing is coming up with a wish list of ideas that allot of Americans want to see happen - the problem with some of Ron Paul's ideas is that they are only dreams and cannot become a truth unless you had the complete congress and senate behind the president which i do not see happening this time around - stop dreaming - vote for less government