Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
Admission to the world at large
By Tom Smith

As Hugh Hewitt says, when you make a mistake, you should admit it to everybody. I actually think he is wrong about that, but perhaps that is one mistake he will not admit. In any event, a somewhat testy reader points out that I wrote 'tenants' when I obviously meant 'tenents' as in beliefs or is it beleifs, no it's beliefs, in my attack on the Straussians. My spelling, she points out, makes it hard to take me seriously as an intellectual. Unfortunately, there are many better reasons not to take me seriously, such as my somewhat splenetic (sp?) temperment. But, at least I am not a KGB spy, as some extremely serious intellectuals have been. As to how smart I am, I can think of no better person to answer that question than the inimitable Brian Leiter, who would probably be happy to rank me somewhere or other, and you know it won't be out of sympathy with my politics. (Brian, do you worst! But please don't hurt my feelings!)

But, really, how smart do you have to be? Here is this view, that says, roughly speaking of course, that there are a few really, really smart people, and they can figure out that everyone from Plato to Aquinas didn't mean what they apparently said (Aquinas? An atheist!), and they, when they are not too busy doing that ancient Greek symposium thing (you know what I mean), should run the world from the shadows by manipulating stupid but brave aristocrats and placating the animalistic masses, into which everybody is declining because it's the end of history, you see. Hegel and that French KGB spy said so. Because Stalin is the world historical whateveryoucallit. Oh, no, it turns out it's Bush. How smart do you have to be to say, Hooooooohkay; would the next candidate for a philosophy of government please come forward?
posted by thomas at 12/03/2003 12:35:00 PM