Tuesday, February 21, 2012

They Shoot Intellectuals, Don't They?

Arguments about how that leadership has been and is being squandered and abused aside, if you don't lead you follow.  Q.E.D. [More]


I don't think this reveler is going to necessarily like his new masters as they give him an education he either never dreamed of or didn't think applied to him.

Fortunately, men he never meets in higher education circles--men he no doubt reviles--stand in the way of that.

3 comments:

Affe said...

I'd google his bio before making any assumptions about who he has and hasn't met in higher education circles and who he may or may not revile... He's earned his anger several times over, both by his service and his son's sacrifice.

David Codrea said...

He's earned his anger, but has misplaced it. A system of undeclared wars where our representatives can't be held accountable betrayed him--now he embraces a system of internationalism. That will betray him too.

He needs to instead put his energies on restoring liberty and being the leader in that. His oath has not expired. And if we don't restore it and lead by example, someone else not interested in freedom will.

And yes, I presume his internationalist academic circle does not include men who stand in the way of that--I'm referring to the hard core of Americans who believe unbendingly in the Bill of Rights and will take to the field before allowing alien doctrine by enemies foreign and domestic to supplant it.

Kevin Wilmeth said...

"men he never meets in higher education circles--men he no doubt reviles"

Hm, about that--at least the first part. I'll admit that I wound up in "higher education circles" by circumstances not of my choosing, for a period of a couple of years, but there I was. The irony both cut me pretty deeply, and at the same time helped me understand even some of the unintended ways that "we are everywhere".

I've met many like him; based only on the linked piece, most are much worse. Most of them loved me immediately, and why not? I'm an affable human being, calm and confident, and I smile a lot. I can speak their language, or at least the vocabulary and delivery of it. And I know when simply to shut up. (The expectation of sameness-of-opinion among this crowd is startling if you haven't experienced it in person, and most political conversations between academics are simple masturbation. It is easy to simply stop contributing to the conversation when it moves into intolerable territory; in two years I don't think any of them ever noticed my patterns of withdrawal.)

As to the second part of your statement, though--oh yeah. You want real, pluperfect hatred of the not-one-of-us? I give you the faculty lounge.

One of the reasons it was so easy to keep smiling, completely immersed in a sea of people who would probably faint away if they ever found out what I fully thought (I was never dishonest--I simply withheld my "dangerous" opinions), is that they'd probably slip into a coma if they found out what I was wearing, every day, all the time.

That part almost made the whole exercise worth it. :-)