Intellectuals in the Nanny State

“The snooty point of it all is that to most of the intellectuals who have entered politics, Americans are a rather dumb lot who, without the help of the elite, would squander their resources, wreck their families, litter the streets, be impolite to their neighbors, lynch everyone is sight, burn the books, break the violins, sack the museums, spit on the pavement, smell, eat garlic, drink beer, belch in public, be unkind to dogs, use abstract paintings as designs in their kitchen linoleum, watch baseball, go to movies with happy endings, scratch themselves, dress unstylishly, and otherwise be helpless clods.

I have found little difference in this attitude between intellectuals who call themselves conservative and those who call themselves liberal. On the other hand, it is not true that all intellectuals feel this way. On the contrary, the people who have most effectively criticized such intellectuals are, not surprisingly, other intellectuals who, although they work with their heads instead of their hands, understand that they are working, that they have a lot in common with, and are not superior to or separate from, people who do other kinds of work. A physicist or a historian is, of course, more likely to be a better physicist or historian than a welder but that may be precisely where the ‘better’ argument starts and should stop– not forgetting that the welder may be a better welder and that, very probably, they’ll all be quite equal in virtually every other skill of living, honesty, decency, regard for others, and so forth.”

Karl Hess in Dear America, 1975, p114-115