Ahhhhhh... smoking weed... groping drunk girls at a party... listening to "Free Bird" and "Crazy Train" with the knob set to 11... ya got me thinking all Senior year of high school (except the "Free Bird" part, that sucked).

I'm distressed -- I've used the word "antidisestablishmentarianism" in a sentence, correctly, relatively recently. (And I inhaled, and I enjoyed it.) Are all who enjoy the study of religion and political history doomed to a fate such as mine?

Is there help for me?

Would it help if I blamed my father -- or is that one of the symptoms?

Seriously, though... Enjoying your site, as always -- thanks!

Love your list. "Information wants to be free" - as a librarian, I find that one particularly sick-making.

Don't forget "social justice"!

I am quite fond myself of 'social justice' myself being at best a soppy moderate sort of geezer who worries about nonsense such as 'fundamental fairness' (oops! there goes another---you've probably disappeared through that exit by now, eh?(

I like your blog. I found the above entertaining. I think Lessing was wrong to say what she said. But I was confused by the above closely reasoned ad hominem attack on Lessing, her work, and her intelligence. It's quite Orwellian really, particularly coming from such an intelligent chap as you clearly are. Are you manipulating the masses for your own entertainment or do you really believe all of the above?

Re Lessing: I think she was wrong, offensive and wrong, to say what she said. It's perhaps likely that she said what she said because she is 88 and not particularly fond of Americans.

In other words, I see a correct conclusion being spun into a web of fallacy. Is that the point---to catch the unwary and credulous?

Anyway, feel free to moderate/delete. I was curious and--as I said--I quite like this blog, while agreeing with very little. You don't mind, I hope, having a reader who is not of your camp?

Cheers

Oh, I'll take it a step farther, a lot of self-styled intellectuals are narcissistic to no small degree.

Check the diagnostic traits, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9 are particularly common.

Cockney Robin: Are you deliberately parodying a pseudo-intellectual, or do you really mean all that stuff?

"Intellectuals" fall in love with murderous dictators way too often to be an accident. They thought that the blood-soaked clown Benito Mussolini was the very model of a modern Great Man. This is typical of their judgment.

The comparison of intellectuals to fans has the ring of truth. Pencil-neck fans get their fix of power fantasy by reading superhero stories, the classic example being Doc Smith's Lensman series. Intellectuals need the crutch of supposed reality, however implausible (like supermarket tabloid readers, who thrill to stories which are no more likely than those in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, but which are presented as true for those who need that).

Back when Benito flourished, the intellectuals declared that democracy had no chance against the deadly efficiency and focus of totalitarianism. The only question was, which kind of totalitarianism would build its monuments on the smoking rubble of freedom. If you looked for the most widely-read fiction that took the opposite view, and presented the case, now recognized as correct, for diversity and multiculturalism over top-down dictatorship, you keep looking until you reach Doc Smith's Lensman series.

Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 10/23/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

Though I had never heard of Doris Lessing before, I just KNEW that the Nobel Prize for Literature could not POSSIBLY have been awarded to a sane person.

Thank you for restoring my faith in my ability to pick the Nobel Prize for Literature:

It always goes to the craziest anti-American loon available.

Poor Mr. Roth. Citizen of the Great Satan AND (relatively) mentally stable.

He's got a better shot at winning the US Open.

I think pseudo-intellectuals confuse ponder and ponderous all the time.

Ever read Lessing's science fiction? Utterly dreadful stuff and very derivative. And of her great work, "the Golden Notebook"? Let's just say that not very intelligent poseurs would consider it great literature. As for the rest of us...

You forgot "Speak Truth to Power". Intellectuals love that saying - makes them feel so brave and tough. But the only power they ever speak truth to are those that can do absolutely nothing to harm them. I find cowardice, as well as narcissism and intellectual vacuity, are positively correlated with liberalism.

How about the term "common man"? I hate that one for some reason. "Violence doesn't solve anything!" When taxes become voluntary I'll believe that.

My theory is that people who are very smart about one thing fall into the trap of thinking they are smart about everything. Lessing may have been smart about the internal lives of woman, which led her to the false conclusion that she new beans about science fiction and politics.

Roth or even Updike should have won the prize. Maybe even Cormac McCarthy. But Lessing? Please...

Cockney Robin:

Anyway, feel free to moderate/delete. I was curious and--as I said--I quite like this blog, while agreeing with very little. You don't mind, I hope, having a reader who is not of your camp?

The perfect opportunity to bring up one of the many differences between a left-liberal blog like Kos or DU and a right-leaning blog like this one, or Patterico's, or Captain's Quarters: We on this side of the aisle rarely delete or "moderate" a post because it's on the opposite political side.

I have never deleted or edited a post for that reason; I have a set of general rules of decorum -- which you can always find by clicking "Comments For Reptiles" in the list of "Hatcheries" (categories) in the right column -- and so long as you follow those, which you certainly did, your comment will stand. (Really basic rules like no profanity, no personal attacks, that sort of thing.)

Others may argue with you; I may even argue with you. But you're allowed to make your point like anyone else.

By contrast, every one of us reading this blog who is more or less on the right has had the experience of seeing his thoughtful, non attacking, and polite comments deleted by left-leaning blogs... or worse, left in place but edited into risibility to make him look stupid.

While I'm certainly not a conservative, I have never had a comment of mine deleted from or edited at a conservative blog -- even when I vehemently disagreed with the blog owner's position.

In fact, knowing I wasn't a conservative, three conservative blogs (each much more popular than Big Lizards -- alas!) have allowed me to guest blog: Patterico's Pontifications, Captain's Quarters, and Michelle Malkin. In addition, Power Line, another strong, principled conservative blog like the other three, posted many e-mails of mine, some disagreeing with their positions.

I really wish that liberals were as confident of their positions as conservatives are of theirs; I am a firm believer in the efficacy and virtue of principled debate. But I fear that many on the left never do get to see responsible opposing opinions -- and thus conclude that there are none! -- when in fact, their fragile eyes are simply being shielded from such disturbing sights by the site owners.

So feel free to continue commenting here, disagreeing with the hosts or anyone else, and arguing for your principles, your positions, and your candidates... so long as you continue to do so with the same decorum as you have... and as we use to argue ours.

Dafydd

Lessing's biography says she joined the Communist Party while in Rhodesia and left the communist party in 1950, when living in England and becoming dissilusioned with the British Communist Party. She is now a Sufi.

Now I remember why I never bothered to read Ms. Lessing, and why I won't bother now. I will do nothing to support her bad habits.

Obviously FN Owl and others here know some very different intellectuals than those I've occasionally encountered! History seems to suggest that the "murderous dictators" are, if anything, the book-burning enemies of intellect, and that their followers tend to be those who value expediency at the expense of intelligence. Of course every era has a few posturing contrarians who prefer any new system to their own thereby enabling the baddies. But human beings, whatever their pretensions, sometimes do get things wrong.

I don't care for Lessing's views, but she is a gifted writer.

I don't feel compelled to accept her political views any more than I feel compelled to accept yours. One can point out that she was wrong without attacking her writing or her intelligence (which I am not in a position to judge.

In answer to FN Owl, I am not "parodying" anything except, of course, myself. Perhaps I really AM a "pseudo intellectual" as FN Owl suggests. On the other hand, whether I am pseudo, intellectual, or---as I'd contend---just another member of the great unwashed isn't really germane to my argument.

My point remains and in fact is well illustrated by the above riposte to my original note: whatever the drawbacks of the "left", including censorship etc., it is certainly the case that many conservatives routinely fall back on personal attacks to make their points. In consequence, nothing changes and the public debate remains paralysed and polarised. But of course that's more entertaining---if less edifying--- than actual discussion of the issues.

Dafydd,

Hey, I resemble that remark ;). I am Geek & Nerd, with coke bottle glasses. I *love* Sci-Fi, but I've never heard of Lessing and have never seen her works in the library or in the book store. I am fond of Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, whose work quality declined late in his life, IMO. I've read Niven and Pournelle.

@ Cockney Robin,

In my experience, it is the Left that primarily relies upon personal attacks to make their points. The Right, at least here in the USA is polite to a fault and refuses to reply in kind.

Case in point. President Bush is routinely trashed by American leftists high and low. President Bush rarely responds to such attacks and even more rarely replies in kind. When he does respond, he attacks the false message, not the messenger.

If we are going to dig out old science fiction, try some George O. Smith if you want supermen ("Highways in Hiding," and "The Fourth R), along with John W. Campbell. On Van Vogt, my favorite was the Null A series. I must confess that I hadn't thought of the Lensman series in years.

As for Lessing, her argument about 9/11 would seem to say that the Holocaust would have been more acceptable had Hitler limited himself to fewer killed per year, but over a longer time span. If we accept her roughly 3000 per year as nothing to get excited about, then it would have taken a lot of years, like twenty thousand, but what's a few years amongst great minds.

Please add to your list the phrase, "Paying their fair share." That one always sets me off, and is dearly loved by Intellectuals, probably because it is a way for them to transfer wealth to themselves when most of them are not capable enough to earn it. You will note that the Intellectuals, when transferring such wealth, always make sure that they get their share first and what is left can trickle on down to the poor whom they claim to feel sorry for.

"it is certainly the case that many conservatives routinely fall back on personal attacks to make their points"

Wow. And this in a comment in response to an article about a liberal who says ""Many of us hated Tony Blair, I think he has been a disaster for Britain and we have suffered him for many years. I said it when he was elected: This man is a little showman who is going to cause us problems and he did."

"As for Bush, he's a world calamity," added Lessing. "Everyone is tired of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever.."

At least Doris Lessing didn't bother to employ 'close reasoning' in her ad hominem attacks.

Your point that 'nothing changes and the public debate remains paralysed and polarised' as a consequence of conservatives routinely resorting to personal attacks (a point I STRONGLY dispute) I find very odd. You say this is a consequence of personal attacks immediately after dismissing any consequences of censorship.

I don't know about anyone else, but I find that censorship does an awful lot more to paralyse public debate. Maybe it's just me.

Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)

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