Commentary: Longtime former Republican on Patrick Deneen and the demise of the conservative intellectual
Go ahead and list an example of one of those past conservative intellectuals and we’ll see how long it takes to dig up an example of them saying something like Civil Rights protesters are all secret communist agents or that child labor and vagrancy laws and debtors prisons are good things.
Like, I get the appeal in wanting to believe the other side is just as smart and well meaning as our side is, but there’s just no basis for that in the historical record. They’ve always been like this and we just keep forgetting.
One can be an intellectual and still a huge piece of shit. Theyre not mutually exclusive. People like Milton Friedman or Henry Kissinger a undebatably intellectuals… but that doesn’t mean they’re angels. It just means they wield their intellect as a whip to beat their opponents with, rather than raising society as a whole.
Honestly this whole “conservatives are just a bunch of dumb rabid animals” is they exact sentiment they want us to feel. Because then we never look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world.
Honestly this whole “conservatives are just a bunch of dumb rabid animals” is they exact sentiment they want us to feel. Because then we never look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world.
I for one would love to look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world, but I end up wasting a ton of my time replying to dumb rabid animal shit David Brooks gets to smear all over the New York Times op-ed page when my older relatives who vote in every single election send me his columns because they think that he makes some good points about “Cultural Marxism”
For example, Karl Marx. Clearly an intellectual as evidenced by his writings. But his colorblind/radical centrist take on minority rights fits right in with modern conservative extremists. And then the way he framed his opinions led to far right authoritarian regimes co-opting the label of communism.
Muh nazis were akschually leftwing and communists rightwing… Typical nazi tactic
