The current issue of the Claremont Review of Books includes a revealing article by Denis Boyles: [Emphasis mine-SW]
Spineless Intellectuals
A review of The Flight of the Intellectuals, by Paul Berman and The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism, by Theodore Dalrymple
In reviewing Berman's book, critics have pointed out that the self-delusion of liberal intellectuals has been the subject of other books. The New York Times's review cites Nick Cohen's What's Left? How the Left Lost Its Way (2007) and Julian Benda's celebrated Treason of the Intellectuals (1927). But the most apt comparison, I think, is with Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970). Unlike Berman, Wolfe saw clearly that fear of fact-checking—repeating the "gotcha" mantra—would never be enough to inspire real intellectual rigor, the kind that can swim upstream and destroy the insipidity of "conventional wisdom."
The reason for this is simple. The victory of Tariq Ramadan has been due to his ability to manipulate the ignorance of friendly intellectuals—men and women whose intellectuality has been consecrated by a kind of laying-on of the hands of other intellectuals. These are people who cannot both confess ignorance and maintain their intellectual claims. Ramadan demonstrated this brilliantly in 2006, when Pope Benedict, making a scholarly reference at a theological conference, quoted 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus's comment that there is little rationalistic tradition in Islamic theology—a problem, when it comes to dialogue. The editorialists at the New York Times may not have known whether there was any truth to that, but the paper nonetheless lamented "Muslims' shock at the Pope's remarks," and invited Ramadan to contribute an op-ed piece to express said shock. Ramadan dutifully denied the pope's assertion, and cited one of his grandfather's favorite teachers, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, an early 12th-century Persian mystic, as the source for his claim that Islamic theology has a strong rationalist tradition.
Except it doesn't; rationalism has always been viewed with suspicion in Islam. (Berman looks at that claim carefully, although not in connection with Benedict's comment.) If he is a student of al-Ghazali, Ramadan's "rationalism" isn't the "rationalism" Benedict obviously intended as a basis for discussion. Although some claim Al-Ghazali may have ultimately paved the way for some sort of Islamic adaptation of Aristotlelianism, in The Incoherence of the Philosophers he specifically rejects rationalism as a means to faith. This was a turning point in Islamic theological and philosophical development and has led to an Islamic antagonism toward reason.(As another Ramadan critic, Caroline Fourest, argues, Ramadan routinely employs a "double discourse"; that's a polite way of saying he talks out of both sides of his mouth.) But in making his claim, Ramadan knew that few people—even intellectuals—reading the Times would have a clue about al-Ghazali, and that they would believe what they needed to believe in any case.
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The idea of manipulating intellectuals by exploiting the gaping holes that no self-respecting modern intellectual can acknowledge, yet which exist in every person's education, is easier than ever. This also works with memory, as Henry Rousso pointed out in his 1987 classic, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. In creating a cogent, intellectual point-of-view, some facts are worth remembering more than others, and some are worth nothing at all and should be forgotten. In the end, most people—but especially contemporary intellectuals—believe what they believe because it's too uncomfortable (or just too much work) to disrupt the seamless narrative of a carefully shaped worldview by trying to accommodate contrary evidence. The result is the kind of ignorance of obvious factors that has so irritated Berman. In fact, simply tracking the needed refutations to these intellectual narratives can make one tipsy with anger.
I write a great deal about Narcissism and especially the ways in which, once an ideological point of view becomes incorporated into one's Ego Ideal, reason and rationality are at great risk.
[For a more in depth discussion of the Ego ideal and its role in the formation of character, Narcissism and Paranoia: Part I and Narcissism, Malignant Narcissism, and Paranoia: Part III. For a glimpse of what happens when the Ego Ideal of a culture is psychotically disturbed, see Who is Samir Kuntar? Who we pick as our heroes is extremely revealing of a culture.]
The intellectual values language facility and abstract ideas far more than they value other people or mere artifacts. Further, only people who share their positions (other intellectuals) are worth idealizing (hence the ridiculous media idealization of Barack Obama) while those who come from a more modest (ie, inferior) class only earn scorn (as in the ridiculous media devaluing of Sarah Palin.) For contemporary intellectuals the verbal construct, the more obtuse, prolix, dense, and complex the better, is the height of sophistication and beauty. Structures which hold Civilization together, shared values for example, are devalued as simplistic "opiates of the masses" while the actual physical structures that form the bedrock upon which our Culture stands, the nuts and bolts of civilization, are dirty, necessary but best kept out of sight.
The intellectual lives above the fray in a world he and his ilk have created in which there is never any room for the confusion and chaos of reality. At the same time, the Intellectual admires the brute man of action. There is a reason Che Guevara has become the icon of the modern Left. He was not a demasculinized word-smith, living a materially wealthy life as a parasite on the greedy capitalist body politic. He was a man of action, not reluctant to do what was necessary to (in the intellectual's fantasy) bring about the Utopian Civilization that never seems to show up on schedule. Today's intellectuals are the same people who gave a Pulitzer Prize to Walter Durante for covering up the genocidal crimes of Stalin and now lie and blind themselves to cover the genocidal crimes of the people Tariq Ramadan fronts for.
Growing up means that we have to relinquish our Utopian fantasies of a perfect world and our "rightful" place in it. We must struggle to earn our way in the world and do the best we can with an untidy and often unjust reality. To be an intellectual means one never has to give up the fantasies of one's youth. It does require pruning one's perceptions to avoid knowing anything that might bring one's world view into question. The Intellectual must maintain a comfort zone where he knows that he is among the best and the brightest, the finest of human beings in all ways. To question the basic beliefs of the Intellectual means you are questioning his self worth; his ideas and his self worth are inseparable. When our Narcissism comes into contact with reality and fails, as it must as we pass the threshold from adolescence to young adulthood, terrible things can ensue. Yet we make the transition because we must and we suffer and tolerate the sadness and depression at watching our dreams slip away because only then can we find more real and more powerful dreams (if we are lucky.)
Many attempt to hold reality at bay for various amounts of time by resorting to the 1960's Holy Trinity of "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." They either eventually comes to terms with themselves and their future or are lost. The Intellectual is terrified of giving up his dreams because they are all too often all he has. To avoid such devastating results, surrendering to Sharia must seem like a small price to pay.
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