Intellectuals and Society

The key take away for me was that there is a type of human in the intellectual space that is analogous to the body builder in the athletic space. Body builders do what they do because they like to seem athletic. Intellectuals do what they do because they like to seem smart. Body builders openly admit they just like the look though while intellectuals will insist they really are smart. This is because there is nothing to prove them wrong. Or more like they avoid the things that would prove them wrong and nobody notices.

Sowell gives lots of examples of how intellectuals have harmed society with their bad ideas. One of the ones I found most interesting was that french teachers had taken the intellectuals talk of peace to heart and taught a whole generation of french men to hate the military and be indifferent to who rules over them. This was the main reason France was such an easy beat for Germany in WW2 despite the french being both well fortified and well armed. Hitler himself knew they could easily of counter attacked his opening move but he correctly predicted that they didn't have the stomach for it any more. The frenchmen of WW1 would of counter attacked Germany's supply train and let the panzers run out of gas.

Sowell also had some good examples of how intellectuals enabled the rise of communism by spreading it's propaganda and ignoring it's failures. The intellectuals also contributed to America losing the Vietnam war by spreading stories about drug addicted solders and ignoring stories of heroism. The net affect was to demoralise the solders and eventually the politicians too. The American military was far from efficient at the time so it might not of won the war had the lies not been spread at home, but I feel sorry for the soldiers that came home from hell to be treated with undeserved distain