This is a fascinating idea: a study upon the nature and influence of intellectuals themselves upon society. What more appropriate group for study than the people dedicated to study? Many people have described the nature of academia, or the processes of research and development in American life, but as far as I know, nobody has turned the spotlight on intellectuals as a group. That lack means that such an analysis is not only warranted, but even needful.



Unfortunately, Sowell fails in this analysi

1. the faculty of the mind by which one knows or understands, as distinguished from that by which one feels or wills; capacity for thinking and acquiring knowledge.



2. capacity for thinking and acquiring knowledge of a high or complex order.



3. a particular mind or intelligence, esp. of a high order.



4. a person possessing a great capacity for thought and knowledge.



5. minds collectively.

In short, at all levels of the intelligentsia, and in a wide range of specialties, the incentives tend to reward going beyond whatever expertise the particular member of the intelligentsia may have, and the constraints against falsity are few or non-existent. It is not that most of the intelligentsia deliberately lie in a cynical attempt to gain notoriety or to advance themselves or their cause in other ways. However, the general ability of people to rationalize to themselves, as well as to others, is certainly not lacking among the intelligentsia.

...many of the intelligentsia express not only surprise but outrage at the number of shots fired by the police in some confrontation with a criminal, even if many of these intellectuals have never fired a gun in their lives, much less faced life-and-death dangers requiring split-second decisions.

In fact, all the Americans killed in the two Iraq wars put together were fewer than those killed taking the one island of Iwo Jima during the Second world War or one day [emphasis included] of fighting at Antietam during the Civil War.

This is a fascinating idea: a study upon the nature and influence of intellectuals themselves upon society. What more appropriate group for study than the people dedicated to study? Many people have described the nature of academia, or the processes of research and development in American life, but as far as I know, nobody has turned the spotlight on intellectuals as a group. That lack means that such an analysis is not only warranted, but even needful.Unfortunately, Sowell fails in this analysis on every meaningful level. In describing the errors of what he deems to be the intellectuals of American society he makes several fundamental errors that fatally doom this effort to describe the processes of intellect, and he does so in ways that should have been obvious to anyone before they sat down to write. In brief, in his criticism of intellectuals in American culture, Sowell commits—almost systematically—every error of logic, shallow misinterpretation and sin of omission that he accuses his subjects of performing. In many cases he commits the error he is describing an intellectual of committing AS HE IS DESCRIBING IT. He does so without any apparent recognition of his own participation in the exact same processes in a way that must be recognized as irretrievably hypocritical if not pathetically naïve.I can't fully address the fallacious errors of this book because it is so rife with them that doing so would require a similarly lengthy text. Let’s just say that the logical errors are so fundamental, and Sowell’s embracing of them so complete, that they appear on nearly every single page, in every example, and in his every argument.Let’s start with his first and probably least offensive error of logic. Sowell begins by defining intellect, its role in society and the differences between intellect and intelligence, or even that elusive concept: wisdom. “The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect,” according to his definition. Or, more succinctly: “Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect.” Now, right off, we’ve got a problem because that’s simply not the operative definition of intellect in the common understanding of the word. Here's what a dictionary has as a definition:Intellect is not intelligence less judgment. Judgment is part of understanding. You can no more divorce judgment from intellect than you can remove knowledge, thought or comprehension. One of the reasons we do not have an artificial intelligence is that we have been unable to develop a machine with judgment. Machines can rate, value and compare, but they do not judge. That’s what an intellectual does. Sowell’s definition “intelligence minus judgment” describes a machine, not an intellect.Unfortunately, Sowell then goes on to further lobotomize the definition by casting it across society so broadly as to make it a meaningless standard. His examples are drawn from the halls of academia to be sure, but he also includes editorialists, journalists, playwrights, psychologists, politicians (notably some who were anti-intellectual) religious leaders, doctors and a range of industrialists. Now, it is certainly true that there are intellectuals amongst any or all of those groups of people, but what Sowell does in lumping them together so haphazardly is create a pool of intellectuals and—at best—non-intellectuals from whom he can draw his examples. He then picks and chooses amongst them to make his case. In doing so, he seems to have redefined “intellectual” to mean “anyone with a public voice” no matter where that voice comes from, nor how it is expressed.Furthermore, according to Sowell, intellectuals cannot be people who go about actually implementing the fruits of their ideas. They are not “policy wonks” or social engineers. They leave such things to others. Specifically mentioned, therefore, as NOT intellectuals are people like Jonas Salk and Bill Gates, whose mental efforts actually produced something that changed society directly. Intellect, it seems, is intelligence less judgment, action AND success.I suppose if one really wants to parse the concept down, one could exclude Bill Gates from the concept of intellectuals on the basis of the relative newness and specificity of his intellectual efforts on a global and historical scale. It would be an error to do so, but it’s a comprehensible one. However, I defy anyone to reasonably describe Jonas Salk as not an intellectual. Sowell had to turn a particularly strange and elaborate backflip in order to justify that one.In short, Sowell defines intellect as anybody he deems foolish, ineffectual or shallow, and whose efforts have had no meaningful influence on society.(Yet he seems to have no sense that he might himself qualify according to his own standards.)This failure of comprehension permeates the entire book, and Sowell goes into rhapsodic fallacious detail in describing the common errors of human beings as the faults of intellectuals.Just one, of many, examples of this error:Here we again run into one of the constant logical loops that Sewell completely fails to acknowledge or, apparently, to recognize. He could very well be talking about himself in that paragraph. In fact, he *is* talking about himself. Sowell is trained as an economist. He’s written books on social theory and commentary, but his authority to do so is derived through his education and his experience as a pundit, not his expertise.Furthermore, what he attributes to the intelligentsia is, in fact, simply part of the human condition. Everyone acts outside their specialties, and we are all incentivized to do so. Not to do so is to deny a fundamental human quality. Specialization has a role, but to only act within that specialization is to reject intelligence itself.Where Sowell’s efforts to describe a social phenomenon don’t simply fail but become truly offensive is in his presentation of other's ideas. Sowell either misrepresents the ideas that other scholars have presented or fails to comprehend them so badly as to make himself a fool exactly of the kind he is attempting to critique. I’ll give two examples, just to illustrate the point.First, in his description of reactions to the police:Now, here Sowell draws upon and stumbles over his experience as a pistol instructor for the Marine Corps. (This is the kind of error he attributes to many intellectuals early in the book.) The problem is that Sowell’s military experience has nothing to do with the objection, and his apparent inability to see past that training makes his assessment a problem. What he fails to recognize is that the nameless intellectuals (he avoids referencing anyone or a particular case on this issue--though it would have been much easier to do so than nearly any other example he cites--since the logic here gets quite shaky) he describes are not objecting to the actual number of shots fired alone. Intellectuals, in fact, understand not only the rate of fire of modern weapons but also their accuracy—just as most Americans, or anyone with a television, is capable of grasping that simple and obvious reality, regardless of their status as a combat veteran. When someone objects to the number of shots fired in a particular case it is done when there is also a contrast between that reaction and the situation with which the police officer was confronted. When it turns out the suspect was not armed, did not make any threatening move, was detained without proper cause, or was otherwise not an appropriate target of police fire at all. When a policing situation goes so far as to require a military style response, intellectuals are perfectly capable of understanding and recognizing that transition. No intellectual objected to the number of shots fired in taking down the Boston bombers, who were themselves armed with firearms and explosives. Intellectuals do not object to the more then 2,000 shots fired in the North Hollywood shootout in and of itself, though someone (including, say, a police officer reviewing the situation and preparing a report on it to his department) could quite legitimately ask why those robbers had 44 minutes to engage the police, thus allowing for such a long exchange AND so many shots fired.When intellectuals object to the number of shots fired in a particular situation, they are pointing out that the transition between an everyday policing problem and the more military role of the police in suppressing violence has been blurred or bypassed. They are pointing out that shots should not have been fired at all, let alone dozens or sometimes hundreds of them. That Sowell is unable to recognize this objection for what it is, and must instead cite statistics about the number of hits at a particular range, illustrates his failure to comprehend even the most obvious of intellectual statements.(You may be able to see one of the reasons Sowell didn't cite examples for that particular objection. Doing so would make his argument and position quite vulnerable. He'd be in danger of siding with cases of police brutality and malfeasance, and that would undermine his true objective for this book. More on that in a bit....)I could go into more detail about the specific examples that Sowell cites. Let’s just say that as he extrapolates into broader and even more meaningful areas (civil liberties, social justice, the justifications and prosecutions of war) Sowell goes from offensive to truly misguided and repugnant. In rationalizing the American participation in the Iraq War, for example, Sowell abandons any arguments where reasonable people can disagree and dives right into the horrific logic of submental rationalizations employed by the truly misguided. He engages in such sophistries as this:I’m not going to describe why that bloody accounting is offensive, and if you need an explanation you’ll not be capable of understanding it, so let’s just leave it at this: comparing the casualties in wars for survival to the American involvement in Iraq is not to slip off the slope, but to leap from it.I’ll conclude on this note: Where Sowell goes to some pains to explain that many of the people he describes as intellectuals are not engaging in their efforts cynically, having read this book I have no such expectation of Sowell. In fact, the only justification for this book that I can see is that it is as a resume. It is filled with so many errors of logic and assertion that it can only be a curriculum vitae for someone seeking grant money from think tanks funded by deep pockets. These organizations are actively and constantly seeking justification and arguments for the money they spend on political support. This book is a play for some of that funding, and the high-paying speaking engagements that go with it. It has no real value other than to outline the script for buyers of such a product. Nobody should bother attending such a lecture any more than they should bother with this book. It’s not, in fact, about intellectuals at all. It wasn’t written by one. It doesn’t serve any meaningful or worthwhile purpose other, perhaps, as an illustration of the lengths and breadths of mental hypocrisy and narcissism.