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Obama Drives Me Crazy, But...

I get him. I understand his intellectual universe, because I kinda sorta live there, too. I'll probably be a professor at some point, if God lets me hang out on this rock for awhile longer. Obama really is like a professor, for good, and for ill. Take a moment to live in the world of the intellectual, if you would. Intellectuals read books. They have conversations about stuff that ordinary people just don't think about most of the time. Not to say they are better or worse; they just are who they are. We absolutely need those people. Our leaders need them. And this is not to say that intellectuals can't make dire errors, because they can. They do, all the time. But let's take a moment to appreciate what we still do have in terms of intellectualism here, and realize that our president is a product of that. Considered by itself, this is absolutely a good thing.

His speeches felt like essays, in the early days. I could almost see the footnotes at the end of his sentences. I could tell that there were massive bibliographies behind the deceptively simple words of campaign speeches. We should expect this, no? The intellectuals don't just sit around and do nothing at our elite universities. Once again, this doesn't mean that Obama is right about any particular thing; in fact, we're on a very dangerous trajectory, and we have been for some time, in morality, in economics, in foreign policy. But it does mean that at some point, someone should say to the GOP, "You know what? It's time to stop taking the affectations of populism from the campaign trail into the policy drafting room." Any of us who would be leaders OWES it to the people to explain the complex issues at play for the average intelligent person. The Republican strategic problem has been that instead of doing this, they attack the intelligentsia itself, which is doubly stupid, because 1) progressives and Democrats don't have a monopoly on smart people in the first place, and 2) this allows them to portray conservatives/Republicans at best as well-meaning but stupid, and that quite successfully.

No, the real weakness of progressives and Democrats is that their intellectuals are arrogant and rigid. The patterns of politics have worn into the academy, such that, in many respects, the university is not really the place where the great matters of the day are discussed freely and truth sought; it's a place where progressive dogma is taught and perpetuated. But here's the kicker: We can still learn from them, as arrogant as they tend to be. That's the thing about intellectuals: When they are wrong, it affects everybody. Obama is hurting us because he stopped being curious, if he ever was. He is the product of a culture that believes it is right, and can't imagine any other way of thinking. You've had professors like that, I'm sure. You hit a wall, and you can't benefit any more, because your teacher refuses to himself be taught.


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