Why do intellectuals oppose capitalism?

[Devildog]

I've got $20 that says that DevilDog learned about this article from Fox News. Any takers?

just taking lebowski at his word, or bet in this case.

What is funny to me... is that I got it e-mailed to me from a guy who thinks I'm turning into a liberal because I quote things that I've read on this forum from some of our professor friends... that make sense to me...

For all I know Fox is pushing it... I really wouldn't know.

I see why some are taking it a little personal though.

How did Shakespeare put it?

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

[TripletDaddy]

What is funny to me... is that I got it e-mailed to me from a guy who thinks I'm turning into a liberal because I quote things that I've read on this forum from some of our professor friends... that make sense to me...

For all I know Fox is pushing it... I really wouldn't know.

I see why some are taking it a little personal though.

How did Shakespeare put it?

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

I agree. Conservatives are protesting too much about anti capitalism.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Wow. Those google bots are quick. Google "fox news, intellectuals oppose capitalism" and take a look at the first link.

[Devildog]

Damn... that was quick.

[pellegrino]

Wow. Those google bots are quick. Google "fox news, intellectuals oppose capitalism" and take a look at the first link.

kind of creepy too

[old_gregg]

cato contributors are fox correspondents with shiny degrees

[oxcoug]

cato contributors are fox correspondents with shiny degrees

That's really not the case, though it's not impossible to see how people end up thinking it.

There are plenty of eccentrics over there, but CATO has some very respected academics and it's carved out a niche in the think tank world that's generally appreciated on both sides of the spectrum - at least among others in the think tank world.

But re Fox and CATO - most of the Hannityesque Fox hacks are a long way from CATO on policy issues.

[LA Ute]

I'm not familiar with The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, but FWIW that source does suggest that Robert Nozick is a respected thinker:

A thinker with wide-ranging interests, Robert Nozick is one of the most important and influential political philosophers, along with John Rawls, in the Anglo-American analytic tradition. His first and most celebrated book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), produced, along with his Harvard colleague John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971), the revival of the discipline of social and political philosophy within the analytic school. Rawls’ influential book is a systematic defense of egalitarian liberalism, but Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a compelling defense of free-market libertarianism.

Unlike Rawls, Nozick neglected political philosophy for the rest of his philosophical career. He moved on to address other philosophical questions and made significant contributions to other areas of philosophical inquiry. In epistemology, Nozick developed an externalist analysis of knowledge in terms of counterfactual conditions that provides a response to radical skepticism. In metaphysics, he proposed a “closest continuer” theory of personal identity.

His final work, Invariances (2001), offers a theory of objective reality. His other significant contributions to analytic philosophy notwithstanding, Nozick’s defense of libertarianism remains his most notable intellectual mark on philosophical inquiry.

Wikipedia bio [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nozick"]Robert Nozick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Question_book-new.svg" class="image"><img alt="Question book-new.svg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/Question_book-new.svg/50px-Question_book-new.svg.png"@@AMEPARAM@@en/thumb/9/99/Question_book-new.svg/50px-Question_book-new.svg.png[/ame].

Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971). His other work involved decision theory and epistemology.

I'd never heard of Nozick until tonight, but it looks like he can't be written off simply as a Sean Hannity acolyte.

[wuapinmon]

Get this weak sauce outta here!!!

Merry Christmas, Notorious JIC

I saw that you had posted and was expecting an awesome rebuttal.

Christmas isn't about rebuttals, it's about giving someone enough money so that they can flee into Egypt and not get killed like everyone else with your same birthday. Basically, Jesus was an Iron Age Sarah Connor, and Herod was a Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Model 101 Version 2.4.

What is funny to me... is that I got it e-mailed to me from a guy who thinks I'm turning into a liberal because I quote things that I've read on this forum from some of our professor friends... that make sense to me...

For all I know Fox is pushing it... I really wouldn't know.

I see why some are taking it a little personal though.

How did Shakespeare put it?

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

You shouldn't use "methinks." Only PAC, BYU71, and creekster are old enough to remember when that was actually in use in common speech, so your usage is archaic and sounds a little contrived, even if you're quoting the Bard.

[Devildog]

You shouldn't use "methinks." Only PAC, BYU71, and creekster are old enough to remember when that was actually in use in common speech, so your usage is archaic and sounds a little contrived, even if you're quoting the Bard.

I'm sure you are correct. However, I seriously couldn't care less.

Way back in school, I couldn't have cared less about the approval of teachers or the school system either. Coaches yes... teachers no.

For me... the playgrounds, then the gyms and athletic fields, the school hallways and student meeting areas, and finding out which friend was holding that night's party always took precedence over making it to class and trying to please the person at the front of the room.

Wordsmithing only ever came into particular significance if one of my friends was attempting a cock-blocking maneuver on a specified target I had designated... and it hadn't come down to throwing fists yet.

Thanks Wuap... I hope you had a Merry Christmas with your family too.

[wuapinmon]

I'm sure you are correct. However, I seriously couldn't care less.

Way back in school, I couldn't have cared less about the approval of teachers or the school system either. Coaches yes... teachers no.

For me... the playgrounds, then the gyms and athletic fields, the school hallways and student meeting areas, and finding out which friend was holding that night's party always took precedence over making it to class and trying to please the person at the front of the room.

Wordsmithing only ever came into particular significance if one of my friends was attempting a cock-blocking maneuver on a specified target I had designated... and it hadn't come down to throwing fists yet.

Thanks Wuap... I hope you had a Merry Christmas with your family too.

Prefiguring people's responses to my opinions has rarely stopped me from proffering them. While your schooling experience isn't atypical, I feel like you've created a false dichotomy, though I'll admit that I'm blind as to your authorial intention, which I reject anyway. What counts are the words used and our reactions to them. Hermeneutics. If I write something and you take offense, if my intention was harmless, that doesn't mean shit if they still piss you off. The reader cannot know authorial intent, no matter what. Even if the author says, "this is what I meant," that's still a false construct because the reader's response, inasmuch as it is supported by historicity and facts in the text, is the only valid reading (in my opinion). My point?

I could've reacted with a wordy riposte of your Christmas Day throw down, dissecting it, rebutting it, refuting it, and mocking your choice to post that article on this site on that day, but I think you're an alright guy (in as far as you can know someone on an anonymous forum), and I was having such a good day yesterday that I didn't feel like donning the gay apparel of my doctoral robes; I just wanted to be Mac and cruise around the internet and watch my boxset of The Wire (with headphones on!) while my kids came to me and had me take parts off toys that they couldn't get themselves (I'm looking at you Hot Wheels Custom Motors). Anyway, my reaction to the article is about what pellegrino said. I don't think that I've got it all figured out, I just think that people who have problems with intellectuals should read a few books, and then re-evaluate this antagonism against people in my profession.

It's not like I am some liberal Svengali trying to get kids to abandon what their parents taught them. Children need to be taught correct principles, and then be allowed to govern themselves, provided there are consequences for poor behavior. Part of this is allowing them to experience the diversity of the world. And a huge part of this is the experience of a rigorous liberal arts education.

How boring would it be to grow up and never have any of your beliefs and ideals questioned? You would be woefully unprepared for the 21st Century. So, when I hear politicians and pundits rail against the liberal, nay leftist, and by association in the United States, “godless pinko Communists,” in higher education, I think to myself, “How scared do you have to be in your own influence over your child, that some professor might make them abandon all they’ve ever known.” I’d hope that conservative parents would want their children to have their beliefs questioned, that they would see the value in questioning their own values to make them stronger and more refined. How do you know if you really believe in something until after the trial of your faith?

There is no liberal bias in higher education. Higher education is a process by which we turn children into adults, capable of thinking for themselves, and not just parroting back what their parents have told them. I want my kids to challenge everything that I teach them. Because, a belief examined and proved is a solid one that withstands the utter brutality that life will throw at them.

The most important thing to remember in all of this, is that as much as another’s beliefs might annoy us, maturity and civility demand that we respect them and recognize their right to hold them as dearly as we hold our own. I hate politics in the US right now. It’s all “if you’re not with us, you’re against” rhetoric engendered by egg-headed politicians stumping for votes, and pundits desperate for ratings.

I use the Socratic method to absolutely bludgeon my students' beliefs about the world. I tell them before each class, "No matter what opinion you offer up, I'm going to say the exact opposite, and I'm going to come at you unrelentingly." They learn to anticipate my inevitable, "Why?" Sometimes they don't know what to do when I am speaking because they forget that I'm not offering up my opinions, but opinions plain ones. They'll think they have me figured out, not realizing that I rarely, if ever, share my actual beliefs about anything with them. That's not my job.

My job is great. I taught a class on reggae and the Rastafarian Movement last year. One class we were talking about the lyrics to "Babylon System" that say, "You can't educate us/we don't want no equal opportunity/we're talkin' 'bout my freedom/People! Freedom and Lib-er-ty." I asked the class what they thought about Affirmative Action. I showed them some data about why it was started in the USA, results, lawsuits of counter-discrimination (people not getting in somewhere for school or work with better qualifications than someone who had help from AA). The conversation was going alright; I was enjoying being devil's advocate, and then one of my African-American students gave the class the tried-and-true line about how he thought that white people had historical advantages and that they benefited from the actions of their ancestors, and his ancestors had historical mistreatment, and he thought that Affirmative Action was a way of addressing that. I'll never ever forget the look in his eyes when I said, "Alright, but what do you say to most of the white people I know who work their asses off and think you're absolutely full of shit?"

I'm an intellectual who has read a whole helluva lot, is damned prideful about how much I know, and who never tires of the sound of his own voice (I actually find it soothing). I also grew up in a house with only a wood-burning stove for heat and a father who would order a load of logs every summer that I would have to split into firewood. I had to work when I wasn't playing sports. I worked 3 jobs at the same time while I was at Georgia Tech; I've got 5 years at McDonald's, 6 at Pizza Hut; I have callouses on my hands because I use them for things besides typing; I can plumb; I can do electrical work; I'm a damned good shot; I can cuss worse than a ship-duty Marine denied shore leave on November 10, and I take all the extra work I can at my job so I can make more money for my family, because I get paid shit. But, I love my job, so the lousy pay is a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Surfah will mock me, again, for saying this, but I'm a do-gooder who wants to make the world a better place. All that I really want is for people to read stuff that makes them uncomfortable, makes them question their assertions, their beliefs, their political parties. A little respect for what I do is all the intangible I need. That, and never having the words "milquetoast" or "pantywaist" used to describe me.

So, I don't oppose capitalism at all. I think it's an excellent system for helping humanity, but I think that it has to be regulated, and I think that the wealthy should have to pay an inordinate share of taxes for the benefit of the nation, otherwise we just revert back to feudalism, or the massive suffering of Third World capitalism. Marx didn't write what he wrote in a vacuum; it wasn't the devil moving his pen. He saw the evils of capitalism and tried to create something new, tragically ignoring the greed of humankind. Capitalism rewards greed, and that's why it's the best system for governing our economies, but greed needs to be tempered, and the best way to temper greed is to tax the greediest.

Hell, I own stock in XOM and WMT. What I do oppose is capitalism at the expense of humanism and humanitarianism. I'm intelligent enough to recognize the effects of post-colonialism on the United States of America, and unfettered capitalism here would trod the downtrodden even further down into the mud.

If you want to read some good conservative political thought, good shit that's not all op-ed stuff, go read almost anything by William F. Buckley. Our country lost a brilliant mind when he passed away. He was a Great American.

I meant it when I said "Merry Christmas," btw.

[LA Ute]

You shouldn't use "methinks." Only PAC, BYU71, and creekster are old enough to remember when that was actually in use in common speech, so your usage is archaic and sounds a little contrived, even if you're quoting the Bard.

Hey!!!

[Devildog]

I meant it when I said "Merry Christmas," btw.

So did I.

I appreciate you sharing your perspective. It sounds genuine and makes it worth the time to try to understand where you are coming from.

IMO the value of these forums lie in what we can learn from them... and find in them to laugh about.

Perspective is interesting to me.

[hopfrog]

I've been accused of being an intellectual because I am obsessed with Shakespeare. Politically I lean toward socialism, but that seems more a dream-like ideal than a human possibility. In practice I think I am absolutely a product of my capitalistic era, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with accepting the reality of how our system works. I need to have a home in which I am surrounded by books -- need it or I won't want to live. I could now not exist as a writer without my laptop and Internet access, simply couldn't exist. I don't feel that the world owes me anything because I may be an intellectual artist -- I believe we need to work our ass off in order to achieve anything we attain in life. But I can see the world only as I exist within it and encounter its realism.

[UtahDan]

I've been accused of being an intellectual because I am obsessed with Shakespeare. Politically I lean toward socialism, but that seems more a dream-like ideal than a human possibility. In practice I think I am absolutely a product of my capitalistic era, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with accepting the reality of how our system works. I need to have a home in which I am surrounded by books -- need it or I won't want to live. I could now not exist as a writer without my laptop and Internet access, simply couldn't exist. I don't feel that the world owes me anything because I may be an intellectual artist -- I believe we need to work our ass off in order to achieve anything we attain in life. But I can see the world only as I exist within it and encounter its realism.

Welcome back!