Inside The Intellectual Bubble

The misleading character of the media angers me continually. Their ignorance of their own bias is frustratingly inbred. But there is still one group of fools that generates in me even more disgust. Need I describe them? They are the intellectual elite of this nation. Perpetually enraptured by their own brilliance, gleefully cheering any difficulty America or Americans may face in the world. Somehow they seem to think that only they have the intellectual capacity to truly understand the nature of things. It is lucky for the Republic that intellectuals stay inside their ivory towers and glass bubbles and don't attempt to enter politics. History is full of examples of intellectuals attempting to run a state. Lenin, for instance.

So it was no surprise to me to read this article from the Boston Globe this morning. It WAS a surprise, however, to see that a Harvard professor wrote the column. I have heard this man speak before, but never with this degree of disgust for his peers. It is a troubling look inside the intellectual bubble.

At universities, little learned from 9/11
By Harvey Mansfield | September 13, 2006

FIVE YEARS have now passed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and what have our universities been doing? I can tell you about Harvard, and the answer is not reassuring.

Harvard has just welcomed the former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami to give a little talk. Harvard thinks this is free speech, but in fact the university has allowed itself to be used as a platform for sweet-talk in the service of a regime that hates, and wants to bamboozle, America. Note, too, that Harvard professor Stephen Walt and a Chicago professor have just written an expose of the Israeli lobby's influence on American politics. They encourage the belief that Israel is the main problem we face .

Nor has Harvard relaxed its hostility to ROTC on the campus. The pretext is the military's policy discriminating against gays by requiring them to keep silent about being gay. Never mind what would happen to gays or defenders of gays if the Islamic fascists took over.

These are not isolated incidents but signs of the prevailing attitude at Harvard and other elite universities. There is lots of griping against the Bush administration but little activist dissent of the kind seen in protest against the Vietnam War. Cindy Sheehan's movement has not caught on.

All to the good, one might say. A university is not a political actor and should not be drawn away from its own business by too much concern for current events.

Yes, agreed. A university is an institution of learning, and as such takes a broad view of things. But this means it should learn from events if not try to control them. What has Harvard learned from Sept. 11? Very little.

Sept. 11 was a stunning blow to multiculturalism. The attacks showed that we have enemies who hate us because they hate both our principles and our practices. They despise the way we live not because we do not live up to our principles of freedom, democracy, and toleration, but because we do. They do not think we are multicultural; they believe we have one culture, and they mean to do away with it.

The feminists at Harvard seek to remove every vestige of patriarchy in America, but they have said almost nothing about the complete dismissal of women's rights by radical Islam. To do so would be to attack Islamic culture, and according to multiculturalism, every culture is equal and none is evil. They forsake women in societies that repudiate women's rights and direct their complaints to societies that believe in women's rights. Of course it's easier to complain to someone who listens to you and doesn't immediately proceed to slit your throat. No sign of any rethinking of feminism has appeared in the universities where it flourishes.

Civil liberties should be another topic of reconsideration. Civil libertarians on the left and the right assume that government is the object of their vigilance and minorities need special care. In time of peace that may be true, but in a war the government is your main friend, and the majority must be protected. The preaching of radical Islam is in fact "a clear and present danger," and we need to suppress it. This sort of speech is not just blowing off steam or keeping us honest or puncturing our complacency. Here is a new task to occupy the anxious minds of civil libertarians in universities: how to distinguish truly dangerous speech and how to defeat it?

The jihadists say they will triumph because they believe in death while we believe in life. That is not quite so. We do believe in life -- but not at any cost. We too value sacrifice and honor for a decent cause. But we let our soldiers speak for us. The professors, who should be our spokesmen, have learned nothing from our soldiers and have nothing to say on why they volunteer to risk their lives.

The difference between our country and the terrorists dwarfs that between liberals and conservatives within our country. But conservatives are more aware of this fact than are liberals, and our universities are dominated by befuddled liberals. Better that they be befuddled than determined to rebel, as during the late 1960s. Better still that they heed the requirements of their own doctrines in the new circumstances of terrorist war.

Harvey Mansfield is a professor of government at Harvard University and author of the book "Manliness."

I don't know that I would agree with Mansfield when he says that the professors should be our spokesmen. I think professors, and other intellectuals, should be our educators and keepers of knowledge, our human Great Library of collective intellect. Be that as it may, his point is a powerful one and something I think it would be hard for an intellectually honest professor or writer or student wrapped up in this bubble to argue against. Why don't our intellectuals support the elimination of religious extremism? Why don't they rail against Islamofascism they way they do against evengelical Christian groups? Where is the outrage against the beheadings and religous killings? It just makes me shake my head in absolute disgust and disbelief. I'm glad that there is, at least, a counter intellectual position such as what Mansfield has espoused. Hopefully there are others keeping their silence inside the bubble for fear of being cast out by their peers for holding a discordant opinion. Hopefully these thinkers too can summon the courage to take up the pen for their country, to take to the podium for their people, to lend their voice in support of civilization.

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