New Review: Intellectual Morons by Daniel J. Flynn
Posted by Mark Radulich on 10.09.2007
One of the most important books written in the 21st century that hardly anyone will read, especially college students.
I've been immersed in the political left for most of my life. I grew up on Long Island, a suburb of New York City. While LI is an ideological mixed bag, the City, certainly is not. New York City is commonly associated with far left causes and politics; after all, we are the city that gave the world "Pisschrist!" I was a far left punker in high school that stood shoulder to shoulder with most if not all the liberal causes of the early 90's that I was exposed to. I even participated in protests against my high school's t-shirt ban.
I earned my BA from a college that taught me equal parts Multiculturalism and Deconstructionism. I worked in the entertainment field for two years before giving it up to become a social worker – both decidedly leftist career fields. I earned a Masters Degree in Social Work from yet another New York City school. I have seen and have been a part of the American Left.
And though the world I thought I knew changed drastically after 9/11 and as such, so did my political leanings, whether I was Green or Republican (and I've been both), conservative or liberal, I have always maintained that there are absolute truths in this world. Bullets fired into your heart at close range will kill you. The earth revolves around the sun. Two plus two equals four. To say all truth is relative and the previous statements are subject to debate is positively Orwellian and at the very least absurd. Yet, truth and common sense are the battered wives of the academics and political life in America.
As I stated above, I come from a world of liberals and I still inhabit this world today, though I am mostly a conservative. For example, I recently went out to dinner with a few friends and since I knew they would be intolerant of my point of view (one of them has stated this to me prior to the dinner) I opted to keep my contribution to the conversation limited to music and movies. However, when one of the friends started babbling about, "we are fighting all of these wars all over the world…and if another Republican gets elected you know there's going to be draft," I couldn't help but speak up.
I responded calmly, "The only sitting politician that has submitted any written legislation calling for a draft was a black Democrat named Charlie Rangel, from Harlem, and said legislation was trounced by a Republican congress." Silence.
Later on that night I was told on the drive home that I shouldn't have said that to a table full of Democrats. I retorted that I was just stating a fact; there was no opinion or ideology present. She answered, "Yes, but it's your fact that supports your opinion and it's insulting to us."
Subjective truth and the promotion of ideology over reason, as illustrated above is at the heart of what is probably my new favorite book, "Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas," by Daniel J. Flynn. Though it was written in 2004, the subject matter covered in this book is timeless. Each chapter is dedicated to a person or group of people who perpetuated or invented an ideology devoid of serious scholarship and facts by simply lying about it in order to serve a political end. Flynn tackles the advent of the Sexual Revolution (Alfred Kinsey), Abortion (Margaret Sanger), Environmentalism (Paul Ehrlich), Animal Rights (Peter Singer), Multiculturalism (Rigoberta Menchu), Anti-Americanism (Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal), Leo Strauss, W.E.B. Du Bois, Alger Hiss, Objectivism (Ayn Rand), Betty Friedan (Feminism) and Deconstructionism (Derrida).
Unlike many of today's best sellers, this isn't a compilation of jabs and insults at the left. It is a well-researched collection of short biographies featuring the people above. It covers where these individuals have come from, how they came to believe what do, what their philosophy was, the lies and myths that have been invented to legitimize them and ultimately why their ideas are unmitigated disasters for modern American society.
On more than one occasion, Alfred Kinsey and Paul Ehrlich being the most notorious in my opinion, we have cases where supposed scientists invented research to back up their political hypotheses. Imagine if you wanted justification and approval for being allowed to hit anyone you wanted to in the face with a brick. So you devise a study to show that being allowed to hit people in the face with a brick is a good thing. However, when your research proves that this is in fact a bad thing, as logic would dictate, you simply invent the data (lie) in order to prove your hypothesis, thus getting your way. And to top it off, when others question your faulty conclusions, you exclaim "Science!" saying that because you did "research" you are beyond questioning. The last piece is finding others in position of authority to buy your false claims and when that happens, you've had the dubious honor of legitimizing what is in reality your own perverse desire, damning the rest of society in the process. Now juxtapose this imaginary world where it is ok to hit people in the face with bricks with one where children are raped and molested on a near daily basis and you have Alfred Kinsey's legacy to the world, as supported by the political American Left.
This is a history book that should be mandatory reading for all high school and college students. However, it never will be because it shines a light on the pantheon of relativist God's that inhabit the current political debate today. "Intellectual Morons" exposes the enemy for who they are and shows the shoddy science that has falsely legitimized them for the past 100 years or so. If everyone from the ages of 15 – 30 read this book over the next year, college campuses and the Teacher's Union would be forever changed as their reign of indoctrination would come to a screeching halt…or would it?
An interesting idea in the book is that people by and large are not moved by truth but instead by belief. Psychology plays just as much a role as politics in how people develop ideology. Certainly there is no ultimate truth in ones faith but the one you believe in yourself and that is completely subjective. It would seem that whether your religion is Christianity, Feminism, Islam, Anti-Americanism, Buddhism, Marxism or Environmentalism, the old adage is true – for those that believe, no explanation is necessary, for those that don't, none will do.
For the intellectually honest, Daniel J. Flynn has written one of the most important books of the decade next to "Guns, Germs and Steel." For the rest of you, I guess 2 + 2 = 5.
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