Intellectual: An occupational category of which the end product is ideas and the only external mechanism for judging whether or not those ideas are good happens to be whether or not other intellectuals like those ideas. This is distinguishable from other occupations like engineers and scientists and doctors who may engage in intellectual pursuits but have actual, real-world, external mechanisms for judging whether or not they are good at their professions.
If an engineer designs a bridge and that bridge crumbles, no one questions whether his pursuits were successful. If an intellectual designs a social program which will be detrimental to millions of peoples' lives for generations, he will never personally suffer the consequences of his ideas.
Recently I brought your attention to the book "Intellectuals and Society" by Thomas Sowell and one of the unique concepts Sowell presents in that book is consequential knowledge. In an interview with "Uncommon Knowledge" Sowell gives this definition of that concept. --knowledge who's presence or absence has serious consequences. The left radicals are so in love with the idea that power should be centralized to the experts who can then dispense wealth, goods, and services where they are needed. Sowell expounds on his concept of consequential knowledge and explains that 'experts' may be smarter and have more information accumulated, but they do not command even 1% of the consequential knowledge required to adequately meet individual needs. You have far more consequential knowledge about your needs than all the experts put together. The net effect is what we are witnessing in our federal, state and even local bureaucracies.
[This is an interview that you must watch. So much 'Consequential Data' is disseminated in this interview that can radically alter your view of radical intellectuals and their effects on society. Take notes, spread that consequential knowledge around everywhere you go. Be the influence on people who make decisions that will affect your life and the lives of your children for generations. People who vote, people who make laws and create policy. People who are granted any responsibility for public discourse on all of the above. Quote: "like so many things that intellectuals believe, {their beliefs} are not subjected to any kind of empirical test."] Click the Uncommon Knowledge link above to go to the YouTube video of the entire interview.
Today, I'm bringing another example of the terrible influence the radicals in our institutions of higher learning are propagating on our society. In every area these radicals touch and that I have investigated, I find their influence to be deadly to individuals and our society as a whole, to our social structures and morality, to our Constitutional rights and guarantees.
John Rosemond is a nationally syndicated columnist and author on the topic of traditional child rearing. He granted an interview on Dennis Prager's radio talk show to promote his latest book and in it testified of an awakening with regard to the college influence on his parenting experience. When his ten year old boy received a review by his teachers saying, "He will not be passed into the 4th grade and should not have been passed into the 3rd. He is the worst behaved child they've known in 20 years of teaching experience." he had to take a hard look at his psychology major parental training and methods. In today's language, his son would have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyper-Active Disorder, Authority Oppositional Disorder, and Bi-Polar Disorder. Within 3 months of that review his son's teachers swore they had witnessed a miracle. They wanted to know what he'd been doing and John comments that it wasn't what he did but what he stopped doing. He threw out all that college influence with its 'new ideas' and returned to the traditional parenting he had been raised with. Since then, he has employed common sense and experience to council parents and write his many books on parenting creating great consternation amongst his colleagues. The college education wasn't a total waste. At least he learned the lingo of psychology and is able to put into professional language the common sense approach to parenting.
Every parent knows they occasionally need guidance in the critically important job of raising healthy, well adjusted kids to be productive members of our society. So, the guidance they seek out is often a college educated "professional" to get them through the issues/stages/behaviors they are overwhelmed with. Not because they don't have resources, but because they've been taught those resources are, if not evil, just plain ignorant. Intellectuals who create new or improved products like medicines, machines, and safer chemicals have rewards based on how useful are their products. The intellectual who specializes in ideas for social structure is rewarded by popularity of his ideas among his peers. So, the expert learns to, or joins groups who artificially manufacture alarm by making dire predictions and then making solutions to these invented problems. Global Warming anyone? That is, if they haven't entered a field of legitimate concerns like child abuse. Here they are more likely to exaggerate the real problems with statistics by either labeling minor infractions as major or inventing new infractions which then can be counted among the concerns the agency was created to address.
We have seen the fear engendered by the condemnation of spanking and the reluctance of parents to use corporal punishment at any age and for any reason. But, have you heard that yelling is the new spanking? Yes, you are now condemned and confronted for yelling at your kids for any infraction and at any time. In our state run schools, teachers have it worse than you parents. Not only are they prevented from spanking and yelling, they are condemned for and sometimes forbidden from using a red pen to correct papers!!
Meanwhile, the fingers of radical influence have reached out into our state run schools, our courtrooms, and right into our very homes with directives/orders. Its way beyond the radical influence we know of in our great halls of legislation and regulation. That, we can decide to accept or stand united against. This is different. This is the kind of thing we are unaware of until the day they are standing in your living room and informing you of their powers to take your kids, to send you into their programs, to force you to pay for these mandatory programs, and after all that, still refuse to return your kids to you. I have no vested interest in this agency's actions beyond libertarian concerns because I have no kids, but I stand against it on principle and demand accountability of our government agencies, one and all. This one is particularly egregious because they have authority not granted to our top law enforcement agencies or our national defense agencies. They are neither required to have a court order, an affidavit, or any oversight authority whatever to just walk into your life at any hour of the day or night and walk away with your kids. This with the full force of the police and justice system. This authority is little known even among law enforcement agencies. Should a cop decide to use any judicial program as a threat or systemic deterrent by hauling a 17 year old off for a night in the pokey, CPS then uses this record as an excuse to dig into your private affairs and the end result for one woman was that she literally left the country to escape their tyranny.
Are you ready for the kickers. Kicker #1. It doesn't matter that statistics show that these agencies are much worse for the kids than their natural parents. Kicker #2. These agencies are magnets for pedophiles and deviants who look for a paid position which puts them near their targets. Kicker #3. While you have to pay tuition to enroll in the required and often unrelated programs to empower them to 'evaluate' your parenting skills, life skills, and behavior, they don't even have an internal affairs office as the police and other authoritative agencies are required. They are not required to self police their abuses, much less self evaluate their effectiveness in providing safety and security to the children they 'help!' let alone be subject to the scrutiny of an outside entity. They have NO OVERSIGHT!!!
The special CPS case judges are complicit with this agency's abuses. They place gag orders on the natural parents to prevent them from talking about their cases to the press, "for the protection of the children." CPS case workers are bonused money for placing kids in adoptive families. The judges sit on the boards of the adoption agencies CPS case workers work with. Agencies which collect fees from prospective adoptive parents. They've figured out a way to make these 'care' agencies personally profitable and purposely place themselves in conflicts of interest where profits can overshadow their original purpose all the while rationalizing that they are doing the best thing for those kids. This alone is evidence enough that the system is broken and the judges are not the representative moral authority they have to be for this work.
The interviewer (Peter Robinson) on Uncommon Knowledge posed a question to Thomas Sowell that frightened Sowell. He asked, "Bill Buckley: I would rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Boston telephone book than by the faculty of Harvard. Very nice encapsulation of the impulse you'd hope that most Americans would show. He's suspicious of the experts. When Bill Buckley made that remark in the 1960's, roughly 9% of Americans held college degrees. Today the figure is 29% and rising because roughly half of high school graduates go to college. The first 400 names in the Boston telephone book today are likely to include a large number of Harvard graduates and Harvard professors. The question here is simple, are we becoming a nation of intellectuals?" Thomas Sowell's response is dramatic, "I hadn't thought of that, it's a chilling thought because we're becoming a nation of people who are propagandized from elementary school right on through the graduate school, in a certain vision of the world and only the ones who for one reason or another, either experience or insight or whatever leads them to say, wait a minute- only those are the ones that we have to depend on."
Are you sure you want Obamacare and another government agency to oversee your health care? Are you really sure you want the college educated radical 'experts' to gain access to another agency by which they can force their values on your choices? These radicals are quick to judge your cognizance with regard to parenting, eating, energy consumption, provision for health care, etc., etc., Look out, soon they'll be choosing your clothes like Chairman Mao. Does this sound vaguely familiar? You know how anti-judgmental they are about sexual deviance. -how very compassionate they are to murderers. But, if you judge their skills, claims, or effectiveness in social engineering and structure with empirical evidence, you are the problem, not them.
If you are ever tempted to say, "Somebody should do something!" you are influenced by, and becoming one of those radicals. The proper response to travesty is to take action and fight it yourself, not to lean on 'somebody' and especially not to require government 'experts' to be that somebody.
