When a Presidential candidate offers a program of legislative reform and political policy, he usually relies upon the thoughts of many intellectuals throughout the culture. If the candidate wins, the intellectuals win, for it is their ideas that will direct the course of political activity.  Whether this actually happens in today’s world of spin and political-speak, it is still a truism that politicians will rely upon their college professors for the ideas and opinions they hold.  Intellectuals provide the cultural foundation upon which a Presidential candidate will base his policies and decisions.

Today the universities are dominated by a predominantly left-leaning group that thinks it has the sanction of reason and moral certitude in proclaiming the United States an imperialistic and militaristic country; in denigrating the profit motive and insisting that the nation should turn to a dictatorship of liberal politicians and environmental leftists.  They are seldom challenged for their interpretation of history, for their command of the facts and for their obvious political leanings.  Safely ensconced in their positions by tenure and government grants, they are virtually unchallengeable.  They send out squads of students into the professions that possess their biases and turn our nation on a path of self-destruction.

What we have missed about this group is its philosophical underpinning that removes them from any claim to reason.  These intellectuals have essentially bought in to the ideas of the skeptical philosophers like David Hume and Immanuel Kant.  Hume’s “empirically” derived views essentially proclaimed that man was incapable of seeing the connection between cause and effect, which means man is essentially blind intellectually, he has no ability to understand reality.  This view, taken as hard headed realism, essentially destroyed the very idea of inductive reasoning by proclaiming its findings as essentially flawed.  Reason, therefore, according to Hume’s premises, is akin to blindness.

Needless to say, the philosopher's influence is, for the most part, implicit. It is reflected through attitudes about the nature of reality, man, and his ability to deal with reality. Because of Hume and Kant and others like them, men view reality and man as defective. This is because the intellectuals have filtered Kant down to them by means of the culture's institutions, primarily the universities that teach our children the skeptical viewpoint.  What they consider to be reason is really unreason, the destruction of reason and necessarily, the destruction of anything that requires reason such as a secular society, induction, honorable discourse and a constitutional government with checks and balances.  Today, the skeptics are nothing more than screaming protestors who want to destroy anyone and anything that fosters freedom, capitalism and the scientific method.  Truth for them is a vote and the means of getting the votes needed to take over are deception, lies, spin and scandal after scandal.  If this is reason and if reason advocates the storm trooper mentality of today’s leftists, then something has gone wrong…we need to look at Hume for that.

In such an environment, fundamental issues are seldom debated by the dominant intellectuals because they are taken for granted.  No one debates Hume any more, yet his ideas are at the base of most modern day skeptics. Sometimes, minority intellectuals raise them, particularly if their philosophical influences are different from those of the dominant intellectuals and the question of who wins these debates is of crucial importance for the survival and future of the culture.

However, when fundamental issues go without debate the dominant intellectuals have the advantage of setting the philosophical terms, and by so doing, they effectively weed out intellectual opposition. Their position of elitism also gives them the capacity to perpetuate their dominance, to continue setting the terms, and to rule the course that the country will follow.  They do this by means of their standing with publishing companies, their tenured status, their ability to set the terms of course content in the universities and their influence in the university hiring and firing processes.

Many intellectuals of opposition viewpoints often complain about the elite as if it were some sort of devious plot to destroy and control our nation. Many such minority intellectuals reduce themselves to the level of cry babies over the situation, and hope that by pointing out the "injustice" done that the parent figures (the citizenry) will punish the elite.

I maintain that the existence of an intellectual elite is inevitable and necessary, and though it is not doing so today, it should function to weed out ideas not validated by a firm and correct methodology.  The real issue is not the injustice done to minority viewpoints but the quality and nature of new ideas that come as an outgrowth of the relative state of freedom in the society. Intellectuals educate this society, and the major issue regarding any elite is whether its ideas are correct. To quibble about ostracism, evasion, and silent reception is to lose sight of whether the elite is leading our institutions correctly.

In a free society, it is within the educational institutions that a power group is formed, and it is only through the educational system that any significant changes are going to be wrought in the society.  This is because educational institutions are the repositories of the knowledge gained from free inquiry and free speech.  The elimination of a misguided intellectual elite and its replacement by a new elite can only be accomplished by means of better ideas.

The Intellectual Reception System is a myriad collection of intellectuals, the prevailing philosophical attitudes held in the culture, the constitutional make-up of the political system, and the general attitude toward change. The Intellectual Reception System is essentially a set of attitudes, of entrenched policies regarding the acceptance or rejection of new ideas. It is the most crucial factor in any society, since it alone holds the balance of change. I divide the attitudes thusly: 1) Objective Value Reception, 2) Indeterminacy or Pragmatic Reception, 3) Power Elite or Status Quo Reception, 4) Dogmatic Reception, and 5) General Public Reception.

OBJECTIVE VALUE RECEPTION

The Objective Value Reception System is, for the most part, non-existent today. Although some intellectuals adhere to it, a great majority merely give it lip service. The Objective Value Reception System is characterized by an openness to new ideas, by a willingness to discuss all ideas, and by a firm set of rules that are used for scrutiny and development of ideas (logic, rational thought, scientific method, etc.).  These rules generally lead to the development of ideas that have rational value for the lives and choices of individuals in society.  It adheres to the proposition that what is objective works, that knowledge, once acquired, will have a positive value for the individual.  It was an adherence to this system that provided for Freedom of Speech in the U.S. Constitution and for the development of capitalism which is a system where people are free to use their minds to make the most rational choices.

In a society of open discussion and free inquiry, it is generally the better, more beneficial ideas that win and replace the old or less desirable ideas. If a society is predominantly open toward new ideas, the transition from old to better is quicker and easier. In an “objective value” society the philosophical terms would be set by the requirements of reality and not by the requirements of maintaining a false set of ideas.

Today, the influence of skepticism has lead to an almost total collapse of the Objective Value Reception System in our universities and in much of our sciences.  The idea that man is incapable of understanding reality, that his senses are invalid has created a situation where integration and the development of objective principles are considered naïve and meaningless.  Through so many variations of deception, our university professors, protected by tenure, able to say anything they want with little regard to method and validity, have set up a system where only skeptics rule in the university.  Intellectuals with an objective value viewpoint, that is integrators of knowledge, are literally shut out.

INDETERMINACY OR PRAGMATIC RECEPTION

With the rise of European-styled skepticism on the North American continent, came a new philosophical influence that threatened the ideas of the Enlightenment.  Philosopher David Hume started the influence of skepticism by concluding that man was incapable of reason because he was not able to see the connection between cause and effect.  This view effectively cut off man from understanding the relationship between his sensory mechanism and knowledge.  In effect, what Hume did was to start with the premise that human reason had yet to be identified and that previously all human reason was improper.  What he did was assume a statistical approach; since there were so many examples of incorrect reasoning, then that meant that reason was not yet established.  He proceeded to “empirically” analyze man’s thinking and concluded that thinking about the real world was not possible.

“We must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by men’s behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures.  Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science, which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehensions”[1] Today, we might consider Hume’s premise to be falsely based.  You cannot identify a fundamental principle by means of statistical analysis.  You can only get statistics, possibilities and “possibly” probabilities from this kind of analysis.  Hume’s science, unfortunately for mankind, amounted to a series of mis-representations of what the process of human comprehension was about.  In example after example, he claimed to analyze the human mind as it processed sensations and rather than see the process as a process of connected elements that lead toward understanding, he sought to slice the process up into “stand-alone” actions that had no relation to understanding.  In fact, his analysis sought to explore how human cognition failed in achieving understanding.  Instead of helping us understand the principles of knowledge acquisition, he told us that sensations, concretes and first level abstractions were superior to human thinking; that human cognition was a failed process.

The pragmatist philosophers held that their philosophy of conceptual trial and error was essentially the American Way. This viewpoint was also an outgrowth of Hume’s view that we cannot know the connection between cause and effect.  Pragmatism and its many practitioners in the universities, in the business world and in politics, stole the shadings of objectivity and turned ideas against free inquiry in the name of free inquiry.  Their basic premise was that since induction was not valid they had to foster “what worked” for the time being.

Their system was based upon the proposition that no idea is absolute, that the criterion of truth is whether an idea works. The final appeal with their philosophy was not reality but the views and opinions of other significant people. It is most evident in the symposia and speeches of intellectuals who offer few opinions, few solutions to problems, and much gibberish, many questions but no answers.

The intellectuals in this system are so peer-group oriented that they are generally unable or unwilling to consider new ideas until those ideas are accepted by the peers. They ignore in particular, those intellectuals who have firm opinions that depart from the commonly accepted ideas.  Within this intellectual structure, it takes years, even generations before a new idea takes hold.  If you advocate something so certain as, for instance, property rights, they would proclaim that the idea has been discredited or that it has not been definitively proven.

POWER ELITE OR STATUS QUO RECEPTION

This system is a necessary support of political dictatorship. The extent to which our system is welfare-state oriented is the extent to which the Power Elite System operates. It operates as a hatchet of intellectual execution of anyone who challenges the welfare-state or power elite. It works through a group of subsidized intellectuals who spout, under the banner of free-expression, the ideas that support the goals of political leaders. These intellectuals flood our media with their opinions in order to manipulate opinion in favor of government desires. These intellectuals have little esteem for the masses and predominantly favor measures that oppress and exploit the average man. They are painted in glowing phrases as men of towering intellects (for this group, the people are stupid and must be controlled and taken care of) when in fact they are merely dogmatic and pretentious mediocrities who want a chance to rule the lives of other people. Their over-blown and over-publicized ideas often cannot stand the test of scrutiny from a first year student of logic.

Their danger is that if statism continues to characterize our culture and political processes, a new and perhaps stronger power-elite may develop. Their ideas may harden into dogma and people who dissent will be punished by prison or disenfranchisement.

DOGMATIC RECEPTION

The Power Elite Reception System cannot exist without a dogma. But when a society hardens into totalitarianism, dogma becomes the dominant force within it. The Dogmatic Reception System regards certain ideas as unquestionable and true, where to challenge such ideas is a mortal sin of more than sacrilegious proportion. It is a system that advocates punishment, not for actual crimes but for actions that are considered wrong by the dogma. Its tendency is to oppose and challenge self-interest, pleasure and happiness, and to glorify sacrifice, punishment, and self-hate.  The Dogmatic Reception System does and can exist without the Power Elite System, but when it does, it exerts little influence except among the most naive and un-influential of cults.

The goal of anyone who accepts dogma is to rule and the rule regarding dissent is to kill it or imprison it. When a society becomes ruled by dogma that is backed up by force the only solution is revolution.

GENERAL PUBLIC RECEPTION

The General Public Reception System is an honest intellectual's first and last resort. In a free or semi-free society, he knows that his ideas, if they are good, will always be accepted by the intelligent people who are not intellectuals by profession but who are interested in ideas. The General Public Reception System is often the sanctuary of the man with better ideas. The Indeterminacy or Pragmatic Reception System fears the general public in that the public might change the accepted ideas without consulting them. The power elite generally shun the general public but watches for its reactions out of much the same fear. The dogmatists care not in the least.

If the society is not free, and is ruled by irrational philosophies, the General Public Reception System is silent and defeated. There is no intellect in such a society except that rebellion that is silence.

How does an aspiring intellectual deal with such receptions? The first principle to hold is that a true intellectual can exist only in a society where there is no censorship; that means a society governed by the law of intellectual supply and demand, a free society. A true intellectual deals in persuasion, and is therefore beholden to recognize the freedom of choice of all men. He would not demand agreement just as he would not demand slavery. He cannot expect to be free to think if other men are not free to accept or reject his thinking, to live their own lives as they see fit.

In fighting the Reception Systems of irrational philosophies, the following guidelines apply:

1. The true intellectual must fight for the objective reception of his ideas. He must provide logic, facts, proof, and a clear argument.

2. The true intellectual must give no validity to the concept of indeterminacy. He must not appease or cater to intellectual and epistemological cowardice and skepticism.

3. Dogmatism should be exposed for what it is: uncompromising fear. It has no place in intellectual debate.

4. The general public is both the first and last resort. If one's ideas are accepted by the dominant intellectuals, they most likely will be accepted by the general public. If the dominant intellectuals are influenced by irrational philosophies, and if they rebuke, ignore or evade new ideas, then the general public is the only court of appeal.

The above guidelines should help any honest intellectual working in a free or semi-free society. They are the opening door to intellectual excellence.

 Posted on 6/18/07