Larrey Anderson remarks on a dearth of thinkers in America and recommends Paul Johnson’s book, Intellectuals. “Our present situation is not good for the Republic,” he writes. “By selling feel good snake oil intellectualism, we have polarized America into unwavering ideological camps, each camp filled with phony sophisticates. How we got ourselves into this pickle is an interesting story.”
Anderson says we’ve been teaching relative values in our society for at least fifty years, but I believe I read Mortimer Adler say in an essay he wrote in 1940s that we’ve been teaching relative values since the late 1800s.
Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals is a delightful, delightful book. And educational.
I don’t want to ask this question, but maybe you know, Lars. Do you know anything about Johnson’s private life? I saw a nasty accusation while looking up his book and wondered if it was a hateful rumor or an unfortunate truth.
No, nothing at all.
In my opinion Johnson is himself a purveyor of ignorant snake-oil, and as phoney and one-dimensional as any and everybody that he criticizes.
Plus who has really been polarizing the USA body-politic in the past few decades?
I would say that it has been the right-wing noise machine—wall to wall lies.
Well, that would make you wrong about Johnson. He’s a good historian and writer. You know, I don’t even believe liberals give us wall to wall lies, even if I oppose all of their solutions.