The Idiocracy Has Overthrown Us
Overthrown statue of the King Sigismund in Warsaw, Poland (1945)
The Republican Establishment cannot help but err because its intellectual foundations are flawed. There is broad conservative intellectual consensus which harks back to T.S. Eliot and Matthew Arnold (via thinkers as diverse as Russell Kirk and Lionel Trilling). Arnold’s passion for the Greek classics overlaps with Leo Strauss’ predilection for the “ancients.” I have argued for the past fifteen years that parsing the rationalism of the past is useless at best and misleading at worst. The great question is, rather, what makes people act beyond reason, for good or for ill. My lodestars have been Kierkegaard and Rosenzweig, and more recently Soloveitchik. We have spent fifty years creating an intellectual elite with undergraduate courses, PhD programs, publications, think-tanks, internships, foundations, and we have failed miserably. There are points of light here and there, to be sure, but they don’t add up to a great deal of candlepower. Because of our failure the idiocracy has overthrown us, and we have to live with the likes of Donald Trump. We no longer have time to revise our intellectual foundations. Even if we wished to, we could not find the teachers, and if we had the teachers, we could not find the students. We are at the end of an era; the barbarians are inside the citadel. I feel like Saruman telling Gandalf that there is no choice but to back Sauron–but Trump isn’t Sauron, just a maddening vulgarian who knows how to tap all the popular resentment that we are guilty of provoking. The people have vomited us out, and we have to make the best of bad circumstances.
Trending Now on Affluent Christian Investor
Sorry. No data so far.
Right Report
Follow Us
The Affluent Mix
Biden Oblivious To Illegal Immigration Issues... August 2, 2021 | Frank Vernuccio
Rob Arnott On Bubbles, Inflation, And Once-In-A-Generation Investment Opportunit... August 2, 2021 | Jerry Bowyer
The Federal Reserve’s Massive Theft Of Stability... August 2, 2021 | Jim Huntzinger
What To Do About This Difficult Market? August 2, 2021 | David Bahnsen
Letter On The Politicization Of Corporations... July 26, 2021 | Jerry Bowyer
Peak Of The Fake Bull Market July 26, 2021 | Michael Pento
Woodrow Wilson’s Administrative State vs. Gold... July 26, 2021 | Jim Huntzinger
Dividends, Energy, And Crypto July 26, 2021 | David Bahnsen
Whose Side Are You On? July 26, 2021 | Frank Vernuccio
Media, Left Ignore These Dangers July 19, 2021 | Frank Vernuccio
Mark Skousen On FreedomFest And How To Measure The Whole Economy... July 19, 2021 | Jerry Bowyer
Quantifying The Quantitative, Or Making Easy The Easing... July 19, 2021 | David Bahnsen
The Gold Standard Means A Rising Standard Of Living... July 19, 2021 | Jim Huntzinger
Book Review: Brian Domitrovic Reveals The Monetary Genius Of Arthur Laffer... July 19, 2021 | John Tamny
Steve Forbes: Time To Worry About Inflation, Not Hyperinflation... July 12, 2021 | Jerry Bowyer
UFOs Rescue Biden July 12, 2021 | Frank Vernuccio
Read This Classical Economist’s 200 Year Old Warning About Paper Money... July 12, 2021 | Jim Huntzinger
How Central Banks Murdered The Markets July 12, 2021 | Michael Pento
Everything There Is To Know About The Stock Market... July 12, 2021 | David Bahnsen
AT&T CEO: We’re Ill Equipped For Politics, And We’re Spending A Lot Of ... July 6, 2021 | Jerry Bowyer
Internet Bias Distorts National Conversation... July 6, 2021 | Frank Vernuccio
The Halfway Point Of 2021 July 6, 2021 | David Bahnsen
Join the conversation!
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.