"One of the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is--beware intellectuals. Not only should they be kept well away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice. Beware committees, conferences and leagues of intellectuals. Distrust public statements issued from their serried ranks. Discount their verdicts on political leaders and important events. For intellectuals, far from being highly individualistic and non-conformist people, follow certain regular patterns of behaviour. Taken as a group, they are often ultra-conformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value. That is what makes them, en masse, so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies, which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action. Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas."
--Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, 1988

Litchman is a huge fan of this epic zinger, and for good reason. Every intellectual is zung straight through the heart by that quip.

Marx is probably the exemplar, right? I wonder (and this is a sincere question) how much influence Marx actually exerted on the likes of Lenin or Mao, for example. How is it that Marxism came to take hold in these countries? Was it clever men cynically exploiting the desires of the masses to gain power? Or was it true ideologues attempting to implement theory? If the former, it seems that Johnson's criticism loses some of its force.

I think intellectuals stand to religious as one to ten. Mark Twain had it right. "Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them....He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven."

Mark Twain didn't live to see the graveyards made by ideologues far exceed the space required for graveyards made by religious strife. Though, if he had been as smart as Edmund Burke, he would have seen it coming after the intellectuals guillotined cloistered nuns during the French Revolution.

Ralph makes a good point that much of the damage was caused by cynical men exploiting ideologies. It was certainly true that cynical men exploited the religious differences caused by the Reformation to get money and power. But the intellectuals end up blaming religion anyway.

But intellectuals empower the vicious in a way religion never did, since decent religions never allow the believer to forget that individual salvation is the goal, while Western intellectuals value "historical development" over any individual goal.

Confusion induced in the masses by heretics loosens the moral ties that traditionally are the only effective check on authority in a society and creates opportunities for the vicious to exploit. But traditional Christian heresies are self-limiting, since they have roots in tradition and text. The heresies preferred by intellectuals are much more dangerous since they are rooted in a simplified view of reason unconnected to any past.

"Marx is probably the exemplar, right? I wonder (and this is a sincere question) how much influence Marx actually exerted on the likes of Lenin or Mao, for example. How is it that Marxism came to take hold in these countries? Was it clever men cynically exploiting the desires of the masses to gain power? Or was it true ideologues attempting to implement theory? If the former, it seems that Johnson's criticism loses some of its force." -Ralph

Does it matter? Either way it is the intellectuals who lay out the foundations of their tyranny and who act as its enablers once it begins.