He’s considered an intellectual giant because of insights he had 30 years ago about language.
Since those insights are still debatable, they are at least evidence for cleverness.
Since his moral depravity and slimy hypocrisy are manifest, they are evidence against even cleverness on the part of his statist supporters. We have just been handed conclusive evidence that “readers of _The Prospect_” are not just useful idiots, but fawning useful idiots of low moral fiber.
To paraphrase George Orwell, this only goes to prove that there are some ideas and some moral codes so reprehensible that only intellectuals can believe in them.
_The Princess Bride_ had it figured out:
Vizzini (Wallace Shawn): ‘Inconceivable.’
Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin): “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
I don’t think intellectual means what they think it means.
With a relative restraint of histrionics, Ann Coulter today wrote a powerful argument against the “common sense” of Harriet Miers. Worth a read.JPM