{"id":554,"date":"2008-02-03T12:57:54","date_gmt":"2008-02-03T16:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=554"},"modified":"2008-02-03T13:01:15","modified_gmt":"2008-02-03T17:01:15","slug":"intellectual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=554","title":{"rendered":"Intellectual"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here's a somewhat open-ended question, borrowed again from Bob Somerby, the Daily Howler<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

First, a fairly simple question: With intellectual giants like Nozick and Rawls defining the world of “political philosophy,” how can it be that our daily political discourse seems to be drawn from the world’s largest sandbox? If giants like these have been striding the earth, consuming themselves with political theory, how can it be that the world’s dimmest, most childish, most unbalanced minds define our public discussion?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here's my sense of this question.  Very few academics participate in political discussion for the reason Somerby mentions.  To elaborate: Engaging with a type like Goldberg or Will or Chris Matthews seems like picking on a child.  It's too easy to knock holes in shallw punditry, because, after all, it's shallow punditry.  Academics know that serious scholarship of the confidence-inducing kind involves a lot of hours of boring, hard work, and ever-so-subtle distinctions.  I can't think of one political show (even Charlie Rose's hour long program) that would have the patience for the kind of necessary parsing that academics engage in as a matter of course.  Besides, I'm not sure if a Rawls could get TV's greatest intellectuals to see the difference between a policy argument and a personal attack.  <\/p>\n

Anyone? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here's a somewhat open-ended question, borrowed again from Bob Somerby, the Daily Howler: First, a fairly simple question: With intellectual giants like Nozick and Rawls defining the world of “political philosophy,” how can it be that our daily political discourse seems to be drawn from the world’s largest sandbox? If giants like these have been … Continue reading Intellectual<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}