What's the difference between an intellectual and a
half-baked intellectual? The answer is one dimension, but it is a dimension
that makes a huge difference in real life. Look at it this way, there is the
proverbial black box whose outside can be seen by everyone. The half-baked
intellectual will see two-dimensional patterns on it, and make a few
interesting observations about them. As to the full fledged intellectual, he
will see the same thing but then penetrate the box with his imagination. He
will hypothesize as to what may be inside it, work out a strategy to get into
it, determine what exactly is in there, and how that can be used to make useful
things.
The same can be said about people who are usually considered
having a little education. They may actually be highly educated, having gone
through school and all that, but they lack the extra ability to penetrate
complex intellectual constructs, and see beyond the two dimensions of what is
obvious to everyone as much as it is to them. These would be the half-baked
intellectuals who get themselves into trouble because they fail to see they are
no match to the full fledged intellectuals whom they take on and injure
themselves in the process.
You can see this drama play itself out when you read the
latest column written by Bret Stephens. It is titled: “Obama's Envy Problem”
and subtitled: “Inequality is a problem when the rich get richer at the expense
of the poor. That's not happening in America .” It was published in the
Wall Street Journal on December 31, 2013. The author tells us it is about a
speech that President Obama gave on inequality.
Stephens says the speech is awful because the President said
that ordinary folks do not have the money to hire the lobbyists that can even
the playing field for them. So the folks sense that the system is rigged, and
they turn apathetic ... which is bad for democracy. But you want to know what
makes this an awful speech? And he tells you what that is. He says the
President is the one who signs the legislation that comes into being because
the high-priced lobbyists work on them.
Good work, Bret. But is it the work of a full fledged
intellectual? No, it's not. In fact, any half-baked intellectual or less could
have made this observation. What Stephens has shown himself to lack is the
ability to see that the difference between himself and President Obama is that
Obama drove the system and found it wanting whereas Stephens looked at it from
afar and thought to himself, there is nothing wrong with this thing. But the
thing is that the President has the duty to drive the system the way it is
handed to him. If not satisfied with how it works, he talks about it as a first
step to getting it fixed. What he cannot do is veto everything he does not
like, thus contribute to the gridlock that is already paralyzing the nation.
Stephens now gets into the inequality part of the
discussion. He begins it by quoting Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote almost 200
years ago that democratic institutions awaken a passion of equality which they
can never entirely satisfy. We know why de Tocqueville wrote what he wrote; he
was an explorer who described things as he saw them. When someone like Stephens
uses that sort of work as a tool to reach out and make a political point; it is
like a monkey who steps on the Mona Lisa to reach out and grab a banana. It is
a pathetic sight.
With a mind that is incapable of penetrating a concept as
simple as this, Stephens goes on to say: “That is the background by which the
current hand-wringing over inequality must be judged.” Well, let me tell this
kid something: No one alive is wringing their hands, but two dead people could
be doing just that in their graves. They would be de Tocqueville and da Vinci.
Stephens now quotes a few statistics to conclude that the
President made a “factual error, marred by an analytical error, compounded by a
moral error.” You ask: How is that? And he says that the President spoke of the
year 1979 when the top 10 percent of the population took in one third of the
national income whereas it now takes half. No, says Stephens, it is the top 20
percent that take “just over half.” What? This writer does not realize that
“just over half” is not half. Thus, it could well be that 10 percent take half
like says the President, and that the other 10 percent take a few crumbs to
bring the total to “just over half.” Stephens does not give the actual numbers
so that we may determine who is making the factual and analytical errors, but
when it comes to the moral error, Bret Stephens has just made one that is ocean
size.
All his other statistics are just as suspect. But more
suspect than the numbers is his ability to understand that the comparison is
not only about what A earns compared to what B earns; it is also about how much
each of them produces compared to what he earns. Thus, if A produces 10, and B
produces 10 but then A takes in 19 while B takes in only 1, there is here an
inequality that is totally objectionable. And this is where the discussion about
the financial class comes into play because it produces near nothing and takes
in nearly everything. And this is a discussion that has nothing to do with
Volvo America or S-class America .