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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 397779" data-attributes="member: 4720">I spent a good chunk of last night trying to come up with a response to this that wouldn't flip out a moderator or two.  I think I've got a version that won't irritate much.I'm not labeling the intelligentsia as a whole "lazy."  My point is that Academia (the subset of Intelligensia with which I am associated), by-and-large does not "take action."  Those that think they are taking action are usually just making meaningless noise.  There's a difference between political action and narcissistic posturing.  For one thing, if the '60's and '70's had truly been about philosophic and political action, the baby boomers would have taken the "lessons" from their "political" professors home with them.  They would not have morphed into the money-grubbing, age-fearing, uber-selfish bad parents that they by-and-large became.  As a generation, they embraced the mindset that they had spent their college years protesting, and then took it to an excess far beyond the problems they had rallied against.Some academic "politicos" have very good intentions, but they don't understand human nature.  This is true of most of the "great thinkers" throughout history.  Only someone who had been completely isolated from the ugly aspects of human nature could possibly believe that True Communism or True Democracy can work for a community greater than perhaps 200 people (and they had all better know each other, and have a better than average education).  The framers of the U.S. Constitution knew this.  That is why the U.S. is set up as a republic, not a democracy.  The only true democracies I'm familiar with are some small towns in New England.  I have yet to see an example of true communism (although from what I hear, there are some communes around here that come close).At any rate, academics are generally idealists.  They will encourage their female students to burn their bras (Although the motivations for this particular activity are mixed).  They will hold sit-ins and other such laughable "political" activities.  They will concoct complicated numbers schemes to determine their vote in an election when they are certain their preferred candidate doesn't have a prayer.  They will passively attempt to open the minds of their students.  But they would NOT enforce their will on others, given the opportunity.  Many would rather have the ideals of others forced on them than defend themselves from attack.  They simply would not take action of a significant form.Those that did would be ostracized for "becoming the enemy" and railed aganst for the "misuse" of their power by a bunch of people who are sitting on that power just like they sit on their intellectual laurels now.This would be little different when much of the intelligensia were monks or scribes in the employ of the church or state.  These people were, like academia today, sheltered from 1) True hardship and 2) The brutal realities of what human beings are capable of and apt to do.People who have the time to study mathematics "to learn the language of God" are not people who are in touch with reality.</blockquote>

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