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Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas
Why do well-educated antiwar activists call the president of the United States “the new Hitler” and argue that the U.S. government orchestrated the September 11 attacks?
Why does Al Gore believe that cars pose “a mortal threat to the security of every nation”?
Why does the Princeton professor known as the father of the animal rights movement object to humans eating animals but not to humans having sex with them—and why does PETA defend that position?
In other words, why do smart people fall for stupid ideas?
The answer, Daniel J. Flynn reveals in Intellectual Morons , is ideology. Flynn, the author of Why the Left Hates America , shows how people can be so blinded to reality by the causes they serve that they espouse bizarre, sometimes ridiculous, and often dangerous positions. The most influential social movements have spawned ideologues who do not care whether an idea is good or bad, true or false, but only whether it can serve their cause.
It is startling how many Americans—and particularly how many media, academic, and political elites—fall for bad ideas. The trouble is, their lies become institutionalized as truth, and we all suffer as a result.
In Intellectual Morons , Flynn
•How rabid anti-Americans simply parrot the delusional claims of a few gurus
•How the environmental movement, spawned by a “scientist” whose doomsday predictions are almost always wrong, has bred fanaticism, stupidity, and dishonesty
•How the hero of the animal rights crowd is a crank who promotes infanticide and euthanasia
•How a scientific fraud—and pervert—launched the sexual revolution
•How abortion rights activists ignore (or cover up) the fact that their matron saint advocated eugenics and concentration camps
•How our universities have become hothouses of leftist ideology
•How historians and journalists have airbrushed history to turn a racial separatist into a civil rights icon
Filled with jaw-dropping lapses in common sense from even our most celebrated opinion leaders, Intellectual Morons is a welcome reality check for the glaring excesses of today’s political and cultural debates.
"This is a sophisticated pile driver of a book, guiding us through the wiles of great luminaries of the netherworld. And such liveliness in the writing, and such erudition. I was quite fascinated by Intellectual Morons ."—William F. Buckley, Jr.
" Intellectual Morons is exceptionally aptly named. The thought of all that brainpower going down the intellectual drain is sad, but Daniel Flynn's description of it is hilariously on point. This is must reading."—G. Gordon Liddy
" Intellectual Morons is a delight—a wonderful intellectual history of the past hundred years. Flynn ably describes the purveyors of the bad ideas that have undermined our free society."—Burton W. Folsom, Jr., professor of history, Hillsdale College
"A famous bit of folk wisdom says, 'You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything.' Some of the crackpot notions now fashionable in academic circles, as here documented by Daniel Flynn, suggest that saying is an understatement. If you want to know how crazy, and scairy, intellectual morons can get, you have to read this book."—M. Stanton Evans, author of The Theme Is Freedom , contributing editor to Human Events
Why does Al Gore believe that cars pose “a mortal threat to the security of every nation”?
Why does the Princeton professor known as the father of the animal rights movement object to humans eating animals but not to humans having sex with them—and why does PETA defend that position?
In other words, why do smart people fall for stupid ideas?
The answer, Daniel J. Flynn reveals in Intellectual Morons , is ideology. Flynn, the author of Why the Left Hates America , shows how people can be so blinded to reality by the causes they serve that they espouse bizarre, sometimes ridiculous, and often dangerous positions. The most influential social movements have spawned ideologues who do not care whether an idea is good or bad, true or false, but only whether it can serve their cause.
It is startling how many Americans—and particularly how many media, academic, and political elites—fall for bad ideas. The trouble is, their lies become institutionalized as truth, and we all suffer as a result.
In Intellectual Morons , Flynn
•How rabid anti-Americans simply parrot the delusional claims of a few gurus
•How the environmental movement, spawned by a “scientist” whose doomsday predictions are almost always wrong, has bred fanaticism, stupidity, and dishonesty
•How the hero of the animal rights crowd is a crank who promotes infanticide and euthanasia
•How a scientific fraud—and pervert—launched the sexual revolution
•How abortion rights activists ignore (or cover up) the fact that their matron saint advocated eugenics and concentration camps
•How our universities have become hothouses of leftist ideology
•How historians and journalists have airbrushed history to turn a racial separatist into a civil rights icon
Filled with jaw-dropping lapses in common sense from even our most celebrated opinion leaders, Intellectual Morons is a welcome reality check for the glaring excesses of today’s political and cultural debates.
"This is a sophisticated pile driver of a book, guiding us through the wiles of great luminaries of the netherworld. And such liveliness in the writing, and such erudition. I was quite fascinated by Intellectual Morons ."—William F. Buckley, Jr.
" Intellectual Morons is exceptionally aptly named. The thought of all that brainpower going down the intellectual drain is sad, but Daniel Flynn's description of it is hilariously on point. This is must reading."—G. Gordon Liddy
" Intellectual Morons is a delight—a wonderful intellectual history of the past hundred years. Flynn ably describes the purveyors of the bad ideas that have undermined our free society."—Burton W. Folsom, Jr., professor of history, Hillsdale College
"A famous bit of folk wisdom says, 'You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything.' Some of the crackpot notions now fashionable in academic circles, as here documented by Daniel Flynn, suggest that saying is an understatement. If you want to know how crazy, and scairy, intellectual morons can get, you have to read this book."—M. Stanton Evans, author of The Theme Is Freedom , contributing editor to Human Events
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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December 26, 2010
Profiles of approximately 15 people, all but two lefties and greens, who Flynn claims were made stupid by the ideologies they followed. I must say that Flynn's arguments are themselves moronic. The future Lord Kelvin estimated in the 1860s that the Earth is 24 to 400 million years old. He was wildly off the mark, but no one calls him a moron because he could not have known about radioactivity. Likewise, Paul Ehrlich estimated in the 1960s that the world of the 1970s and the 1980s would be hit by Malthusian famines. He was also wildly off the mark, since he did not take into account Norman Borlaug's Green Revolution and the dramatic fall in birth rates over most of the world. The Green Revolution averted mass famine in Asia, but it did not penetrate into Africa, which has been experiencing famines into the 2000s. I am unconvinced that Paul Ehrlich is a moron just because he turned out to be wrong. There are ideologically motivated greens out there, no doubt, but there are also ideologically motivated anti-greens; blogger Tim Lambert writes a lot about them, including some of the people Flynn cites as non-morons. Rigoberta Menchú famously lied, for example, exaggerating the gory details of her brother's death in the hands of the Guatemalan military, and inventing another brother that supposedly died of hunger. Well, in 1934 a Hearst newspaper published photos of victims of the 1921-1922 Volga Valley famine, pretending that they showed the 1933 famine in Ukraine, accompanied by fake reporting, and in the 1980s some Diaspora Ukrainians reprinted the fake photos in an album. This fact alone does not prove that the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine was a hoax. Likewise, Rigoberta's lies by themselves do not prove that the atrocities of the Guatemalan military were a hoax. Both Communists and anti-Communists are only human, and are capable of lying to further their respective causes. If professors of Latin American studies who continued to assign Rigoberta's book to undergraduates even after her lies were exposed are morons, then I am a moron in believing that the Ukrainian famine was real despite the forgeries.
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July 25, 2011I'm confused by this book a lot. Apparently, you need to be a very mature critical thinker to separate objective and valid points from ad hominem attacks and other slendering techniques in this one. Because to my mind both approaches could be detected there. Yet I would certainly recommend it to everyone. To see a common and "holy" cause being skillfully (sometimes) attacked is priceless. You may like authors arguments or you may bitterly disagree, but you brain will be awaken and working at high revs.
August 12, 2017
Skepticism - at least in the sense of how the philosopher, Karl Popper, defined it - is the method with which one parses through claims of this or that by testing all preconceived notions against the most difficult test possible in order to reach a conclusion with the least possible amount of bias -- meaning, these notions are considered to be falsifiable or, in other words, can be negated -- regardless of their validity and soundness. Flynn, when put in the mold of "scientific investigator" (which is assuredly what he tried to do with this book), fails to conduct himself according to this principle. And so he falls into the quagmire of his own ideological biases, for he has not removed himself from the sphere of his own ideology, while still mostly critiquing only the ideas of those opposite his own stances -- ideas he is biased against. Thus, he never fulfills the role he intends to convince us he means to fulfill -- that he is a skeptic.
It is not necessary for Flynn, however, to resort to empirical falsification. He could've gone fore other means. But, by committing a number of fallacies, he has allowed himself to be set up for a reputation of factual unaccountability.
This is peculiar to me, since he took the position of critic of ideology but failed to do so remarkably. Even the less rigid and more straightforward forms of falsification, or fact-checking in other words, was not something that Flynn had fully committed to doing. This makes him not only irresponsible, but also intellectually lazy. Believing that this hubristic, elitist, pompous tome of almost-empty air is well-researched is to believe that self-deception is the true perception of reality. Such is the case with the Republican party these days. Flynn did not make it apparent that he was a reliable skeptic. He made it ostensible.
"Intellectual Morons" is replete with a plethora of strawmen deliberately, or perhaps unintentionally (it may be presumed that his apparent excess in wit more than makes up for by the limits of his cognition), written here by an author who comprehends little to nothing of the nuances presented by the figures he criticizes -- the "left-wings" and "greens" in particular whom he quite obviously disagrees with and denounces. Ironically, Flynn is the intellectual moron here. He does not see the atrocities of the American government to cultures everywhere -- and subscribes to the idea of American moral ascendancy and that America is an angelic godsend in nature. More so than that, he does not find his behavior contradictory to his intent. When the perpetrator of stupidity is incognizant of the stupidity that was committed, that is the height of intellectual degradation.
It may just be Flynn's attempt at facetiousness that he implicitly arrives to this opus of miniscule proportions, or perhaps this is his attempt at showing to the world and to the audience he panders to his perceived intellectual high ground. The evidence of American military atrocities is plain to see in foreign policy over the decades, but a presentation of this truth does not equate to anti-Americanism -- only to anti-hegemony in the sense of its totalitarian nature. This situation is unlike the choice one has to make between it and the saving lie a la Alan Moore's Watchmen, because there is no white lie in most American interventionist escapades.
The main problem here is that, while it attempts to maintain an air of erudition, all it does is masquerade what he truly means with a kind of newspeak. Using words in ways not meant and in ways to support the feeble strawman caricatures Flynn has designed the ideas of Zinn, Chomsky and Vidal seem foolish, and make his own ideas seem big. All of his arguments were patently false and were definitive evidence of how poorly he understood the ideas of the apparent "Three Idiots" who, like the characters in the Bollywood movie of the same name, would become important figures in history. Meanwhile, Daniel J. Flynn is nothing more than a blip running on a backwards-running conservative treadmill. The irony of his title is that it describes all too well, with scathing accuracy, the man that is Daniel J. Flynn, a stooge of neo-liberal right-wing Americanism.
Chomsky, for one, when he criticized B.F. Skinner and argued that behaviorism is pseudoscience, did not commit the ad hominem of calling Skinner a stooge, but presented clearly every point made by Skinner's theory and dissected each and every one of them and where they were wrong. Chomsky did so to such a point that Skinner could not formulate a proper response, until such time that adherents of his initial theory defended him, but not sufficiently. One would imagine Daniel J. Flynn incapable of this, as is every single shining knight of the so-called "golden age of conservatism."
Chomsky, Zinn and Vidal were heavily mischaracterized as part of Flynn's primary strategic talking points. To the point that they were wronged, and that this collection of gibberish is akin to something that warrants a charge of libel. I will only discuss on Chomsky's case, since I know more about the story of his situation than them (though I must add the ad hominem nature is abundant in Flynn's joke of a critique, regardless of who is criticized). Noam Chomsky criticized the American government for causing deaths, yes, naturally as any true blue humanist should. But what he did not do was deny the genocide for mere ideological adherence. Chomsky (and Herman who co-wrote the report) criticized the American government for its role in instigating the military encounter based on its self-righteous tendency for moral ascendancy. He did not deny the genocide for mere ideology. He based his conclusions on the data available to him at the time, as opposed to mere interpretations which could be so easily fabricated. And there is the rub for empirical methods. It is not perfect, but it is the best as a guiding mechanism for any sort of interpretation to be made. Facts mold stories, not the other way around.
Even Christopher Hitchens at the time defended Chomsky, stating that Chomsky engaged himself in the touchy business of distinguishing mere narrative interpretations from the actual facts. Chomsky admitted his mistake on Khmer Rouge in "Manufacturing Consent", which is a fascinating read on its own. He said, "I mean the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot, 1975 through 1978 - that atrocity - I think it would be hard to find any example of a comparable outrage and outpouring of fury." (I recommend that book as an essential read for anyone. Deny media propaganda as a fact, and you deny the reality that it has perpetuated in present America, and the world in general.)
Fortunately for David J. Flynn and his contemporaries as well as influences, the realm of academics does not take lightly this collection of fabrications (or so I would like to think) and, therefore, Flynn is liable to the heavy scrutiny of an impartial scientific rigor, in the modern deductive sense, or not (because American liberal arts and all liberal arts in general are somehow lacking in that way).
I remember the 2008 recession. One of the consequences of mainstream economics (neo-classical synthesis or combined neoclassical and Keynesian economics) was this economic downturn. To think that Flynn, Buckley and the like and their followers have still not left free market economics behind and have not seen it for the tyranny that it truly represents is beyond me. This is evidence of Flynn's hypocrisy as a so-called intellectual (he is a PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL of the highest degree and the criticisms herein are the basis of such judgment), wherein he states that he dissects arguments based on their rational foundations but, in truth, he does not. Popper would concur. He effectively implies that he is not a mere ideologue but, in truth, he is. He does not adhere to the facts and statistics laid before those dumbstruck by the economic catastrophe because it does not fit his comfort. Good for him.
Before continuing, I would like to talk about the idea, Darwin's Wedge -- a concept in which there are no limits to competition between members of an ecosystem, which leads to problems of cost-effectiveness because of means of production, regardless of the bountiful outcomes. Applied to economics, Richard Dawkins' metaphor for the free market captures this idea -- his metaphor being "Dumb Tree Analogy." You grow a bunch of trees crowded together in the same area and they compete for sunlight which is the source of energy. As one tree grows taller than the others, the rest attempt to catch up. Trees grow taller and taller to out-compete each other, causing continuous and unnecessary expenditure while experiencing relatively little to no amount of increase or improvement in the desired outcomes. If the trees had set rules on each other for the sake of collaborative limitation, they would not be spending too much energy by growing their trunks and they may as well spend their energy on their roots. This would lead to less overall cost while still maintaining the same gains in solar energy, with the energy properly distributed, and without the vanity of height. So, it is beneficial to have a relatively free market, but an absolutely free market leads to problems. In the broader global economic perspective, this leads to tons of debt accumulation while progress continues, but the consequences are more harsh and more devastating, as seen in the various recessions that have occurred since 2008, including the current recession in Saudi Arabia (circa 2014-2016), leading to foreclosures, increased unemployment and underemployment, job displacement due to automated machinery and computers replacing jobs meant for mechanics and dental assistants and the like, devaluation of various currencies, social unrest among the poor and middle class, etc. It could even be inferred that if without these cascade of events, the present political zeitgeist of far-right and authoritarian populism (which could worsen the current economic trend and lack of consensus in new international economic policy decisions) would not have occurred.
But I digress. It must be noted that this simplistic work of non-fiction made enough criticism, albeit ad hominem- and strawman-laden, of postmodernism at the beginning that I was initially willing to forgive him for his straight-off-the-first-page ad hominem and tasteless sarcasm regarding Al Gore and Peter Singer (both of whom I am interested in reading about but still disagree with on certain issues). But it seems to me that Flynn's prerogative is to compound already-falsified claims upon more already-falsified claims like a stubborn old man stuck to his old ways. His misinterpretations and convolutions become the foundation of further misinterpretations and convolutions in his intellectually decrepit ideology (which is what sadly constitutes the ideological and linguistic devolution of the once-respectable term called "conservatism").
I enjoyed, like I would enjoy 90's pop guilty pleasure, his criticism of postmodernism due to its crass construction without reliance on strong, logical counter-arguments and with heavy reliance on the stereotype about the movement as the foundation of said "criticism." This ultimately leads him to spew fallacy more than anything that can be considered real, substantial and persuasive. He did not provide substantial arguments in support of better alternatives - quite unlike the writer and non-professional (and also more educated) philosopher, David Foster Wallace, who was more influential than anyone in the formation of the new ethos for our current times - the ethos of cynical sincerity.
On the whole, I am a bit disappointed. I truly expected a proper critique of those who fall trap to ideology. Unfortunately, the man himself fell, and perhaps continues to fall, into the trap of ideology, by deliberately misrepresenting and by throwing in subtle and not-so-subtle forms of ad hominem towards a section of the left, as his right-wing bias dictates. It is unfortunate, but my hope of a truly nonpartisan critique of ideology AS AN ENTIRETY did not come to fruition.
If you are not well-read, you may just well be fooled by the pretentious erudition coming from the well-written prose of this man's rubbish parvulum opus. It is filled with calumny, defamation, self-aggrandizement, false humility and pure fallacy. Do yourself a favor, and read anyone, perhaps Thomas Sowell before you read this, and please read this only for the pure joy of critical dissection.
It is not necessary for Flynn, however, to resort to empirical falsification. He could've gone fore other means. But, by committing a number of fallacies, he has allowed himself to be set up for a reputation of factual unaccountability.
This is peculiar to me, since he took the position of critic of ideology but failed to do so remarkably. Even the less rigid and more straightforward forms of falsification, or fact-checking in other words, was not something that Flynn had fully committed to doing. This makes him not only irresponsible, but also intellectually lazy. Believing that this hubristic, elitist, pompous tome of almost-empty air is well-researched is to believe that self-deception is the true perception of reality. Such is the case with the Republican party these days. Flynn did not make it apparent that he was a reliable skeptic. He made it ostensible.
"Intellectual Morons" is replete with a plethora of strawmen deliberately, or perhaps unintentionally (it may be presumed that his apparent excess in wit more than makes up for by the limits of his cognition), written here by an author who comprehends little to nothing of the nuances presented by the figures he criticizes -- the "left-wings" and "greens" in particular whom he quite obviously disagrees with and denounces. Ironically, Flynn is the intellectual moron here. He does not see the atrocities of the American government to cultures everywhere -- and subscribes to the idea of American moral ascendancy and that America is an angelic godsend in nature. More so than that, he does not find his behavior contradictory to his intent. When the perpetrator of stupidity is incognizant of the stupidity that was committed, that is the height of intellectual degradation.
It may just be Flynn's attempt at facetiousness that he implicitly arrives to this opus of miniscule proportions, or perhaps this is his attempt at showing to the world and to the audience he panders to his perceived intellectual high ground. The evidence of American military atrocities is plain to see in foreign policy over the decades, but a presentation of this truth does not equate to anti-Americanism -- only to anti-hegemony in the sense of its totalitarian nature. This situation is unlike the choice one has to make between it and the saving lie a la Alan Moore's Watchmen, because there is no white lie in most American interventionist escapades.
The main problem here is that, while it attempts to maintain an air of erudition, all it does is masquerade what he truly means with a kind of newspeak. Using words in ways not meant and in ways to support the feeble strawman caricatures Flynn has designed the ideas of Zinn, Chomsky and Vidal seem foolish, and make his own ideas seem big. All of his arguments were patently false and were definitive evidence of how poorly he understood the ideas of the apparent "Three Idiots" who, like the characters in the Bollywood movie of the same name, would become important figures in history. Meanwhile, Daniel J. Flynn is nothing more than a blip running on a backwards-running conservative treadmill. The irony of his title is that it describes all too well, with scathing accuracy, the man that is Daniel J. Flynn, a stooge of neo-liberal right-wing Americanism.
Chomsky, for one, when he criticized B.F. Skinner and argued that behaviorism is pseudoscience, did not commit the ad hominem of calling Skinner a stooge, but presented clearly every point made by Skinner's theory and dissected each and every one of them and where they were wrong. Chomsky did so to such a point that Skinner could not formulate a proper response, until such time that adherents of his initial theory defended him, but not sufficiently. One would imagine Daniel J. Flynn incapable of this, as is every single shining knight of the so-called "golden age of conservatism."
Chomsky, Zinn and Vidal were heavily mischaracterized as part of Flynn's primary strategic talking points. To the point that they were wronged, and that this collection of gibberish is akin to something that warrants a charge of libel. I will only discuss on Chomsky's case, since I know more about the story of his situation than them (though I must add the ad hominem nature is abundant in Flynn's joke of a critique, regardless of who is criticized). Noam Chomsky criticized the American government for causing deaths, yes, naturally as any true blue humanist should. But what he did not do was deny the genocide for mere ideological adherence. Chomsky (and Herman who co-wrote the report) criticized the American government for its role in instigating the military encounter based on its self-righteous tendency for moral ascendancy. He did not deny the genocide for mere ideology. He based his conclusions on the data available to him at the time, as opposed to mere interpretations which could be so easily fabricated. And there is the rub for empirical methods. It is not perfect, but it is the best as a guiding mechanism for any sort of interpretation to be made. Facts mold stories, not the other way around.
Even Christopher Hitchens at the time defended Chomsky, stating that Chomsky engaged himself in the touchy business of distinguishing mere narrative interpretations from the actual facts. Chomsky admitted his mistake on Khmer Rouge in "Manufacturing Consent", which is a fascinating read on its own. He said, "I mean the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot, 1975 through 1978 - that atrocity - I think it would be hard to find any example of a comparable outrage and outpouring of fury." (I recommend that book as an essential read for anyone. Deny media propaganda as a fact, and you deny the reality that it has perpetuated in present America, and the world in general.)
Fortunately for David J. Flynn and his contemporaries as well as influences, the realm of academics does not take lightly this collection of fabrications (or so I would like to think) and, therefore, Flynn is liable to the heavy scrutiny of an impartial scientific rigor, in the modern deductive sense, or not (because American liberal arts and all liberal arts in general are somehow lacking in that way).
I remember the 2008 recession. One of the consequences of mainstream economics (neo-classical synthesis or combined neoclassical and Keynesian economics) was this economic downturn. To think that Flynn, Buckley and the like and their followers have still not left free market economics behind and have not seen it for the tyranny that it truly represents is beyond me. This is evidence of Flynn's hypocrisy as a so-called intellectual (he is a PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL of the highest degree and the criticisms herein are the basis of such judgment), wherein he states that he dissects arguments based on their rational foundations but, in truth, he does not. Popper would concur. He effectively implies that he is not a mere ideologue but, in truth, he is. He does not adhere to the facts and statistics laid before those dumbstruck by the economic catastrophe because it does not fit his comfort. Good for him.
Before continuing, I would like to talk about the idea, Darwin's Wedge -- a concept in which there are no limits to competition between members of an ecosystem, which leads to problems of cost-effectiveness because of means of production, regardless of the bountiful outcomes. Applied to economics, Richard Dawkins' metaphor for the free market captures this idea -- his metaphor being "Dumb Tree Analogy." You grow a bunch of trees crowded together in the same area and they compete for sunlight which is the source of energy. As one tree grows taller than the others, the rest attempt to catch up. Trees grow taller and taller to out-compete each other, causing continuous and unnecessary expenditure while experiencing relatively little to no amount of increase or improvement in the desired outcomes. If the trees had set rules on each other for the sake of collaborative limitation, they would not be spending too much energy by growing their trunks and they may as well spend their energy on their roots. This would lead to less overall cost while still maintaining the same gains in solar energy, with the energy properly distributed, and without the vanity of height. So, it is beneficial to have a relatively free market, but an absolutely free market leads to problems. In the broader global economic perspective, this leads to tons of debt accumulation while progress continues, but the consequences are more harsh and more devastating, as seen in the various recessions that have occurred since 2008, including the current recession in Saudi Arabia (circa 2014-2016), leading to foreclosures, increased unemployment and underemployment, job displacement due to automated machinery and computers replacing jobs meant for mechanics and dental assistants and the like, devaluation of various currencies, social unrest among the poor and middle class, etc. It could even be inferred that if without these cascade of events, the present political zeitgeist of far-right and authoritarian populism (which could worsen the current economic trend and lack of consensus in new international economic policy decisions) would not have occurred.
But I digress. It must be noted that this simplistic work of non-fiction made enough criticism, albeit ad hominem- and strawman-laden, of postmodernism at the beginning that I was initially willing to forgive him for his straight-off-the-first-page ad hominem and tasteless sarcasm regarding Al Gore and Peter Singer (both of whom I am interested in reading about but still disagree with on certain issues). But it seems to me that Flynn's prerogative is to compound already-falsified claims upon more already-falsified claims like a stubborn old man stuck to his old ways. His misinterpretations and convolutions become the foundation of further misinterpretations and convolutions in his intellectually decrepit ideology (which is what sadly constitutes the ideological and linguistic devolution of the once-respectable term called "conservatism").
I enjoyed, like I would enjoy 90's pop guilty pleasure, his criticism of postmodernism due to its crass construction without reliance on strong, logical counter-arguments and with heavy reliance on the stereotype about the movement as the foundation of said "criticism." This ultimately leads him to spew fallacy more than anything that can be considered real, substantial and persuasive. He did not provide substantial arguments in support of better alternatives - quite unlike the writer and non-professional (and also more educated) philosopher, David Foster Wallace, who was more influential than anyone in the formation of the new ethos for our current times - the ethos of cynical sincerity.
On the whole, I am a bit disappointed. I truly expected a proper critique of those who fall trap to ideology. Unfortunately, the man himself fell, and perhaps continues to fall, into the trap of ideology, by deliberately misrepresenting and by throwing in subtle and not-so-subtle forms of ad hominem towards a section of the left, as his right-wing bias dictates. It is unfortunate, but my hope of a truly nonpartisan critique of ideology AS AN ENTIRETY did not come to fruition.
If you are not well-read, you may just well be fooled by the pretentious erudition coming from the well-written prose of this man's rubbish parvulum opus. It is filled with calumny, defamation, self-aggrandizement, false humility and pure fallacy. Do yourself a favor, and read anyone, perhaps Thomas Sowell before you read this, and please read this only for the pure joy of critical dissection.
March 30, 2017
The book was pretty unimpressive but it is interesting to see how crazy right wing folks think about those who are a bit more liberal.
February 2, 2010
If you’re curious to know the origins of all the radical far left movements in this country, then you simply must read Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall For Stupid Ideas by Daniel J. Flynn.
This is a fantastic book which breaks down all the propaganda that has been created to promote the left’s causes over the past several decades. What you’ll learn is simply stunning:
The intolerance and political correctness that the left display in our society today can be traced back to Herbert Marcuse. He preached that truth is falsehood, freedom is totalitarianism, tolerance is intolerance, education is indoctrination, and that sex is better than work. If this all sounds absurd, it is, but that’s never stopped the far left before. Marcuse advocated tolerance for ideas from the left but intolerance for ideas from the right. Clearly, he knew that his side couldn’t win in a legitimate debate.
The sexual revolution was started by Alfred Kinsey, a “scientist” who was actually a pedophile. He authored studies in the 1940s and 1950s claiming that a large percentage of Americans engaged in premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality. This started the idea that the conservative mores of society that kept sexuality private and monogamous were old-fashioned, out-of-date, as well as hypocritical. It came out too late all of Kinsey’s studies were fraudulent. Take a look at the hyper-sexualization of today’s society, and the end results of Kinsey’s legacy are clear.
The Feminist movement was started by Betty Friedan and her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique. She claimed that too many women led unfulfilling lives trapped as housewives raising a family. She portrayed herself as a typical stay-at-home mom, but she was actually a radical political activist who believed in Marxism. A recent study says that women today are less happy than they were thirty years ago is proof that radical feminism has done far more harm for women than good.
The environmental movement originated with Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich and his 1968 book The Population Bomb. In the book he claims that during the 1970s hundreds of millions of people would die from starvation due of overpopulation. He also said the United States would be literally dying from thirst. And that a new ice age might be upon us. And that meat prices would rise so rapidly that most of us would be forced to become vegetarians. And that a billion people would die from disease. And that nuclear war was likely. Of course, he was wrong. But all the environmental hysteria we see today can be directly traced back to Ehrlich.
The chapter on Ehrlich is probably the funniest in the entire book. It quickly becomes clear why Ehrlich took so many radical and ludicrous positions when you take a look at his proposed solutions. He wanted a bigger government to use heavy taxation to reduce Americans’ overall standard of living. Ehrlich, like so many others, advocated big government because he believed it could be used to force his own ideology on other people. And if he had to do it by dishonest means, that was irrelevant.
Intellectual Morons covers many other racial leftists including Naom Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Peter Singer, and Ann Rynd. I strongly recommend it. It is both fascinating and funny, stunning and at times horrifying. But you will learn a great deal about how the left in this country operates and why.
Please check out my book and movie review blog at http://inagalaxyfarfaraway-john.blogs...
Thanks for reading!
This is a fantastic book which breaks down all the propaganda that has been created to promote the left’s causes over the past several decades. What you’ll learn is simply stunning:
The intolerance and political correctness that the left display in our society today can be traced back to Herbert Marcuse. He preached that truth is falsehood, freedom is totalitarianism, tolerance is intolerance, education is indoctrination, and that sex is better than work. If this all sounds absurd, it is, but that’s never stopped the far left before. Marcuse advocated tolerance for ideas from the left but intolerance for ideas from the right. Clearly, he knew that his side couldn’t win in a legitimate debate.
The sexual revolution was started by Alfred Kinsey, a “scientist” who was actually a pedophile. He authored studies in the 1940s and 1950s claiming that a large percentage of Americans engaged in premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality. This started the idea that the conservative mores of society that kept sexuality private and monogamous were old-fashioned, out-of-date, as well as hypocritical. It came out too late all of Kinsey’s studies were fraudulent. Take a look at the hyper-sexualization of today’s society, and the end results of Kinsey’s legacy are clear.
The Feminist movement was started by Betty Friedan and her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique. She claimed that too many women led unfulfilling lives trapped as housewives raising a family. She portrayed herself as a typical stay-at-home mom, but she was actually a radical political activist who believed in Marxism. A recent study says that women today are less happy than they were thirty years ago is proof that radical feminism has done far more harm for women than good.
The environmental movement originated with Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich and his 1968 book The Population Bomb. In the book he claims that during the 1970s hundreds of millions of people would die from starvation due of overpopulation. He also said the United States would be literally dying from thirst. And that a new ice age might be upon us. And that meat prices would rise so rapidly that most of us would be forced to become vegetarians. And that a billion people would die from disease. And that nuclear war was likely. Of course, he was wrong. But all the environmental hysteria we see today can be directly traced back to Ehrlich.
The chapter on Ehrlich is probably the funniest in the entire book. It quickly becomes clear why Ehrlich took so many radical and ludicrous positions when you take a look at his proposed solutions. He wanted a bigger government to use heavy taxation to reduce Americans’ overall standard of living. Ehrlich, like so many others, advocated big government because he believed it could be used to force his own ideology on other people. And if he had to do it by dishonest means, that was irrelevant.
Intellectual Morons covers many other racial leftists including Naom Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Peter Singer, and Ann Rynd. I strongly recommend it. It is both fascinating and funny, stunning and at times horrifying. But you will learn a great deal about how the left in this country operates and why.
Please check out my book and movie review blog at http://inagalaxyfarfaraway-john.blogs...
Thanks for reading!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 15, 2017
This is an exceptionally well-written, researched, and supported examination of the forebears of modern liberalism and the inherent contradictions they raise. The simple idea behind the book is that highly intelligent people often fall for stupid ideas, as they have a nutty ability to reason themselves into thinking what even ordinary people can eyeball and declare to be untrue. It's hardly an ideological hit piece, but tries to make an objective and rational case for the harm that elitist liberalism causes ordinary people, despite at its heart being an ideology that believes it is truly helping people. A lot of liberals seem to dislike this book but to be fair, it isn't about attacking liberals. It's about deconstructing the faulty minds behind today's liberalism.
December 31, 2021
I started this book many years ago and just finished. It is right wing propaganda, written in a style that intersperses personal ad hominem attacks with cherry picked factoids to position various individuals throughout history (largely liberal ones) as “morons”. This book contains interesting truth nuggets and good counter perspective to the mainstream narrative for sure about many of these individuals but the style in which it is done is unbalanced. This is really only a “good” read for people with a really strong background on each of these individuals to pick the good meat from the bone and discard the bad fat and grizzle. The book is like terrible buffalo wings.
January 21, 2016
I really liked this book.
Flynn goes back and shows the origin of favorite Left pet causes and the ideologues who promoted them and pushed them.
Flynn goes back and shows the origin of favorite Left pet causes and the ideologues who promoted them and pushed them.
June 19, 2020
Well, let me start by saying that I didn’t really like this book.
I agreed with much of what he was saying, which bothered me slightly, but I did not at all like the way in which he was saying it. He is a very frustrated person. He is angry that people believe stupid things and this book is his diatribe against stupidity. It’s not really a book to inform, it’s a book to belittle and I didn’t like that aspect. I think if ideas are dumb it’s enough to show that they are dumb, you don’t necessarily have to make fun of those who hold them. On the other hand, some ideas are so bad that they deserve to be debunked and even ridiculed, it’s a fine line to walk and I’m not sure he did it well.
This is not to say that I could do it better. I couldn’t. I especially couldn’t because I actually learned a lot by reading this book. Unfortunately, it was a lot about stuff I was not really interested in. This book goes into a lot of detail about the sordid sexual lives of many of the people in it. I’m not particularly fond of reading about the sexual depravity of other people, nor even about their extramarital affairs. An extramarital affair is morally wrong, but not a reason to dismiss someone’s intellectual contributions. If that were enough then we would have to cut David out of the
Bible, and denounce Martin Luther King Jr. This is not to justify what these men did, they did something reprehensible, but I think that it is possible to decry the wrong and still honor what they did that was good. People often don’t live up to the moral code that they hold up as good, they fail in many ways, but that’s not a reason to decry the moral code.
I kind of felt like that was what this author was doing. Throwing mud around in order to make these people seem like the absolute worst people in the world, and certainly some of them are, and certainly some of them were so sexually perverse that I would not want to hang out with them, but it seems to me that those lifestyle choices were secondary to the more important aspect of false ideology. Or perhaps it would be better to say that they were secondary to their proselytizing of evil.
Take for instance Ayn Rand. I happen to have read her books, three of them actually. I thought that most of her characters were wooden, stilted, unrealistic and verbose. But I thought that the message behind the books was good in some ways. I think they went too far in their glorification of selfishness, but it’s understandable that they would do so. Having been raised in the Soviet Union and its mantra that the self must be sacrificed to the collective, it was natural for Ayn to go completely off the rails in the opposite direction. Most people do that. We overreact and go to the opposite extreme. I read her books, her perspective was interesting and I learned from reading them. The Fountainhead was particularly good, I quite frankly enjoyed it. Finding out that she cheated on her husband and refused to debate her ideas with others just reinforces the point that no one is perfect and no philosophy is perfect, it doesn’t equate to doing the same thing that she does and throwing out her philosophy because one does not agree with it, or with the progenitor of it. I don’t agree with Ayn Rand, I don’t think man can live by objectivism alone, but neither do I think that she should be banned or ridiculed.
And that made me wonder about the rest of the people in the book. I happen to know something about Ayn Rand, so although I found his critique of her personal life to be justified, I didn’t find that as grounds for dismissal, but I don’t know much of anything about the other people mentioned in this book, so I started to wonder if maybe this author is treating them a bit cavalierly as well? I started to wonder if maybe Marcuse and Ferdain and Foucault actually have something good in their philosophies? If I can take the good parts of Ayn Rand and reject the bad parts, is it only because I tend to agree with her more than I do with others? Or are there certain things that are just wrong that nothing good can be gleaned from them?
I struggled a lot with the characterization of W.E.B. Du Bois as well. I have read some of his work when I was younger and thought it was quite good. Then I discover that he supported the communist party until his death in 1968. To me, that’s one of the lines that cannot be crossed. You can read Marx and find good philosophical thoughts in him if you must, but that is only in the context of his time period where his ideas had not yet been tried. As soon as you look at the realities of communism in this world and the millions of deaths it caused, you cannot continue to support it and still be respected in other areas. By continuing to support communism in the light of its complete and utter failure and its responsibility for millions of deaths you show yourself to be utterly incapable of being convinced by truth.
Maybe that was my biggest problem with the people mentioned in this book, it seemed that all of them were incapable of being convinced by truth. Instead the common thread in this book was that the people in it twisted the truth and twisted facts in order to further their viewpoint or to remain in their comfortable delusion. In that way, I completely understand the author’s frustration. It is unfathomable to me why someone would continue to cling to a belief that is demonstrably false. Ayn Rand, for instance, clinging to her belief that cigarettes didn’t cause lung cancer. DuBois clinging to his belief that communism was good, it’s ludicrous.
But there was one chapter in this book that truly disgusted me, and one person that I cannot divorce the person and the problem, and that was Alfred Kinsey. If even half of what this book says about Kinsey is true then every paper, book, study and journal that man touched needs to be looked at, debunked, barred, recanted, and withdrawn from courses, textbooks and journals except to serve as an example of how badly awry research can go in the hands of the immoral. I don’t like Internal Review Boards, they are clunky, ponderous, power hungry bureaucracies that slow down research, make it nearly impossible to conduct and act as gatekeepers for certain ideologies, but they are necessary. If only to keep cretins like Kinsey from getting anywhere near other humans, let alone studying them. This man employed other people, convicted pedophiles, to go and molest children and called it science and data gathering. He required his interns and assistants to sleep with him and each other and called it science. That is indeed the very opposite of science. Setting aside the moral issues for a moment, any observation made is immediately suspect because of the issue with sample size and subjectivity. But there are so many other problems with this! There is not a single good thing about this! You have a boss, a professor, someone in a position of power telling you that sleeping with him is necessary not only to keep your job, but it is in fact a good thing, it will further science! How is this any different than a cult leader demanding his followers offer up their wives because it will lead them to heaven?!
And he and his successors have never even made public their data sources? Ridiculous! Anonymize it by all means, but you have to have the data on hand so that your study can be replicated or debunked, that’s what science is, not stacking your surveys with people who differ from the norm and then generalizing it out to the population. That’s like interviewing only serial killers on the justifiability of murder and then publishing it claiming that all humanity has that viewpoint. Utterly ridiculous. I cannot understand why people are still assigning this man for reading! If you are doing it as an example of what not to do, go right ahead, but using it as a citation to back up your work?! I cannot fathom it. To me this is the same as talking about how science was furthered by the experiments done at Dachau. Yes. Now we know a lot more about hypothermia. It doesn’t change the fact that the men who conducted those experiments were evil and had no regard for human life and wellbeing. Neither did Kinsey. Thank God for IRB boards, at least they prevent this kind of blatant abuse.
I agreed with much of what he was saying, which bothered me slightly, but I did not at all like the way in which he was saying it. He is a very frustrated person. He is angry that people believe stupid things and this book is his diatribe against stupidity. It’s not really a book to inform, it’s a book to belittle and I didn’t like that aspect. I think if ideas are dumb it’s enough to show that they are dumb, you don’t necessarily have to make fun of those who hold them. On the other hand, some ideas are so bad that they deserve to be debunked and even ridiculed, it’s a fine line to walk and I’m not sure he did it well.
This is not to say that I could do it better. I couldn’t. I especially couldn’t because I actually learned a lot by reading this book. Unfortunately, it was a lot about stuff I was not really interested in. This book goes into a lot of detail about the sordid sexual lives of many of the people in it. I’m not particularly fond of reading about the sexual depravity of other people, nor even about their extramarital affairs. An extramarital affair is morally wrong, but not a reason to dismiss someone’s intellectual contributions. If that were enough then we would have to cut David out of the
Bible, and denounce Martin Luther King Jr. This is not to justify what these men did, they did something reprehensible, but I think that it is possible to decry the wrong and still honor what they did that was good. People often don’t live up to the moral code that they hold up as good, they fail in many ways, but that’s not a reason to decry the moral code.
I kind of felt like that was what this author was doing. Throwing mud around in order to make these people seem like the absolute worst people in the world, and certainly some of them are, and certainly some of them were so sexually perverse that I would not want to hang out with them, but it seems to me that those lifestyle choices were secondary to the more important aspect of false ideology. Or perhaps it would be better to say that they were secondary to their proselytizing of evil.
Take for instance Ayn Rand. I happen to have read her books, three of them actually. I thought that most of her characters were wooden, stilted, unrealistic and verbose. But I thought that the message behind the books was good in some ways. I think they went too far in their glorification of selfishness, but it’s understandable that they would do so. Having been raised in the Soviet Union and its mantra that the self must be sacrificed to the collective, it was natural for Ayn to go completely off the rails in the opposite direction. Most people do that. We overreact and go to the opposite extreme. I read her books, her perspective was interesting and I learned from reading them. The Fountainhead was particularly good, I quite frankly enjoyed it. Finding out that she cheated on her husband and refused to debate her ideas with others just reinforces the point that no one is perfect and no philosophy is perfect, it doesn’t equate to doing the same thing that she does and throwing out her philosophy because one does not agree with it, or with the progenitor of it. I don’t agree with Ayn Rand, I don’t think man can live by objectivism alone, but neither do I think that she should be banned or ridiculed.
And that made me wonder about the rest of the people in the book. I happen to know something about Ayn Rand, so although I found his critique of her personal life to be justified, I didn’t find that as grounds for dismissal, but I don’t know much of anything about the other people mentioned in this book, so I started to wonder if maybe this author is treating them a bit cavalierly as well? I started to wonder if maybe Marcuse and Ferdain and Foucault actually have something good in their philosophies? If I can take the good parts of Ayn Rand and reject the bad parts, is it only because I tend to agree with her more than I do with others? Or are there certain things that are just wrong that nothing good can be gleaned from them?
I struggled a lot with the characterization of W.E.B. Du Bois as well. I have read some of his work when I was younger and thought it was quite good. Then I discover that he supported the communist party until his death in 1968. To me, that’s one of the lines that cannot be crossed. You can read Marx and find good philosophical thoughts in him if you must, but that is only in the context of his time period where his ideas had not yet been tried. As soon as you look at the realities of communism in this world and the millions of deaths it caused, you cannot continue to support it and still be respected in other areas. By continuing to support communism in the light of its complete and utter failure and its responsibility for millions of deaths you show yourself to be utterly incapable of being convinced by truth.
Maybe that was my biggest problem with the people mentioned in this book, it seemed that all of them were incapable of being convinced by truth. Instead the common thread in this book was that the people in it twisted the truth and twisted facts in order to further their viewpoint or to remain in their comfortable delusion. In that way, I completely understand the author’s frustration. It is unfathomable to me why someone would continue to cling to a belief that is demonstrably false. Ayn Rand, for instance, clinging to her belief that cigarettes didn’t cause lung cancer. DuBois clinging to his belief that communism was good, it’s ludicrous.
But there was one chapter in this book that truly disgusted me, and one person that I cannot divorce the person and the problem, and that was Alfred Kinsey. If even half of what this book says about Kinsey is true then every paper, book, study and journal that man touched needs to be looked at, debunked, barred, recanted, and withdrawn from courses, textbooks and journals except to serve as an example of how badly awry research can go in the hands of the immoral. I don’t like Internal Review Boards, they are clunky, ponderous, power hungry bureaucracies that slow down research, make it nearly impossible to conduct and act as gatekeepers for certain ideologies, but they are necessary. If only to keep cretins like Kinsey from getting anywhere near other humans, let alone studying them. This man employed other people, convicted pedophiles, to go and molest children and called it science and data gathering. He required his interns and assistants to sleep with him and each other and called it science. That is indeed the very opposite of science. Setting aside the moral issues for a moment, any observation made is immediately suspect because of the issue with sample size and subjectivity. But there are so many other problems with this! There is not a single good thing about this! You have a boss, a professor, someone in a position of power telling you that sleeping with him is necessary not only to keep your job, but it is in fact a good thing, it will further science! How is this any different than a cult leader demanding his followers offer up their wives because it will lead them to heaven?!
And he and his successors have never even made public their data sources? Ridiculous! Anonymize it by all means, but you have to have the data on hand so that your study can be replicated or debunked, that’s what science is, not stacking your surveys with people who differ from the norm and then generalizing it out to the population. That’s like interviewing only serial killers on the justifiability of murder and then publishing it claiming that all humanity has that viewpoint. Utterly ridiculous. I cannot understand why people are still assigning this man for reading! If you are doing it as an example of what not to do, go right ahead, but using it as a citation to back up your work?! I cannot fathom it. To me this is the same as talking about how science was furthered by the experiments done at Dachau. Yes. Now we know a lot more about hypothermia. It doesn’t change the fact that the men who conducted those experiments were evil and had no regard for human life and wellbeing. Neither did Kinsey. Thank God for IRB boards, at least they prevent this kind of blatant abuse.
April 7, 2010
A bit ideologically partisan but what it lacks in neutrality it more than makes up for in clever and well-researched observations.
May 27, 2017
Excellent book. Well researched and informative.
April 12, 2020
Solid yet very depressing read...this is a book on the who's who whom have helped destroy Western Civ....
September 30, 2021
The word "moron" and "left" on the cover was a hint that this book wouldn't be unbiased. Leftists have indeed caused trouble with riots and race-hustling, but treating the consistently greedy Right as moral is dishonest.
This book rehashes the standard right-wing view of the world that shows wisdom on social issues and personal accountability, but ignores evidence for environmental problems and tows the industrial growth line (personal values don't debunk destructive facts). Flynn succumbs to the same tribal ideology the book claims to critique. Bigger thinkers step outside of their own camp.
Flynn denies overpopulation with the easy route of citing Paul Ehrlich's worst-case predictions, as if the Earth isn't actually finite and nobody else warns of limits. Flynn also skips the role of fossil fuels in unnaturally stretching carrying capacity. He clearly leans toward climate change denial (Al Gore gets a standard mention, but not in depth.), claims the ozone hole was never a real problem, and downplays species lost to man-made extinctions. We get the usual implication that pollution was reduced voluntarily, and calling environmentalism a "religion." Very predictable, anthropocentric stuff.
You have to read authors like J.H. Kunstler for a balanced view of moronic thinking on both the Left and Right.
This book rehashes the standard right-wing view of the world that shows wisdom on social issues and personal accountability, but ignores evidence for environmental problems and tows the industrial growth line (personal values don't debunk destructive facts). Flynn succumbs to the same tribal ideology the book claims to critique. Bigger thinkers step outside of their own camp.
Flynn denies overpopulation with the easy route of citing Paul Ehrlich's worst-case predictions, as if the Earth isn't actually finite and nobody else warns of limits. Flynn also skips the role of fossil fuels in unnaturally stretching carrying capacity. He clearly leans toward climate change denial (Al Gore gets a standard mention, but not in depth.), claims the ozone hole was never a real problem, and downplays species lost to man-made extinctions. We get the usual implication that pollution was reduced voluntarily, and calling environmentalism a "religion." Very predictable, anthropocentric stuff.
You have to read authors like J.H. Kunstler for a balanced view of moronic thinking on both the Left and Right.
May 16, 2019
If you have been following progressive thought for awhile, there will probably not be much new to learn here. However, for everyone else this is an excellent introduction. It covers the influence of the Frankfurt school, cultural hegemony, origins of radical feminism, many of the heros of the movement such as Herbert Marcuse, Neizche, Rousseau, Alfred Kinsey, Margaret Sanger, Rigoberto Menchu, Che Guevera, Noam Chomsky, Ayn Rand and more. It describes post modern thought and deconstructionism. If you ever wondered how we got here, read this.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 2, 2021
They say nothing is more dangerous than a resourceful idiot. Daniel J. Flynn shows you why in this damning exposee of the corrupt, pseudo-intellectual mindsets held by those masquerading as the enlightened.
October 15, 2024
my favorite quote: “When confronted with new information, the joiner’s immediate concern is, ‘Will it serve my cause?’ We would all be better off if we approached untested assertions by instead asking ourselves, ‘Is it true?’”
January 17, 2012
Flynn puts the spotlight on a dozen or so characters, mostly centered in the Academy, who were central to a variety of Ideologies that were initially suspect and later absurd and destructive. These fall into both "Left" and "Right" ends of the spectrum and most are frightening, to say the least. Flynn is especially interested in the Guru Phenomenon and has selected representative antiheroes who have suprisingly mindless followings, even years after their deaths. As he points out in the wrap-up, those who don't think for themselves will have someone think for them. It's really a crime that so many who follow these people have abdicated their responsibility to do that thinking.
Currently reading
July 7, 2008shows how easy it is to be 'mis-informed' when you don't use logic and think for yourself.
August 10, 2013
See my review on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/review/RLC5EK15RUDTB
September 14, 2009
Another in the genre of how people think, with a conservative twist.
December 19, 2013
Awesome book! I love the sections on the lunatic Ayn Rand and the liar Rigoberta Menchu.
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