If you honestly don't think Republicans read, then maybe you need to get out more and meet a few of them. I don't think many college professors are “intellectual” because very few of them question the dogma they hear and spread on a consistent basis.

TRY AGAIN.

It's the SUN, people.

And I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, and a Deist/Taoist who, after countless bad encounters with fundies, pretty well loathe and despise them.

It's. The. SUN.

Learn it.

Live it.

Know it.

Deal with it.

That makes middling professors at middling schools more “intellectual” than all the people responsible for Republican recruiting this decade, and however much Libertarian intellectual purity stands up to weaselly liberalism, Libertarians haven't quite understood human problems and suffering aren't solved by a shouting match.

You might have done well to immerse yourself in the thinking of a boatload of morons.

Anything citing “their IQ scores”? I know facts are hard and all.

I went to a top 20 school and often had fairly intelligent professors, but I purposefully avoided the boatload of morons. This was at one of the “better” schools. Academia, from professors down to students, isn't all that brilliant as many people like to claim it is.

“Detached from its moral grounding by its intellectual paradigms, the West has become increasingly and intractably secular. We now look to science for all answers about life; we have experts for everything; the new creation of Christianity has devolved into the evolutionary hopelessness and purposelessness of survival-of-the-fittest reductionism. We have become no more than random chance, with no purpose higher than our survival in this life, and no meaning beyond genetics or neurotransmitters or selfish genes. Morality, ethics, self-restraint are but social constructs convenient to our survival — and eminently disposable when the need arises.

The consequences of this imperceptible but profound change in worldview, centuries in the making, have brought us to our current state. We no longer trust the individual, based on the inculcation of moral and ethical values through family and cultural tradition, but instead trust no one, multiplying laws, rules, and regulations to micromanage behavior no longer restrained by the inner moral compass and now-discarded social mores. We no longer look to the individual, and family, the community, the church, to be the prime movers of support or those who fall by life’s wayside, in poverty, ill health, economic or social misfortune. We have outsourced our hearts, contracting with those most ill-suited to the task of compassion: those who by our own appointment or their own unbridled ambition have become our leaders in government.”

To repeat a part of the above, “we no longer trust the individual, based on the inculcation of moral and ethical values through family and cultural tradition.” Libertarianism unmoored by a Judeo-Christian understanding of and appreciation of the individual's responsibility to conduct himself or herself within a framework of moral and ethical constraints is a very great weakness and a reason why its doctrinaire proponents, such a Wilkinson, have never and will never play a practical role in national politics. Oh, and please, this chimera of the “threat” from the so-called religious right is risible. Their agenda is basically to prevent their taxpayer monies from being used for what they consider morally and ethically questionable activities, to say nothing of patently unconstitutional ones. None but the fringe elements push for any legal constraints on private activity.

Really, if your priorities are such that you endorse what Obama and his Chicago Boys are implementing, manipulated census data, a Civilian Expeditionary Workforce to suppress internal dissent, the Fairness Doctrine, the prohibition of voluntary, private sectarian activities on university campuses, ACORN funding to facilitate voter fraud, a new Smoot-Hawley protectionism, and probably hundreds of other hidden gems in the “pork”ulus bill, I say go ahead, break bread with the Democrats. Oh, and I'm sure you're all in favor of that no-loose foreign policy of talking the NoKos, Iranians, Chavistas, Hamas/Hezbollah out of hating us. That should work.

You show by your comments, including this “rejoinder,” that you don't know the difference between the conservative movement and the Republican Party. Nor do you know the difference between the various kinds of conservatives within the movement, many of whom are very libertarian, a surprising number of whom are social libertarians, not to mention a growing number of cultural/religious conservatives (like me), who are nonetheless quite comfortable leaving people's moral choices up to them.

Clearly you are unaware of just how poorly academia is doing in actually educating young adults and preparing them for anything other than left-wing, postmodern uselessness. We slam the academy, not because we're anti-intellectual, but because we long for the restoration of academic vigor and integrity, which is sorely missing in today's America. Your appeal to that authority is ludicrous to anyone who knows how to read and think for himself.

Just as clearly you are a pro at building straw men and then cherry-picking to support your “case.”

You will get respect when you get off your high horse and demonstrate that a) you are familiar with the people and movements you criticize and b) quit speaking to very intelligent, well-educated people as if they just crawled out of the swamp.

I delight in de-gassifying the deluded condescensions of leftist blowhards like you.

And—my friend—as harsh and personal as this comment is toward you, there is not a bit of ad hominem anywhere in it.