Excerpted from “Writing In The Age Of The Idiot,” this week’s WND.COM column:

“The reasons for addressing readers’ responses to last week’s column, “Paleoconservative Hypocrisy” [not my title], lie not in an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but in a sense of urgency. For some particularly jarring retorts (these have become ubiquitous over the years) are emblematic of the triumph of twiddle dumb and twiddle dumber in American culture and politics. And that’s a problem.

Super smart sorts still predominate in the few professional niches in which advanced skill and aptitude are necessary if bridges are to keep from falling, airplanes to remain airborne, and their human cargo pacified with electronic gadgets. Otherwise, an intellectual underclass has risen to dominate America in almost every field of endeavor.

Once upon-a-time simpletons sought self-improvement. No longer; in the Age of the Idiot they are groomed to be oblivious to their shortcomings—and will proceed loudly and aggressively against those who fail to mirror their mindset. … On encountering someone he might learn from, he unfurls an “untamed Id” and an inflated Ego in all their fury.

So it was that Ivan Poulter wrote to inform me that … although he meant no insult, he nevertheless needed to inform me that I ‘also appear as some kind of dumb-ass in [my] exaggerated intelligence.'”

Believe it or not, but one Founding Founders forewarned of the “Idiocracy,” although not quite in those words. More in the column “Writing In The Age Of The Idiot,” which can be read on the weekends on Taki’s too.

Update I (Oct. 9): George Pal’s comment hereunder about the association between democratic mass society and mass stupidity is an important one. I wanted to include this observation, plus a reference from a “dumb-ass with an exaggerated intelligence”—can’t recall if it was Hoppe or Huntington—but I dropped the idea. Too many ideas in one column might have caused a riot.

Update II: Regarding Clay Shirky (whoever he may be, posted by anon): the man belongs to the postmodern tradition—a “tradition” that has managed to almost completely dismantle one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization: the intellectual discipline. (Hint: this is why you “study” so-called “social sciences” o “cultural studies” in secondary and tertiary schools and not history.)

“Intellectual disciplines were founded in ancient Greece and gained considerable impetus from the work of Aristotle who identified and organized a range of subjects into orderly bodies of learning. … The history of Western knowledge shows the decisive importance of the structuring of disciplines. This structuring allowed the West to benefit from two key innovations: the systematization of research methods, which produced an accretion of consistent findings; and the organization of effective teaching, which permitted a large and accumulating body of knowledge to be transmitted from one generation to the next.” (The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle, Encounter, pp. 247-250)

The concept of the intellectual discipline is inseparable from Western canon and curriculum.

No, “Dumb Down, You Uppity (Intelligent) Bitch!” is not the title of my new WND column, now on Taki’s, but a reaction to it. In the Age of the Idiot people take pride in their ignorance, and seek to shame and humiliate those who do not reflect their own impoverished state-of-being. On encountering someone they might learn from, they recoil, and out come the Id and the Ego all in one ball of fury.

Personally, on encountering my betters, I seek to learn from them. In fact, I actively seek out my intellectual betters. But not the average member of the Idiocracy. If the Little Woman makes him feel bad, he lashes out in an attempt to take her down a notch or two, and salvage his own ugly, aggressive emptiness.

I urge you: Rather than lash out at someone for using her gifts, at the very least examine yourself first: Ask yourself why you are behaving in such a transparent, disgraceful manner. Get onto yourself. And then work hard to submerge your demands for replicas of yourself.

The letter that prompted these thoughts arrived in response to the not-quite-new, originally titled “Paleos Must Defend the West…And That Means Israel Too.” A version of the essay was first published on VDARE.COM. Barely A Blog readers had discussed the topic extensively, so I did not post it again.

OVER TO IVAN The Terrible (and proud of it):

From: Ivan Poulter
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 12:40 AM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: Re: Paleo….:Dumb Down

Ilana,

Compared to you, I’m a total ignoramus. I’d admit to lacking your intellectual quotient. Not meaning to be insulting, you also appear as some kind of dumb-ass in your exaggerated intelligence.

You’re far too clever for you own good. Or better still, you far, far exceed the ability of most you write to. I am constantly accused of being too intellectual, and in my ‘intellectualism’ speaking or writing way above people’s heads. However, Ilana, you take that award away from me, hands down. If you want to reach a few more people, for heaven’s sake, dumb yourself down a little. Then, even as I write that to you, I’ll attempt to remember my own advice. Except, I’m very dangerously down there, too close to the ranks of stupidity, sometimes. You certainly could afford to dumb down just a little, as least in your attempts to communicate to all of us. Unless, of course, you have a very limited target market. Then do as you please!

Ivan Poulter

[Ivan: cheer up, there is no chance of you being too intellectual. Absolutely none. I’m glad you did not live back in the days of our Founders. The Federalist Papers would have driven you to distraction. Or worse.]

Update II (Oct. 3): Young Brett is right about the dumb-down shtick being an insult to our readers. First, I write as I think. I can’t change that. I don’t know how to. Second, the reason I won’t make a concerted effort to parrot O’Reilly’s erroneous, ugly prose is that I have respect for my readers. It’s patronizing to talk down to people. Yes, it is inevitable that I will enjoy fewer readers than the other crowd pleasers becasue, for the most, people wish their views confirmed. However, those who want to be challenged and have minds that seek interest and humor; something extra—they will find their way here. I hope.

To follow the medical profession’s recommendations, Mercer columns can help ward off Alzhemier’s later in life. Staying within your comfort zone mentally will do nothing to force those dendrites and synaptic connections in the brain to branch out well into old age. The brain is very plastic; but if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. I know of what I speak; I once awoke in a sweat mumbling: “Oh, my G-d, I think I made a circular argument in my last column.” Yeah, I often argue my case in my dreams. You want to stay alert well into old age, so stick around, boys and girls. Let the other lazy minds atrophy and fill-up with plaque, the hallmark of senility.

Anyhoo, read “Athens & Jerusalem,” and the rest of the intellectual gymnastics on Taki’s.

Despite his surprisingly mundane and misguided ideas on politics and economics, brilliant belletrist Gore Vidal, at 83, still manages to dazzle with his original insights. In a country in which homegrown retardation is more pressing a problem than homegrown terrorism, that’s quite something.

Vidal recently gave an interview to the British Times from which it was clear that he no longer sees signs of the divine in Obama. Nevertheless, absent from the dismal score card he gave the president was a realistic appraisal of the putative gifts of Obama, a charmer who was elected based on his ability to sweetly say nothing much at all.

To his credit, Vidal is scathing about Obama’s talismanic, “solve that [war] and you solve terrorism” treatment of the Afghanistan war. At the same time he wants to see Obama, Lincoln-like, lord it over the people (especially with respect to health care). But those kinds of images go with the homoerotic territory.

In any event, his weak protestations over Obama are the least interesting of Vidal’s comments, the ones about Timothy McVeigh and the love that dare not speak its name the most interesting.

Read the interview.

Update I (Oct. 1): Some respect for Gore Vidal, please. He belongs to a generation of intellectuals who SERVED. Bravely. As a matter of interest, “Some 450 out of 750 Princeton graduates in the class of 1956 served in the military.” Samuel Huntington, one of America’s greatest scholars, served in the army. “All four of the Kennedy brothers served in the military; not one of the thirty Kennedy cousins has.” [Excerpted from Are We Rome?The Fall of An Empire And The State of America by Cullen Murphy, 2007, p. 82.]

Most of the neocon-minded war mongers have not served.

Of course, “our freedoms,” such as they are, do not come courtesy of our armed forces leveling this or the other far-flung protectorate abroad. That’s yet more neocon nonsense on stilts. Cheap sloganeering.

Update II: The proverbial Orwellian Ministry of Truth decrees how the peons think about the issues of the day. When it comes to Timothy McVeigh they’ve had the same degree of success as in ensconcing Rosa Parks as the new Founding Mother of America.

Vidal is rare and courageous in recognizing the legitimate effrontery against life and liberty that motivated McVeigh to commit his crime. He is also unique in acknowledging that McVeigh was not a rube, but a thoughtful man who had fought for his country and was familiar with its foundational principles and documents. Here is McVeigh on the American experiment gone wrong (haven’t you read the interview?):

I think it all has to do with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the misconception that the government is obliged to provide those things or has the jurisdiction to deny them. We’ve gotten away from the principle that they were only created to secure those rights. And that’s where, I believe, much of the trouble has surfaced.

The characters involved in the Waco massacre—our “brave” law and order officers and their puppet masters—deserved to be put to death too, but were not. Vidal has my respect for recognizing what the decidedly mediocre mind of a Rich Lowry has been incapable of. If Vidal were of a younger generation (like myself), his iconoclasm would have consigned him in mindless America to obscurity.

Update III: MORAL/INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENCE. Conflating the causes for which McVeigh committed his cruel crime against agents and family of an oppressive government is akin to conflating MY causes with those of, in Myron’s taxonomy of the evil, the “Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin,” and I would add Al Gore (to round off the profile, and to poke at the humorless).

What sort of moral relativism is this? What kind of messy thinking is this? The causes and theories of the Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin (and Al Gore) were wrong on their logic and facts; McVeigh’s causes and motivation, if not his deeds, were right. What’s so hard about that? Kudos to Vidal, however confused he is about all else, for recognizing this.

The following is a good description of our OVERLORDS WHO ART ON MOUNT OLYMPUS:

“Like those of imperial Rome, America’s elites are an urban and international group, perhaps on their way to forming a distinct transnational class. They are cosmopolitan-citizens who often have more in common with members of that same class around the world than with other members of their own society. The elites of Washington, Mew York, Los Angeles, and Boston may be American by birth, but their wall hangings are from Peru, their sculptures from Nunavut, their literary fiction from Sri Lanka, their CDs from Brazil, their basmati from India, their wine from New Zealand. Their religious values, if they have any, may be drawn impressionistically from Eastern and Western traditions—an eclectic pantheon.” [Excerpted from Are We Rome?The Fall of An Empire And The State of America by Cullen Murphy, 2007, p. 147.]