Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Sometimes I Wish We Spoke This Plainly
Another great op-ed in the Telegraph of London. This one is a bit of a book review and is very British, but at its core it says some really interesting things:
The editorial contends that this fashion in intellect is changing in Britain -- would that it does here too.
Can an intelligent person be patriotic? Or is national loyalty a base emotion, fit only for the tabloid-reading masses? In the 1940s, George Orwell remarked that Colonel Blimps and highbrow intellectuals both accepted as a law of nature that patriotism and intelligence were divorced.Here in America such words would be greeted with howls of protest, and yet can it really be argued that most liberal intellectuals in this country feel that they are somehow too smart for the room and that intellect raises them above the patriotic fray?
The editorial contends that this fashion in intellect is changing in Britain -- would that it does here too.
