Intelligence not the same as wisdom
Dennis Prager’s latest column, “Brilliance Is Overrated”, is spot on:
Most Americans upon hearing that someone has attended Harvard University assumes that this person is not only smarter than most other people but is actually a more impressive person. That is why, for example, people assume that a Nobel laureate in physics has something particularly intelligent to say about social policy. In fact, there is no reason at all to assume that a Nobel physicist has more insight into health care issues or capital punishment than a high school physics teacher, let alone more insight than a moral theologian. But people, especially the highly educated, do think so. That’s why one frequently sees ads advocating some political position signed by Nobel laureates.
Intellectuals, e.g., those with graduate degrees, have among the worst, if not the worst, records on the great moral issues of the past century. Intellectuals such as the widely adulated French intellectual Jean Paul Sartre were far more likely than hardhats to admire butchers of humanity like Stalin and Mao. But this has had no impact on most people’s adulation of the intellect and intellectuals.
So, too, the current economic decline was brought about in large measure by people in the financial sector widely regarded as “brilliant.” Of course, it turns out that many of them were either dummies, amoral, incompetent, or all three.
President Obama has a Harvard law degree, but his brilliance is likewise losing its sheen.
h/t: Signs Of The Times
A liberal friend said that Obama had attracted many intelligent people to his team of advisors. I responded by recalling that the late William Buckley said he preferred to be governed by the first 1000 people in the Boston phone book than the Harvard Faculty. As a retired academic, I can only say “amen” to the limitations of really smart people. I guess if I were Canadian I would say “spot on.”
[...] PRESIDENT OBAMA has a Harvard law degree, but his brilliance is likewise losing its sheen …. [...]