Priestly Rule (V)

It may seem ironic to call American intellectuals “priests.” They are largely secular, leading the evolution that has taken us away from the Church and Christianity starting with the Enlightenment, continuing with Darwinism, and helped by the "lost generation" that followed a Great War both sides fought in God's name. Furthermore, the women’s movement that is so central to the Democratic coalition is fueled by alienation from Church stands on birth control and abortion. Intellectuals view Christian conservatives as a core GOP opposition group; Evangelicals have so been since Reagan took over the party in 1980.

Though the Democrats’ intellectuals are mostly secular, they resemble priests in that:

• They are better educated;

• They revere knowledge, and the superior position learning provides;

• They use their authority openly on behalf of the masses, whom they view as child-like;

• They treat warriors as rivals for power, put captains of industry in the same category, and seek to assert their superiority over their rivals where possible, and;

• They exercise domination by creating categories of persons whom are blessed, and whom are cursed.

Intellectuals in America today yearn for the larger meaning of life. They gain immortality by doing good for others less blessed—the poor, the minorities, women, GLBT persons, animals, and all things nature, including (especially in 2007) glaciers.

Their emphasis on superior knowledge—“reason” in the words of Al Gore, author of The Assault on Reason—means they are deeply concerned about Americans who spend 4.5 hours a day watching mindless television instead of reading. That makes people brain flabby; easy prey for simplistic messages that lead to Bush and Chaney’s election, followed by the Bush-Chaney systematic destruction of democracy's pillars—prohibition of torture, ban on warrantless wiretapping, and protection of our standing with intellectuals abroad—as well as their using the national treasury as a piggybank for friends and supporters.

Reading between the lines, I see modern day priests not as protectors of democracy as Gore suggests, but with their put-down of the masses' level of intellectual achievement, today's intelligentsia instead display a genuine fear of democracy. “The people, Sir,” Alexander Hamilton is supposed to have said, “are a beast.” Harvard’s Gore seems to agree.