Via Marginal Revolution, I see that Foreign Policy and the UK Prospect are asking readers to vote on the top five living intellectuals.
Hernando de Soto and Pope Benedict XVI are rightly nominated, but Mises readers can probably think of other important names that were somehow overlooked — which is why it’s a good thing they’re also asking you to write in your own choice for the top intellectual not on the list.
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/4115/the-top-intellectuals/
The Top Intellectuals?
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The list wasn’t terribly surprising for me as I didn’t expect for any Austro-libertarians to be on there. However, I was surprised that Milton Friedman did not make the list while Thomas Friedman did.
Hmmm…Perhaps we Mises blog readers could organize and all vote for one person?
Hmm. Top five living intellectuals? From our crowd, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Lew Rockwell, inter alia. As I regard economic education as the main issue on which our survival depends, any of the most significant and sound–read: Austrian–economists would fit–e.g., Salerno. But outside this group, dunno. Pope Benedict? Ray Kurzweil? Sowell?
I would think Dr. Sowell would have to be on the short list.
Chris
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/
Sowell’s brilliant, but while he definitely has libertarian leanings, his defense of the Iraq war and other statist positions puts him in the neocon camp.
I vote for Hoppe and/or Rockwell, and Kurzweil.
Hoppe, Block, DiLorenzo, Charles Adams, Butler Shaffer, Rockwell. (somewhat) honorable mentions to Sowell and Walter Williams, despite their tepid support of the Iraq War.
Why the particular love for Kurzweil?
What “tepid support”? Sowell’s a raging enthusiast for the Bush imperium.
Williams: I haven’t been following him in recent years. But if he still subs for Limbaugh, there’s a bad omen.
I have read an occasional Sowell column since the statist scales have fallen from my eyes, and on at least one occasion he seems to have had second thoughts; http://www.libertyguys.org/articles/detail.asp?ArtID=232
Mea culpa if I am reading too much into it.
I still like Williams on everything but the war.
Interesting quote coming from Sowell that you quote on your blog:
“If the continuing carnage in Iraq accomplishes nothing else, it should silence the ‘national greatness’ bunch who have been pushing the idea that we should be creating democracies around the world.”
However, I wouldn’t read too much into it.
First, it’s from over a year ago, and he hasn’t turned around on the war since then. Second, it’s from one of his occasional “Random Thoughts” columns that compile his throwaway lines.
Basically he’s saying the US should conquer and bully uncooperative Third World countries at will, and not fuss about trying to make them into democracies like us. Let’s cut the c–p and just force their governments to do what we want.
Not the neocon party-line to be sure, but typical of all too many right-wing types ever since the Spanish-American War.
“To those with the vision of the anointed, the public serves not only as a general object of disdain, but as a baseline from which to measure their own lofty heights, whether in art, politics, or other fields.” — Thomas Sowell, Vision of the Anointed, p. 123
His columns run hot and cold, but his books alone should qualify him.
HT Asks;
“Why the particular love for Kurzweil?”
Ray Kurzweil (bio: http://www.kurzweiltech.com/aboutray.html) invented, among others, a way to sample and port to a keyboard instrument sounds that are so realistic it has put a lot of expensive musicians out of business in some applications. He has gone on to work with electronic devices that replicate hearing and sight for the deaf and blind, with limited success. He is out with a book now about the coming “Singularity”, a convergence of technologies will change human history by making people immortal. AAAND, he has won a Lemelson Prize, inspired by the dubiously prolific “submarine” patents he filed to claim credit and income from the work of others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_H._Lemelson Iz Kurzweill a great inventor? Undoubtedly. But I think he’s getting a swelled head.
Vince,
Maybe Kurzweil’s head is swelling because he’s stuffing it with nanobots to faciliate the achievement of superhuman intelligence.
I certainly agree with most of the choices here. Hernando de Soto should be an obvious choice. Ditto on Hans Hermann-Hoppe and Pope B16. But someone mentioned Lew Rockwell. A terrible choice, I think. Yes, he’s often an eloquent anti-statist, but like so many he loses his mind when it comes to Israel. I note that Rockwell’s next hoe-down features Cindy Sheehan. How sad. Sheehan has totally bought into the Israel-is-responsible-for-everything line put out by the Uber-statists at moveon.org. She is a magnet for the anti-Semites now. Rockwell strays too close to that line for my comfort.
A “great thinker” cannot indulge the view that a country the size of Lake Michigan is forcing GWB into war and spoiling the peace for the entire world. It’s one thing to call for an end to ALL foreign aid, it’s another single out the only civilized country in the entire Middle East. Rockwell does that too often. Now he’s laying down with the worst of the socialist left. A disqualification for the title “Great thinker.”
1. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
2. Howard Bloom
3. Peter Thiel
4. Howard Zinn
5. R.J. Rummel
6. Vin Supreynowicz
7. Michael Scheuer
8. Fred Reed
9. Michael S. Rozeff
10. Terry Hulsey
Howard Zinn and Vin Supreynowicz on the same list? I’m sort of surprised the apocalypse hasn’t started
I’m halfway through Zinn’s People’s History. My friends were harassing me when I started reading it, claiming I’d turn into a socialist
My take so far is that, like all socialists who base their arguments on emotion rather than logic, he has no grasp on economics. I agree with 90% of the book, namely how the statists/political class in America have been abusing their power since the time of founding fathers. Unfortunately, he then equates cronyism with capitalism, and blames everything on free market economics.
Many might argue that it has started; others can’t comment.
This whole topic confuses me. By “top” do we mean “best” or do we mean “most influential”?
Generally, the former aren’t going to be among the latter, because the dominent intellectual trends are in a sorry state indeed.
Also, there’s a distinction to be made between those who popularize valuable ideas, and those who actually extensively develop, if not originate, them. Rockwell is among the former. Hoppe is among the latter. Joe Sobran is a great contemporary intellectual who exemplifies the best of both qualities.
BTW, I wonder if Joe Kelley meant “Harold” Bloom, not “Howard”. And if he did mean Harold Bloom, and if Harold Bloom is indeed the best of our literary intellectuals, then no wonder we’re living in close to a literary dark age.
Finally, Paul Pennyfeather charges anybody who doesn’t think American lives, security, and wealth should be unstintingly sacrificed at the alter of a little country on the other side of the planet, or are too impolite to pretend not to notice what’s been happening, with anti-Semitism, or being a fellow traveler thereof. As usual with this sort of thing, he doesn’t define his terms, but just hurls mud. Fortunately, more and more people right, left, and center are waking up to this longstanding bamboozle.
No need to wonder. I meant Howard Bloom.
No, Mr. McCosker I did not charge everyone who disagrees with U.S. policy toward Israel with anti-Semitism, as any literate person reading my post could surmise.
You claim that I sling mud at anyone who does not think “American lives, security, and wealth should be unstintingly sacrificed at the alter of a little country.”
Where, pray tell, have American lives been sacrificed for Israel? Iraq? If that’s what you believe, that the world’s richest, most powerful country goes to war because of its Tel Aviv taskmasters, then you do belong in the category with Cindy “Bush and the Jews killed my boy” Sheehan and other such moonbats.
I don’t want to bore you with economics, but as for our “wealth” being sacrificed for Israel, our aid package to Israel was 2.7 billion dollars; our aid package to Egypt in the same year was 2.3 billion dollars. SOME PEOPLE find the first item deeply troubling, while rarely mentioning the second. Very telling.
And while Israel, a beacon of liberty in the Middle East, benefits the world with its economy, cell phone and laptop technology, anti-terrorism strategy (which the US asks for, then ignores) and numerous medical break-throughs (all available to Arabs), what, pray tell, do we get from Egypt? It won’t do to whine about ALL FOREIGN AID (a legitimate position) since people like yourself only go ballistic when aid to the Jewish state is mentioned.
And finally: “Fortunately, more and more people right, left, and center are waking up to this longstanding bamboozle.”
Yes, there’s a world wide explosion of anti-Semitism, infesting your friends on the socialist left and paleoconservatives everywhere. This is certainly an era of enlightenment. By all means let’s celebrate the continued persecution five and half million Jews whose only crime is not wanting to submit to the sword of Allah.
After all, if more and more people latch onto a position, then it must be true, right?
Paul,
While I disagree with both you and others about the degree of complicity that our solicitude of Israel has in our current predicament, you are building the proverbial straw man when you infer that Misesians deplore the financial aid given to Israel while they have no problem with the foreign aid the US Government gives Egypt. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Austrians generally believe that if governments want to leech off of the public that they confine it to the public within their own country. In other words, we oppose ALL foreign aid by governments to other governments because it simply amounts to stealing from the poor in one country to help the government in another country oppress people, either their own or their neighbors.
So please, do not drag that smelly argument in here again.
UPDATE — The winners have been announced (hat tip: Marginal Revolution. Noam Chomsky won.
My take:
Thumbs up: # 3, 4, 5, 7 (sort of), 13, 14, 20
Thumbs down: # 1 (on his politics), 6, 8, 9, 11, 17
And thumbs down to #18 too, of course.
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