Ammon Shea recently spent a year of his life reading the OED from start to finish. Over the next few months he will be posting weekly blogs about the insights, gems, and thoughts on language that came from this experience. His book, Reading the OED, has been published by Perigee, so go check it out in your local bookstore. In the post below Ammon reflects on Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson’s unusual editing actions.

A pair of purportedly well-intentioned young men who have an avowed interest in fixing our language have recently proved to me that the road to hell is not only paved with good intentions (or at least self-righteous ones), but also that this road has the capacity to be rather expensive.

According to a story last week that ran in the Associated Press, and several other gloating publications, Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson ran afoul of the law after they had completed a several-week long quest, during which they crossed a wide part of the country, fixing many typographical and grammatical errors that they found on various signs. They appear to have mostly done so with the knowledge of those who owned the signs. But supposing you are a young man, brimming with vigor and the dissatisfaction that comes from overmuch reading of the Chicago Manual of Style, and you come across a sign that is positively reeking of poor grammar, with no visible owner in sight – what then do you do? Well, you take out your magic marker and fix it.

And then you brag about it on your blog.

Unfortunately for Deck and Herson, the sign in question happened to be hand-painted by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect who had designed that which the sign described – a 1930s watchtower in the Grand Canyon National Park. They have been ordered to pay a fine of $3,035, and are banned from fixing public signage or entering national parks for a year.

According to the Associated Press, “Authorities said a diary written by Deck reported that while visiting the watchtower, he and Herson “discovered a hand-rendered sign inside that, I regret to report, contained a few errors.”” Deck then proceeded to ‘fix’ these errors, which amounted to a misplaced pair of apostrophes and an added comma, but neglected to fix the far more egregious spelling of the word ‘emense’. Said Deck in his diary “I think I shall be haunted by that perversity, emense, in my train-whistle-blighted dreams tonight.”

Personally, I believe that Deck will be haunted by the absence of the several thousands of dollars more than he will be by the alternative spelling of this word, but maybe I’m wrong. In fact, I sincerely hope that I am wrong – I would love it if this self-righteous prig were haunted in his dreams, tonight and for many nights to come. Because I would like to point out to him that the sign he saw is hardly the only incidence of immense being written ‘emense’. It comes up in the OED - Caxton used it in Eneydos in 1490. And a quick perusal of Google Books shows that it was use in the Journal of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and also in Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters (by Joanna Baillie in 1821), and also in 476 other sources listed. If Mr. Deck has the courage of his convictions, and if his diary was telling the truth, it would be appropriate if he has ‘train-whistle-blighted dreams’ once for every one of those 478 emenses found in Google Books.

When I lived in Queens, there was a nail salon just down the street from me, with the wonderfully improbable title on its awning ‘Hannah And Her Sister’s Nail’. Every day I walked by this store on my way to the train. And every day as I did so I imagined that somewhere in the back of the store Hannah sat arguing with her sister’s nail, or perhaps asking the nail if it wanted a cup of tea. The misspelling gave a personality to the store that an ordinary nail salon could never have, and in being so in need of fixing it managed to make me smile every day.

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Following from Thomas Dixon’s previous very popular post for OUPblog, he has very kindly agreed to write another article for us. Here he reflects on the recent interviews conducted with the two Presidential hopefuls at the Saddleback ‘Civil Forum on the Presidency’ in terms of Christianity as an altruistic or individualistic faith. Thomas Dixon is Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of London, and is the author of Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction and The Invention of Altruism.

There has been an outbreak of altruism in the race for US President. During interviews with the influential evangelical pastor Rick Warren at the Saddleback ‘Civil Forum on the Presidency’, Barack Obama and John McCain spoke about their selfless motives for seeking to become the most powerful man on earth. Both Presidential candidates had done their homework. They knew what their interviewer and his congregation wanted to hear. Warren’s multi-million-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life, begins with the words, ‘This is not about you.’

Whether Christianity is in fact a religion of altruism, rather than individualism, is an interesting question. Historically both believers and skeptics have recognized the self-interested character of Christian teaching. When Jesus told the rich young man to sell all he had and give it to the poor, this was for the good of the young man – so that he would have ‘riches in heaven’ – rather than for the good of the poor. Oscar Wilde approvingly described Jesus as ‘the first individualist in history’. And Obama and McCain both told Rick Warren that being a Christian meant that they were, as individuals, saved from their sins, forgiven, redeemed. But the keynote of the Saddleback Forum, reflecting Warren’s own interpretation of Christianity, was self-denial rather than self-fulfillment, sacrifice rather than salvation.

So, how do the two candidates’ versions of Christian altruism compare? John McCain, whose sacrifices in Vietnam are well known, stated he wanted to ‘inspire a generation of Americans to serve a cause greater than their self-interest’. He wants Americans to ‘put their country first’. He also suggested that throughout their history ‘Americans have gone to all four corners of the world and shed blood in defense of someone else’s freedom’, and contrasted this with Russia’s allegedly self-interested pursuit of energy through its campaign in Georgia. This is implausible. American and Russian foreign policy are both clearly driven by national self-interest, and by the need to secure access to energy.

In fact, McCain’s ideology is a classic example of what scientists call ‘in-group altruism’ combined with ‘out-group hostility’. McCain’s Christian love does not extend to America’s enemies: ‘If I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get bin Laden and bring him to justice.’ His criterion for risking American troops is not actually the defense of someone else’s freedom, but ‘when American national security interests are threatened’. And even in terms of domestic policy, McCain has not forgotten about individual self-interest altogether: ‘I want everyone to get rich. I don’t believe in class warfare or redistribution of the wealth.’

Obama, in contrast, favors higher taxes for the wealthy and empathy with the poor. His mother had always told him, he said, when he had been mean to anyone, to ‘imagine standing in their shoes, imagine looking through their eyes.’ This principle of empathy, he said, was what had ‘made America special’. ‘I think about my grandparents’ generation’, he went on, ‘coming out of the Depression, fighting World War Two. They were confronted with some challenges we can’t even imagine. If they were willing to make sacrifices on our behalf’, he concluded, ‘we should be able to make some sacrifices on behalf of the next generation.’

While McCain envisaged Americans exchanging self-interest for national interest, Obama seemed to be thinking of something a little broader – the responsibility of the current generation of humanity to the next. Obama’s echoing of the gospel precept, ‘whatever you do for the least of my brothers you do for me’, also had a different ring from McCain’s wish for everyone to get richer.

The advice Obama got from his mother immediately reminded me of one of the humorist Jack Handey’s aphorisms: ‘Before you criticize someone’, Handey said, ‘you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticize them, you’ll be a mile away and you’ll have their shoes.’ Handey’s surrealism hints at a serious point – altruism and empathy are often little more than an attractive veneer for low cunning and self-interest. Altruism is a favorite topic with scientists too. Whether they worry about the fact that we are driven by ‘selfish genes’ against which we need to rebel, as Richard Dawkins suggested in the 1970s, or think that altruism is in fact a ‘blessed misfiring’ that is built into those genes, as Richard Dawkins now maintains, no-one doubts that we all have evolved the ability to do good both for others and for ourselves. What is less obvious is whether it is better, overall, for me to pursue my own interest, on the theory that my health and happiness will be indirectly good for others too, or better for me to pursue the good of those others directly. The former is McCain’s favored approach, the latter Obama’s.

Although Presidential candidates’ paeans to self-sacrifice and altruism may ring hollow, perhaps politicians are simply telling us what we want to hear – that we, like them, are motivated by a humanitarian love of others, not a selfish love of lower taxes or cheaper energy. Voters may be happy to accept this sort of flattery but I think they should pause when they hear politicians celebrating self-sacrifice – whether in the alleged interest of America or of the wider world – and ask themselves what price they and others are really being asked to pay, and for whose ultimate good. It is because it sounds so wholesome that altruism can be such a dangerous ideology.

You can read a full transcript of Rick Warren’s interviews with Barack Obama and John McCain, which took place on 16 August 2008, on the CNN website.

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In honor of President Johnson’s birthday we have excerpted from The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power by H.W. Brands. Brands is a Professor of History at Texas A&M University. In the excerpt below he looks at the origins of Johnson’s foreign policy ideals.

…When Kennedy alluded in his inaugural address to the fact that he was the first American president born in the twentieth century, Johnson might have reflected that he too was a child of the present century, only he had seen a good deal more of it than Kennedy. What Johnson saw most distinctly—so distinctly that the view forever colored his outlook on the world—was the decade of the 1930s. Johnson experienced this most formative period in modern American history in a way Kennedy only read about. The 1930s molded Johnson’s understanding of both domestic and foreign affairs. As a junior congressman from a district wrung by the depression, Johnson learned to appreciate the potential of government for ameliorating poverty and restoring hope to communities suffering from too much of the former and too little of the latter. He witnessed the depth and force of the American desire to be left alone by the world, to tend America’s garden unmolested. He observed the failure of the Western democracies to stand up to aggression, especially at Munich in 1938. Once Johnson became president, his domestic program evinced his desire to complete the New Deal and extend the comforting hand of government to those parts of society still suffering. His foreign policy demonstrated his determination to avoid the mistakes of the 1930s and spare humanity a repetition of the horrors of the subsequent world war.

The postwar period did nothing to alter Johnson’s fundamental opinions on world affairs. His rapid rise in the Senate placed him among those regularly briefed on significant issues, first by Truman, then by Eisenhower. Though Johnson paid more attention to domestic developments than to international events, he learned much about global affairs from the front-row seat his position in the Democratic leadership afforded him. John Foster Dulles’s frequent consultations privied Johnson to the diplomatic thinking of the Eisenhower administration, which Johnson broadly shared. With Dulles and Eisenhower, Johnson accounted communism close kin to fascism—fascism with a red face. As fascism had battened on the irresolution of the democracies, so would communism if given a chance. What alone would keep the Cold War from becoming another world war was the fortitude of the Free World…

Beyond reminding him of what he already knew, Johnson’s exposure to the American policy-making process as majority leader and vice president increased his knowledge of world affairs. Johnson never became a student of international relations the way Richard Nixon, for example, did. But Johnson, like Nixon, early developed designs on the presidency, and he understood that anyone who intended to be president needed to keep an eye on happenings abroad. Johnson listened carefully to Dulles and Rusk, and he noted what he saw when he traveled. Besides, a man as smart as Johnson, in his position, would have learned a great deal about the world without even trying. Johnson inspired a variety of feelings in those who knew him, yet all agreed that he possessed daunting mental firepower. Robert Kennedy remarked, “I can’t stand the bastard, but he’s the most formidable human being I’ve ever met.” Eric Goldman, a Princeton historian who worked in the Johnson White House, commented that he had never encountered anyone with more raw intellectual ability than Johnson. Richard Helms remarked upon the president’s “enormously intelligent mind” and his “great capacity to grasp facts.” When Johnson believed an issue merited his attention, he blotted it up. “He mastered the details down to the last riffle,” Helms said. John McCloy depicted Johnson as “much more exacting and penetrating” in his efforts to get at the root of questions than Kennedy had been. “Mr. Johnson always gave me the feeling that he knew a great deal about his subject,” McCloy remembered. “I was always impressed by the depth of his penetration.” Dean Rusk was too. The secretary of state said of Johnson, “He was a man of great intellectual capacity and had an ability to understand the issues that were in front of him clearly and in great depth.”

Allied with Johnson’s intellect was his overwhelming personal presence. David Bruce described the Johnson force field. “I’m not frightened of him,” the ambassador said, “but I must say that when he entered a room, particularly if you were going to be the only person in it, somehow the room seemed to contract—this huge thing, it’s almost like releasing a djinn from one of those Arabian Nights’ bottles. The personality sort of fills the room. Extraordinary thing.” John McCloy related a narrow—and rare (and temporary)—escape from the Johnson treatment. In 1964 the president attempted to persuade the former high commissioner to Germany to replace Henry Cabot Lodge as ambassador in South Vietnam. “Talk about twisting your arm!” McCloy said.

I will never forget it…He went from appealing to my patriotism and shaming me with my lack of it, or lack of willingness to take on a tough job. . . I came out of there limp and feeling a bit ashamed of myself because I hadn’t agreed to it.

(Johnson later nailed McCloy to serve as negotiator in talks with Britain and Germany over troop levels and problems regarding America’s balance of payments.)

Outsiders often assumed that the Johnson treatment did not work with foreigners. Unmodified, it didn’t. But Johnson was clever enough to adapt his approach to changing needs. Eugene Rostow, undersecretary of state for political affairs and Walt Rostow’s brother, found the president “extraordinarily sensitive and adept” in diplomatic conversations. “Simply superb,” the undersecretary summarized. David Bruce conceded that many in Britain considered Johnson a “picturesque character,” yet the ambassador noted that Johnson got on admirably with British prime minister Harold Wilson. George Ball explained that Johnson’s political background stood him well in dealing with that most difficult of foreign leaders, Charles de Gaulle. “I think the president respected de Gaulle as a brilliantly effective politician. He had a sort of high professional respect for him, and at the same time totally distrusted him.” Benjamin Read described how Johnson managed visiting dignitaries at Kennedy’s funeral. Read and others at the State Department prepared index cards for Johnson identifying the scores of guests and suggesting pertinent topics of conversation. Johnson palmed the cards and worked the reception line as if he had known the visitors since birth. “He handled it just extraordinarily skillfully,” Read recounted. “It left us with the greatest feeling of admiration.”

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Xilin Gol, China

Area: 78,000 sqare miles (202,020 sq. km)
Elevation: 3,280 feet (1,000 m)

As I sat watching the closing ceremony of the Olympics on Sunday night, listening to the repetitive refrain of “Beijing Beijing, I Love Beijing,” I couldn’t help but think that in spite of all of the media attention heaped on China during the past few weeks, I hadn’t necessarily learned much more about the country or its surprising geography. Certainly nothing about the hinterlands beyond the populous Eastern cities. Take Inner Mongolia for instance. North of the capital, bordering the Great Wall, Xilin Gol is the largest area of pastoral land in China, encompassing vast stretches of grasslands, more than 20 rivers and 470 lakes. Here, Nomadic Mongol herders have raised sheep, goats, and horses in the region for centuries, earning a meager income by selling wool, milk, and meat. This expansive plateau is suffering from growing desertification however, and the Chinese government as well as UNESCO are working together to arrest grassland degeneration.

Ben Keene is the editor of Oxford Atlas of the World. Check out some of his previous places of the week.

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Between the ages of 16 and 26, male development often evolves and explodes into such problematic behavior as binge drinking, fraternity hazing, and female-directed abuse—particularly on college campuses.  To better understand these trends, Michael Kimmel, Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University and leading gender scholar, has just published Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. Drawing from hundreds of interviews with 16-to-26-year-olds across the country—and traversing locales from high schools to frat houses to sports bars—Guyland is a riveting look inside the intriguing incubators of modern manhood.

Kimmel is the author of several popular and acclaimed Oxford textbooks, including Manhood in America, Second Edition, which provides an engaging cultural history of masculinity by examining such cultural constructs as advice books, magazine columns, political pamphlets, and popular novels and films. In addition, he is author of the best-selling The Gendered Society, Third Edition; coeditor of The Gendered Society Reader, Third Edition , and Sexualities: Identities Behaviors, and Society; and editor of Classical Sociological Theory, Second Edition .  Below is an excerpt from the epilogue of Manhood in America which put Kimmel on the path to deconstructing Guyland. Be sure to tune in to the Today show (NBC) on Wednesday, August 27th to see Kimmel talk about Guyland.  He will also read from Guyland on Tuesday, September 9th at 7:00 PM at the Borders Store at Columbus Circle.

The presidential election of 2004 revealed a nation deeply divided about politics, war, and economic issues. Red and blue states possess different visions of what America is and what America should be. And it’s equally true that there are two disparate visions of American masculinity. As this new century unfolds, the pace of change accelerates, and the world grows ever more integrated, it remains to be seen what ideals of manhood will prevail both in the short run and in the longer run.

Personally, I believe that in the twenty-first century, we need a different sort of manhood, a “democratic manhood.” The manhood of the future cannot be based on obsessive self-control, defensive exclusion, or frightened escape. We need a new definition of masculinity in this new century: a definition that is more about the character of men’s hearts and the depths of their souls than about the size of their biceps, wallets, or penises; a definition that is capable of embracing differences among men and enabling other men to feel secure and confident rather than marginalized and excluded; a definition that is capable of friendships based on more than common activities (what among toddlers is called “parallel play”) or even common consumer aesthetics; a definition that centers on standing up for justice and equality instead of running away from commitment and engagement.

We need men who truly embody traditional masculine virtues, such as strength, a sense of purpose, a commitment to act ethically regardless of the costs, controlled aggression, self-reliance, dependability, reliability, responsibility—men for whom these are not simply fashion accessories but come from a deeply interior place. But now these will be configured in new and responsive ways. We need men who are secure enough in their convictions to recognize a mistake, courageous enough to be compassionate, fiercely egalitarian, powerful enough to empower others, strong enough to acknowledge that real strength comes from holding others up rather than pushing them down and that real freedom is not to be found in the loneliness of the log cabin but in the daily compromises of life in a community.

Recall again the postscript to that vicious campaign of 1840. Taking the oath of office on one of the most bitterly cold days in the entire nineteenth century, William Henry Harrison refused to wear a topcoat lest he appear weak and unmanly. He caught pneumonia, was immediately bedridden, and died one month later—the shortest term in office of any president in our history. Believing your own hype may be dangerous for your health let alone the health of the nation.

The deep divisions between red and blue America parallel the deep divisions in red and blue gender politics. On the one hand, it appears that about half the country subscribes to older, more traditional notions of masculinity; the other half subscribes to a version that is more protean and responsive to social change. While it’s surely a caricature to suggest that one side swills burgers and beer (not microbrew) while watching NASCAR and the other sips chardonnay and nibble imported brie, every cultural arena does present us with a variety of images from which to choose. The increased polarization of the nation does lead these images to equally become more polarized.

So, for example, where once Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant could capture the same audiences as Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum, today one is unlikely to find many fans of the fey Leonardo di Caprio or the earnest Toby Maguire at a film starring The Rock or Vin Diesel. Yet these new iterations of the last action hero are cartoons of hypermasculine inarticulateness; they make Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis seem positively emotional. And their young male audiences are as likely to laugh at their verbal grunting as they are to marvel at the special effects.

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Edward A. Zelinsky is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Origins of the Ownership Society: How The Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America. In this article, Zelinsky observes that Senator Obama’s selection of Senator Biden as his running mate confirms the evolving role of vice-presidential nominees. In recent years, presidential nominees have increasingly picked running mates for the intellectual and moral ballast they add to the ticket rather than for traditional geographic and ideological balance.

Senator Obama’s selection of Senator Biden of Delaware as his running mate confirms the evolving role of vice-presidential candidates. Traditionally, presidential nominees have picked their running mates for geographical and ideological balance. However, over the last decade and a half, presidential nominees have increasingly selected vice-presidential candidates to provide intellectual and moral ballast to the national ticket.

This trend began in 1992 when then Governor Clinton selected Senator Gore as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. This pick made no sense in terms of traditional ticket balancing. Clinton and Gore were both southerners, coming from the neighboring states of Arkansas and Tennessee. Both were then perceived as centrists within the Democratic party. Compared to prior Democratic tickets (e.g., Kennedy of Massachusetts running in 1960 with Johnson of Texas), Clinton-Gore was a nonstarter.
Except that it worked. Through Gore, Bill Clinton overcame the perception that he lacked the gravitas for the presidency. Sober-minded Al Gore, a Washington insider, reassured voters that there would be an experienced hand at the top of a future Clinton administration. While Gore lacked geographic and ideological balance relative to Clinton, voters perceived Gore as bringing seriousness to the Democratic ticket.

Similar concerns were at work on the Republican side in 2000. George Bush, like Bill Clinton, was a presidential nominee about whom many voters had misgivings in terms of maturity and experience. Dick Cheney (who famously ran Bush’s vice-presidential search) brought neither ideological nor geographic balance to the Republican ticket. In fact, at the beginning of the search process, Cheney, like Bush, voted in Texas. Cheney had to switch his registration back to his home state of Wyoming so that Texas’s electors could, under the Twelfth Amendment, vote for the Bush-Cheney ticket. Moreover, both Bush and Cheney were identified as G.O.P. conservatives.

In historic terms, Bush-Cheney made little sense when compared, for example, to the Republican ticket of 1960, Nixon of California and Lodge of Massachusetts. But Cheney in 2000, like Gore in 1992, brought substantive weight to the ticket. An experienced Washington figure who had served as Secretary of Defense, as a member of the House of Representatives, and as White House Chief of Staff, Cheney’s presence on the ticket reassured voters that the prospective Republican administration would have a mature veteran at its top. This consideration overrode traditional concerns of geographic and ideological balance.

Obama’s selection of Biden fits this evolving pattern of picking vice-presidential candidates for ballast rather than balance. Biden was not selected for his ideological orientation or his geographic location. Like Obama, Biden sits comfortably in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Delaware, with its three electoral votes, is not a natural mother of presidents – or vice presidents.

However, Biden brings to the Democratic ticket a thirty year career in the U.S. Senate including much experience in foreign affairs. As a senior statesman of the Democratic party, Biden is thus positioned to blunt the charge that Obama lacks a track record in national politics and international relations.

Like many important trends, the evolution of the vice presidency from balance to ballast is not complete. Senator Kerry’s selection in 2004 of Senator Edwards fell comfortably within the tradition of a balancing choice of a vice-presidential nominee. We await Senator McCain’s decision on his running mate, a decision which is likely to fall within the balancing tradition.

However, Senator Biden’s selection as the Democratic vice- presidential nominee indicates that what started in 1992 with Clinton-Gore is now an accepted part of the American political system. Today, when a presidential nominee must add stature and experience to the ticket, traditional concerns of geographic and ideological balance give way to the search for moral and intellectual ballast.

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Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com.  In the article below he looks at Senator Barack Obama. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

The talk of town these days is that Senator Barack Obama is either just too cerebral, or refreshingly so.

Assessing the Senator’s weak performance at the Saddleback Faith Forum, Michael Gerson wrote in the Washington Post, “Obama was fluent, cool and cerebral — the qualities that made Adlai Stevenson interesting but did not make him president. ” Yet to others, cerebral is good. “Obama’s cool, cerebral style may be just what we need,” wrote Eleanor Clift of Newsweek.

It has occurred to me that people who agree or disagree with my thesis about The Anti-intellectual Presidency have tended to be divided on the question of whether or not a president’s political judgment should be based on intellection or intuition. This division may appear to some to map crudely along partisan lines: some liberals and Democrats tend to value reliance on the intellect; some conservatives and Republicans prioritize instinct. I think there is more agreement than meets the eye.

Insofar as there is a partisan disagreement, populist Republicans are probably right that as a general political rule, visceral trumps cerebral. The Obama campaign is starting to recognize this, with their choice of vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden, someone who speaks with passion and sometimes, apparently, without much prior thought.

But I don’t think many people are against intellection as a method for decision-making. It is surely a strawman argument that President Bush does no thinking and that Karl Rove was the brain behind his decisions. The key is that Bush pulls off the semblance of intellectual diffidence, even though he must do a lot of thinking behind the scenes. Like others have said of President Dwight Eisenhower, President Bush has mastered the highest political art that conceals art itself.

Now, there is still an argument to be made for judgment to be based on intuition rather than intellection, but it is a weak one. “Go with your gut” may be a familiar refrain, but even if intuition is less error-prone than intellection, there is one reason that recommends against its excessive use. Intuition is non-falsifiable. No one can prove what he feels in his or her gut. So when President Bush told us that he looked into Vladamir Putin’s eyes and saw a soul, we could only take his word for it that he saw what he saw. We couldn’t test the claim; we couldn’t even debate it. This can’t be what democracy is about, because democracy is conducted with the deliberation of public reasons, not the unilateral assertion of private emotions.

If I am correct, then no one disagrees with the importance of intellection as a decision-making method, even as there is disagreement on the political utility of projecting or hiding such intellection. The disagreement is about the image, but we can scarcely deny the importance of the process of intellection. Because they have failed to make this distinction between image and process, those who disagree with the appearance of intellection have also wrongly concluded that the process of intellection should have no place in leadership.

Anti-intellectualism is politically powerful, but it is in the end self-defeating. Suppose I feel in my gut that intellection is key to decision-making. How will someone who disagrees with my gut instinct prove my intuition wrong? Only by argument, debate, intellection.

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