By comparison with P.J.’s 1935 list, mine also shows a strong shift towards conservatism. The center of gravity of the 1935 list is well to the left of center; of mine, well to the right. This, I thought, must just be me; I’m just writing down the names of people I know about. To correct the balance, I leafed through some back copies of the reliably left-wing New York Review of Books and New Yorker to pick out a heavyweight or two. With the best will in the world, I couldn't. The modern Left simply isn't competitive above the middleweight category. Considering their near-monopoly of academia, the arts, and the media, this is astounding; but try the experiment for yourself and see. There were one or two names I hovered over — K. Anthony Appiah would have been a fine adornment to my list, not only adding political and racial diversity, but giving me a credentialed philosopher, too — but I couldn't honestly see him, or any others I considered, making the cut.From my biased secular libertarian point of view I think this is mostly correct. The libertarian Chicago School wins all the Nobel prizes, signifying, what I think, is "the Right's" empirical victory on economics. The world policy consensus is basically in the "right-wing" direction of democracy, merit, and free-markets (trumping the Communist policies a majority of the world’s population was under a generation ago, and by far trumping Chomsky’s own choice of “participatory economics”). “Right-wing” ideas about human inequality (gender, cultural, genetic, “human capital”) have generally trumped left-wing ideas of exploitation and power-relations (socialization, economic, “dependency theories”) as the inclusion of Larry Summers, Samuel Huntington and over a dozen sociobiologists will attest (Jared Diamond’s sociobiology contrasts with the last generation of left-wing science intellectuals like Gould and Lewontin, who vigorously tried to fight these ideas. What was once controversial and “right-wing” is the new scientific and intellectual center. Again, an empirical victory more than anything). The Right won all the social policy battles at home, as the last generation of neo-conservatives cleaned house on the excesses of the Great Society - culminating in "welfare reform", tough on crime policy and the "third way" economics of the Clinton administration (and since 5 of the last 7 terms have gone to the Republicans, we can expect the Democratic party to move ever-Rightward to gain votes). They also cleaned house and successfully fought off the world threat of totalitarian Communism. This generation of neo-conservatives are also cleaning house on foreign policy, again, the only ones with the ideas on what to do about the world threat of militant Islam. In all cases the "conservatives" have been the ones with the ideas and the will-power and the intuition to get things done and to ultimately improve the lot of the greatest number. (I'm not saying this is a general proprty of "the Right", btw, at other times the "the left" had the good ideas [e.g. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine]. Also the terms are highly artifical anyway as the criteria shifts with popular currents [e.g. "liberal" free-markets in one generation are considered "rightwing" in another generation. "Race-blind" liberals of the Civil Rights Movement were considered "conservatives" in the next era of "racial preferences").
If you want to engage with big, original, interesting ideas about life, society, knowledge, the past or the future, your best bet in this day and age is to call on a heterosexual male conservative. Again, this may be just my own inclination showing through; but if you disagree, let’s see what names you can come up with.
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Just to emphasise, the last list was British intellectuals, this is worldwide.
A bit of commentary from Prospect's editor here.
posted by biffa at 7:26 AM on October 3, 2005