I Like to Be an Intellectual of This and That, and So It's Good.

From Hannah Volokh, via Instapundit:

I also find conservative anti-intellectualism troubling, and I think it’s important to separate it into three separate points:

1. Left-wing intellectuals are wrong substantively.

2. Many people who claim to be intellectuals are actually not intellectuals at all, but activists.

3. Central planning is not the best way to run a government or economy, so intellectuals do not need to be running things.

Still, to understand why central planning is a bad idea, and what we should have instead, and to get at the answers to numerous substantive policy issues, intellectuals are crucially important.