call dictators -- political dictator toes were not only popular in their own countries, but were also admired by numerous highly educated and idealistic westerners. the object of this political hero worship included benito mussolini, adolf hitler, mao mao tse-tung, and more recently, hugo chavez. few people remember it today, but the original lyrics from cole porter's immensely popular musical anything goes originally read you are the top, you are mussolini, you are the top, you are mrs. sweeney. [laughter] today, of course, it reads you are the top, you are an o'neill drama, you are the top, you are whistler's mama. so some progress there. [laughter] and whereas few people today openly praise hitler or mussolini, it is not uncommon to see young men and women in our nation's capital wearing che guevara t-shirts and to see american entertainers like michael moore and intellectuals like noam chomsky praise the castro brothers and hugo chavez. paul hollander spent decades trying to understand why intelligent and educated people are attracted to authoritarianism and totalitarianism and why they persist in doing so even today after a century of incredible bloodshed perpetrated by governments existence their own people -- against their own people. paul hold lander was born in 1932 in hungary and fled to the west when the hungarian revolution of 1956 was bloodily put down by the soviet forces. he's a well known american political sociologist, communist studies scholar and nonfiction author. his fist book in -- first book in 1973 was called soviet and american society: a comparison. in 1981 he came out with his probably best known work, political pilgrims: the many faces of socialism followed in 1983, then came the survival of the adversary culture, decline and discontent, anti-americanism, critiques at home and abroad, discontents postmodern and postcommunist, the end of commitment, the only superpower, extravagant expectations and other books. today we are here to talk about a book that came out last year from benito mussolini to hugo chavez, intellectuals and a century of political hero worship. hollander earned a ph.d. in sociology from princeton university in 1963 and a b.a. from the london school of economics in 1959. he's professor emeritus of sociology at the university of massachusetts-amherst and an associate of the davis center for russian and eurasian studies at harvard university. of he's a member of the advisory council of the victims of communism memorial foundation. with that, paul, over to you. [inaudible conversations] >> well, you already heard something about my background, we certainly have to explain my interests in what my wife considers my morbid fascination with human nature. my wife is a native-born american, and she could never understood how i can read all these terrible stories about how people mistreat one another for various reasons. so these interests of mine are longstanding and, well, i started off as a kind of sovietologist, and then i sort of shifted to looking at the country and the culture of the society and especially american intellectuals and western intellectuals. and as was just said, political pilgrims is my best known book. this recent book, actually this book was published this year, but they put in 2016, but actually it was published last winter. i don't know why they put in 2016. anyway, this book has the blurb people also said has lot in common with political pilgrims, but i would like to draw your attention with how it differs from it. and i will also cite from it occasionally. well, of course, the major similarity between the two backs that both are, in some ways, concerned with the political misjudgments of western intellectuals and people who reviewed the book also focused on the similarity that they are both about the misjudgment of western political intellectuals. and this, indeed, has been a longstanding preoccupation. and also it's a somewhat controversial point as to what proportion of western intellectuals could be characterized as leftist or pro-soviet or pro-communist, and some people criticize ised me for overgeneral using -- criticized me for overgeneralizing. but i always pointed out, and i repeated it in this book too that we don't know because we don't know what proportion of western intellectuals are sympathetic to the soviet union or maoist china or castro's cuba because there are no opinion surveys addressed to intellectuals as such. what we know is that there was clearly a portion of visible and vocal intellectuals who were sympathetic to these countries or political systems. and my approach to this topic also led me to propose a number of times that the prevailing or surviving conceptions of intellectuals need the revision. and i would like to read you one quote, one characterization of intellectuals which i have clearly found dated and dubious. and this was by the late edward said, and he said -- i quote no -- the intellectual being set apart, some unable to speak the truth, a courageous and angry individual for whom no worldly power is too big and imposing to be criticized and pointedly taken to task. and so, he also said in this same exalted view that the real or true intellectual is obviously an outsider living in self-imposed, seamlessly integrated exile on the margins of society, unquote. now, of course, this is the same edward said who was a university professor at columbia, and his books were required readings in numerous courses on the college campus. and he was on television -- so not exactly a marginal figure. but again, he had this view of intellectuals, the human intellectuals still believe in or maintain. but it's clearly dated. there was perhaps a time when intellectuals were marginal figures and, again, it also depends on what society we're talking about. so i thought that the political misperceptions of intellectuals demand or justify some revision since i obviously, i found that they were capable of completely suspending their critical faculties and act like the proverbial true believers. but again, in the book "political pilgrims," my major concern was the intellectuals' overall perception -- could i have my glass of water -- rather than focusing on leaders. now, another similarity between that book and this one that, of course, i have been intellectuals, i have been interested in the connections between the personal and political attributes and experiences and needs which influence political belief, and i am still interested in that. the personal and the political. and this is very tricky because, of course, i don't purport to reduce political beliefs to, you know, how a person was toilet trained or some such thing. but on the other hand, i have been repeatedly struck by connections between personal experience and political at tuesday as my own -- attitudes as my own case illustrates this too. sorry about my voice. certainly, the 1960s in this country, it seemed to me it was the prevalent view that the personal both determines and validates the political. i mean, the personal is political, this was a kind of '60s catch phrase. and the disillusionment with the left. and how the personal influences the political, that, of course, depends on many, many things in context. and in this book at the end of this book i have a long list of distinguished american and western intellectuals who have never been sympathizers with communist systems and movements. and avoided the temptations which others succumbed to. i should add that i have also been interested in other instances of the misjudgments or misperceptions or distortions of reality not only in the political sphere, i have been interested in commercial advertising and, of course, in political propaganda, and in general i have been interested in how people deal with different similarity between appearance and reality. and, of course, this has been, obviously, a major preoccupation of intellectuals, appearance and reality. and you could say that present-day identity politics in a way is also a reflection of this connection between the personal and the political. some people believe that certain kinds of identities determine their outlook, political outlook. so how ideas influence behavior, i thought it's a very interesting issue. and once more i will shamelessly quote from what i have written earlier, and i think this is perhaps the key to this relationship between personal and political which is that i have writtenning that political -- written that political attitudes and beliefs often stem from nonpolitical sources. that includes a self-conscious orientation to a self-transcendence, self-expression and personal problem solving through political action and immersion. that is to say that many of the intellectuals i have written about tried to find answers and solutions for personal problems and discontents which couldn't really be found, the solutions in the public or the sociopolitical realm. and another good comment i will quote to you about this matter of the intellectuals and their attitudes and beliefs comes from -- [inaudible] who is not so well known. he was also of hungarian origin, and he lived, he was an academic in england, and he wrote at some point in his life that what struck him about the involvement of progressive intellectuals in poll tibs -- politics, that being political commitment had fundamentally non-intellectual nature. almost invariably an emotional attitude. owing very little to the process of reasoning and study that one usually associates with the word intellectual, unquote. now, so these are the general issues and interests about intellectuals. i have written about earlier. and as i said, i have moved to some degree more into a psychological direction than a sociological, and i am, you know, by training i am a sociologist, although i have never been a quantitative sociologist. but again, the study -- both of these books reflect my durable preoccupation with what i call spiritual problems of modernity or the by-products of no to dernty or -- modernity or the unheroic aspects of modernity with special reference to social isolation and loss of meaning and the decline of community and decline of social solidarity and secularization. and here again i am tempted to quote daniel bell, the late daniel bell who made a very good point on this subject and very terse point about the problems of no -- modernity which he called the problem of belief. he said the real problem of modernity is the problem of belief. and the problem is that bourgeois society falls short of responding adequately to the full range of man's spiritual nature. it is a religious vacuum, a lack of meaning in their own lives -- namely, the intellectuals he was also writing about -- the absence of a larger purpose in their society that terrifies them and provokes them to alienation and unappeasable indignation, unquote. so this is a persistent strain in my thinking and preoccupation, you know, why intellectuals made these remarkable political misjudgments. now, one difference between the political pilgrims and this book is that in this book i was not limiting myself to communist systems, but also included nazi germany and fascist italy and some of the authoritarian systems in the arab world as well as north north korea which received some admiration on the part of intellectuals. so i was very interested in, you know, how the admiration of stalin might be compared with the add admiration of hitler or mussolini. so that's one big difference. and the other was in this book i focused on leaders, on political leaders and dictators which i didn't want do in political pilgrims. and so the range was much wider because i was interested in the broader issues of the beliefs of intellectuals, and i came to the following not very original conclusion that intellectuals also displayed religious or quasi-religious yearnings in their search for meaning. so that -- and that they went along with this political hero worship of particular leaders and tick today to haves -- dictators who were really deified. now, of course, the veneration of hitler and mussolini was much more short-lived than the veneration of stalin or mao for obvious reasons. but again, there was an obvious irrational component to these attitudes. and i think one of the most interesting findings was that what intellectuals admired most in these leaders, in these dictators had more to do with their personality than with their actual policies. the intellectuals, first of all, this conception of the philosopher king, that all these leaders were philosopher kings and the dictators themselves contributed to this myth because they all thought of themselves as great intellects x many of them have written books. almost all of them have written books and thought of themselves as great theorists. those in the -- well, hitler too, they were interested in arts. you know, hitler attended an exhibit of the degenerate art and so forth. and, of course, stalin and mao, they were -- and castro too, very much involved with stalin in particular realize manuscripts of novels before they were published. so they have this myth that they were also sort of fellow intellectuals. and castro, when wen intellectuals, for example, a famous sociologist visited castro, and lo and behold, castro knew about one of his books. and this was not an accident, obviously. so intellectuals actually, this whole phenomenon of what i call the politics of hospitality or techniques of hospitality whereby intellectuals invariably encountered ordinary citizens who were familiar with their writings, and, of course, this made a huge impression on intellectuals who thought in their own countries they were underappreciated and not, and didn't have sufficient influence. so these are the two major differences. here i am interested in the broader phenomenon of political hero worship and not limited to the communist ones. now, some of my major findings of conclusions. what these leaders had in common different -- well, apparently different political outlook and certainly different political ideologies, you know, nazis and communists and fascists and so forth. that they projected the sense of mission. i think that was very important. and again, this made a big impression on intellectuals who thought that their own politicians were rather inferior and insufficiently isled listic -- idealistic, politicians in western countries. whereas these great leaders were believe to be revolutionary isl idealists possessed of a sense of moral superiority based on an ideology that claimed to explain everything. this sense of certitude can justify the worst horrors in the name of sanctity, purity and the general m improvement of life of the multitudes. and i think this comes from an american political scientist. so, of course, western politicians were not interested in the fundamental change of society or human nature whereas the people i have written about this, these leaders or dictators, claim to be interested in just that, a fundamental transformation of society and human nature. and, of course, the other interesting thing about this phenomenon which has also been called the cult of personality, this phrase the cult of personality was applied to stalin. but you could apply it to hitler and mussolini and mao and the rest of them. the interesting thing was that there was this enormous, astonishing gap between the perception or the images of these leaders and their actual personality. i mean, obviously, to use an understatement, they were not very nice people, none of these. and this somehow delighted the intellectuals and the admirers. i mean, there was a huge -- i mean, one factor is just ignorance, sheer ignorance. as to what went on in these societies or what the policies of particular leaders was. but again, i should mention here that many people tried to explain the behavior of intellectuals, western intellectuals who succumb to these illusions by power hunger. that they themselves wanted power, and they were under the impression that intellectuals in these countries whether they were communist or nazi or fascist, they had more power and more influence which they really didn't have. and these same leaders, you know, hitler and mussolini and mao and stalin and castro, they actually had intellectuals in contempt, but they could use them, and they used them as much as they could. so i am not inclined to believe that intellectuals actually made this misjudgment because of their desire for power. i think i have a more charitable explanation which is simply that there was ignorance and there was unhappiness with their own society, and there was, there were these problems with modernity, lack of meaning, lack of sense of community. and also i think one thing in my opinion a very important characteristic intellectuals have in common, whether or not they admired stalin or hitler, that they have high expectations. i think that's, i think you could say that this is high expectations which, of course, merges into idealism. and they really thought that the new chapter in history could be opened by these leaders. so as to my findings, i think that these might be called secular religious or quasi-religious impulses which found political expression. now, most of these people didn't actually meet personally the intellectuals in question, although many of them did. and when they did and then again they made very favorable impression. and these people -- hitler and stalin and mussolini and the rest of them -- they're actually quite good at projecting a kind of personality which intellectuals found tractive. attractive. as i said, this philosopher king image and this revolutionary idealism or the assumption or belief that these dictators used political power wisely and benevolently, that they were kind, that they -- actually, this is the most important for intellectual -- they bridged the gap between theory and practice. they did what they claimed to believe in. which is, it's debatable to what extent it applies. that made them i authentic. i think this is an important issue. i think that modern intellectuals, especially i think american intellectuals, have been particularly bothered by this feeling that they lived in an inauthentic society. so much of modern social criticism of western and especially american societies focused on inauthenticity rather than injustice. well, injustice too, but inauthenticity. i think the critique of capitalism, much of the critique of capitalism came to be focused on inauthenticity. like advertising, you know, and public relations. all these products of modern capitalist society. so by contrast, these great heroic leaders seemed to do what they believed in. they were authentic. and again, the most important from the point of view of the admirers, that they had good intentions. this comes up repeatedly. it sounds like such a simple and trivial matter, but this made a huge impression on many intellectuals that these people had good intentions. even when they acknowledged that they didn't succeed to realize these good intentions. another thing that many of these leaders, dictators gave the impression that they were successful in trying to somehow blend tradition and modernity with this emphasis of community. that's the idea that socialist -- now, i have to say it was more pronounced in the case of communist systems that they succeeded in modernizing without alienation. that was the claim. but, of course, the nazis were very much and very self-consciously involved with the notion of community, national community as being more important than class and class division. but i think this attempt to blend traditional and modernity was very important. or the belief that that was going on in these countries. now, you know, here again just to give you very few quotes of this grotesque misperceptions which western intellectuals engaged in, for example, sartre said about they guevara -- but he's not in the same class as castro, but he was an important figure, certainly, che get very row. .. this is a new tradition specialization so this was a remarkable observation with the residents that are not for human beings but again, the religious protection was so obvious and many of these instances because another intellectual who was perceived as a hard-nosed factfinder and this is so spectacular he said the desire was for love like the night he had set out to combat with the powers of the world. it would be the case that we safeguard. it would spark the guerrilla movement in bolivia. he himself executed people he considered traitors not just during the war and he was a ruthless idealist and of course he wrote some books, too for the intellectual who takes action. there's another explanation but i don't think it has been used very much in the concept of reality in other words people feel deprived because of the condition of other people in the society with some idea or possibility or other society. when people say that it is intolerable because there are so many people and the inequalities are enormous in the resources. this is an important day with high expectations and maybe they have diminished over time. when they thought that the systems could be much more improved and therefore they were much more critical of their societies so this probably still remains the case involving human nature again not many intellectuals had higher hopes than perhaps history or sociology would justify the perfectibility of human nature. i alluded to this but i want to give you one more quote that was not well known. he said we have a tension in our existence and it will relieve much of the attention. but he said in the preceding sense that it doesn't become evidence of any psychological theory it should be pointed out that this is the key to his belief that most of us have. it allows for spontaneous relief of the frustrations caused by capitalism. this is very interesting. i met this individual two years ago. he's now a law professor at the university and believed in none of that which is set in the 60s and early 70s. so, that was an interesting example of how the society can corrupt or undermine people and i'm just suggesting that it's very difficult to draw the line between the social and personal. people respond to similar experiences in different ways. so i think the view of people that wrote this intellectual believed they had a very negative impact that the intellectuals tried to rationalize to blame society for their personal feelings which have little to do with the injustices of the political system. i think that they can be reconciled in the broad social setting of the society that contributes to the personal problems that dispositions and the sense of identity or purpose to connect with modernization and change within an impact on people including intellectuals. i could talk more about these and will conclude by saying the number of true believers might have diminished but there are still many left for the foreseeable future. thank you. [applause] thank you very much. john alexander is an associate professor at the university of virginia and his research began with a focus on the conditions of democratic consolidation in the advanced industrialized countries especially western europe. in his book the forces of consolidation, he argued that the key right of the movements formed commitments only when there were political risks as the left-wing agendas across time. it was used to explain the variation but it system in the t countries from 1870s france to 1980s spain and the national affairs. he's a proud member of the academy, founding member of the academy and his research indicates there's an the united states and how they influence the compass as a form of the welfarwelfarestates. please help me welcome alexander. [applause] thank you all thei there are highlights from this recent project. let me run over some basics for my comments here today. some basics from the book we know each other a little bit. paul's basic argument is that for decades, far too many western intellectuals have had a fascination with and attraction to an authoritarian and tutelage of a project rumors and regime's. he asks as he has made clear today why they may be susceptible to these attractions and track such fascination which you might have thought would be immune to the admiration. he suggested it is difficult and even impossible to separate support for these regimes and support for the policy goals of the regime's, political, social or economic and he insists that these dynamics need not apply to the context but they are as a general rule idealistic and suggested they may have higher expectations and social outcomes likely to defend nondemocratic projects aimed at achieving those outcomes. he works through the series proposed by a number including edward, mario and many others considering in the process whether some characteristics unique to intellectuals, for example as there have been in many of the past years has a distinctive position that mixes the social prestige with middle income to explain the political choices that so many of them have made. he adds that well-known formulation of the inquiry many other finance questions. might intellectuals, for example have been attracted to what amounted to the state project because they understand themselves to be members of a technocratic elite attracted to the top-down programs in which they could imagine themselves playing unimportant role or at least have them played by people like themselves. or idealist at least as much as the people that are full-time engaged with ideas especially susceptible to the charisma of extraordinary leaders, extraordinary leaders who promised to achieve outcomes that others cannot and that's the mundane procedures like the characteristics of democracy cannot. and idealists defined in that sense attractive in some special way to the secular religious totalitarian projects in particular. in that formation we would say that they are attracted at a high race not the authoritarian projects that may be a special at the project tha but offered n idealistic and allegedly total approach to social change. his book then as he suggests catalogs specific intellectual journeys of admiration for those that are quite explicit in many cases and happy to abide by and celebrate the lack of concern and constraints on the governmental power, the exercise of the constitutionally constrained powers of the state and are explicitly democratic and reconciled in the authoritarian or totalitarian sources of power and after reading the quotes an analyst is that he cites from the wide range of intellectuals, i have to say that it is hard to think quite this way about those of the world if you thought about them before to begin with. it's a very sobering read to go through the chapters that make up the bulk of the book reading with many others have had over decades preaching such deeply and destructive regimes of the political projects in history. i want to focus today on challenging one important aspect of the analysis. although even then let me say that if my critique is right if anything it would conclude that his analysis is relevant to a much greater respect drum of individuals but even he portra portrays. it is obviously correct. what extent this admiration by intellectuals was an affliction of intellectuals in particular that there was something distinctive about that class of people. the scholarships of intellectualism something distinctive about that, is it something about the site they happen to live and informed them and their values and their sense of what was imperative and what was not and i think that while the focus is understandable and played such a role in history in the 19th and 20th century history in particular it may not be optimally formulated today because the admiration for the nondemocratic procedures or practices is today less distinctive to the individuals and if anything more pervasively distributed among a wide range of people so my critique is if anything it would thoroughly depress us all. i would space my remaining remarks on three things that have become much more pervasive in the recent times. three things that have, political polarization in the west one example has recast political teams much more thoroughly than in the past more thorough than the postwar peri period. it's not just intellectuals but a wide range that they should feel and voice and actions that they understand to be on their side of the left and right political divide and third the last thing that has become pervasive in our time is something that followed logically from the polarization and intensification which is a preference for the procedural norms. the it's not ou out of a deeper sense that the procedural norms matter in and of themselves. let me develop even more detail. the intensification of the postwar period has little need to describe intensified sorting of the left and right subcultures suffice it to say a republican party that continued the liberal wing and substantial conservative one is almost meaningless to people say half my age ensures the prior state of affairs and overlap between the two parties in both houses of congress and for all practical purposes does not exist at all today. it's still noticeably to the right and was absolutely not the case. the earlier state of affairs wasn't in the regional political identities and the change has been substantially but not entirely driven by the politics that superseded those reachable distinctions. the effect this has on the tribalism i submit because the change has been intensification of the tribalism is always prone to some degree o social psychologists have observed error prone to the confirmation bias by which we are to apply to reinforce the existing view such as challenging and the political equivalent is a tendency to voice and feel support for political positions, people, proposals that one associates with one's political allies and to oppose those with one's opponents and this issue of procedural norms i'm concerned those two developments in that intensified tribalism spills over into people's attitudes not just towards the individual policies but also to the procedural norms through which the policies and democracies are formulated that organized the collective decision-making and in itself is a procedural norm in any specific constraint on the exercise of the state powers and procedural norms with different constitutional arrangements the notion that people's attitude may be driven by the commitment itself is in the town that most people a little bluster seem to be divided on which party has a majority in the senate this ye year. we know a substantial number of people see fit to change their position depending on the political outcomes in the next 24. my concern is that tendency to subordinate one's attitudes and the political norm to the outcomes can expand on issues central to the democracy itself and it can expand to more peop people. we are trying to innovate with the social scientists call authoritarian values. we asked a large number of americans whether they would support a series of government policies or practices that infringe on the core civil liberties and other core civil liberties. they are in the simplification that is a little premature is that the respondents seem pretty consistent more likely to support policies that infringe the core civil liberties when they are championed by publications to that respondent and second when they target the groups of citizens. in other words it may be the case that they are considerably more likely to support infringements on the political liberties with the freedom to disseminate and hand out political fight because fliers expressing the view in a public place and so on and so forth when they are championed by politicians as good as little and they are directed at the groups clearly associates as liberal and progressive. a more nuanced discussion of what we see how this is connected to the book. my first thought and reading this aside from the incredible range of commentary that he unearthed was to ask whether he's sure that many average citizens and not just intellectuals might not form an admiration for nondemocratic processes, procedures, regimes, rumors associated with their side of the political divide if they are seen as being on the left were on the right whether r in the facwhetherin fact that at extend far deeper to the extent others were susceptible to the admiration's intellectuals and average citizens might not function implemented in different ways. they are clearly identified as professional intellectuals do not seem to me to fit the description meaning no disrespect intended. intintellectuals may be distinct from average citizens in that they have tended to and polarized ideologically earlier and more consistent or thorough but to the extent that the willingness to apologize for the sources of power and even champion some heavy lifting right ideological affinity and in some cases not just apologize for those uses and abuses of power but maybe even admire them because they are under the pursuit of goals to foresee the process that is more and more of the citizens is not just some intellectuals. we have a lot to worry about that seems to be deeply concerning. that is the sense that my critique of the book and the challenge i want to make today suggests that the dynamics are anything applicable to more people than he thinks or discusses which should be enough to ruin the day. given his recent interest in the topic he would appreciate that i offered no consolation. [applause] i just want to comment on my eyi was focusing on intellectuals and nowhere did i dispute that was limited and i interested several points of the book the similarities concerning the political figures. there are reasons i'm preoccupied with intellectuals won is because they have been familiar. graduate student, so these are the people that i know fairly well. it's the nature of claimed virtue as being a critical intellectual. while the post easy to demonstrate that was reflected and ignorant so this is a shocking contrast and finally the third reason that i was interested with the intellectuals was the idea and influence including those that hold on to certain ideas and try to incorporate them into their behaviors. >> we will open up to q-and-a and i would ask you to please wait until the microphone gets to you. state your question in the form of a question rather than a comment because people are waiting to ask their own questions and please tell us who you are and who you work for if indeed you do have a job. .. members of big political groups feel tempted to conclude they are a majority, or they easily could imagine remaining one so for many years i suspect although have mo evidence on this, it matters that in the last 15 years, an enormous number of progressives have convinced themselves that history is on their side, they're going to be a majority. in which case the reason to -- that need falls away for procedural constraints. why that perception you're in charge of history would have survived the last 12 months of american politics is little opaque to medism not think it's a coincidence that voice is most fully articulated on campuses where a certain brand of activist sees themselves as overwhelmingly powerful and highly unlikely to be dislodged once you left the campus gates, america presents you with into much more complexesty you think if anything to take away from last year, would have been a revalidation of caution and concern with liberties and rights rights and protection as pervasive phenomena to be enjoyed by all. we don't seem to be in a realization of a moment and appreciation of that. >> well, the only thing i might add to this, fully agree that many of my findings are relevant today and in fact i have two pages devoted to our current president, and i think to summarize the way i would summarize the relevance today is it shows we continue to have evidence of this immense human capacity for irrational beliefs. >> okay. now, accuracy in academia and my only question is what do the public intellectuals do when philosopher kings turn out to be thugs? >> anyone? >> i'm certainly waiting for the narrative to emerge with time that, for instance, chavez's death replaced him with a mediocrity who took vermont -- venezuela into a darker direction, to take off of what paul said about irrationality. the ability to talk ones self and rationalize juan's choices away, won't see it seems bottomless but seems could capacious. >> i wonder what psychologies would say about the self-defeating beliefs. >> great idea for the next cato formum. >> i'm from venezuela. obviously we have helped the intellectuals coming down and basically on chavez and chomsky and many others, but then suddenly when things are almost as bad as they have ever been, up comes the goldman sachs finances this horrific government. where does that fit into with -- with intellectual, where have been the uproar from the non -- it's not the silence of many of the intellectuals, really what is worse in here. >> do you wish to direct your question to anyone specifically? anybody? >> [inaudible] >> this applies not only to chavez but the other cases, too. there have been very few intellectuals who publicly renounced their earlier mistaken beliefs. there have been some people who had if the kind of you might call it conversion experience and wrote about and it we have tons of books like the famous book edited by the british crossman about many people have some intellectuals have written about the disillusionment with the earlier political beliefs but it's a difficult process, and i think it might have been more difficult in this country because there used to be a huge subcultural which support these beliefs are especially on campuses. so a lot of group support for mistaken beliefs and chavez, people don't like to admit they made serious mistakes. suzanne sontag admitted she made serious mistakes but that's very rare. >> is it rare specifically because in a sense it is a secular religion? i mean, it's a world view which they have developed and defended for decade. you can't just dismiss it. >> that is part of it. but i think it may even apply to personal relationships. when people make some obvious mistake, like a bad marriage. very common. nothing political about it. it's difficult to examine one's motives, where did i make the mistake? why did i pick this person? human beings are not made that way, to wallow in their mistakes. >> yes, sir. >> robert cottrell, george washington university. i'm wondering if we need to look at the definition of what is an intellectual and to what extent there's a certain amount of self-fulfilling prophecy or self-reverend shall aspect to it. what separates on intellectual from a journeyman historian or political scientist at the local state teachers college who may very well be writing in his or her field, but doesn't achieve the status of intellectual, quote-unquote. i wonder if embracing totalitarian movements to some extent helps propel on individual into the ranks of intellectuals, one, they've taken out a position which is kind of outrageous and, therefore, gains them certain amount of notoriety, but also creates a support system of -- from supporterred of that to to tarean movement, that -- totalitarian movement that indeed promotes that individual's ideas beyond that which might be the ordinary scrivener who happens to be, again, professor of political science or history and is writing but is not necessarily -- does not necessary guy gain that profile. does the very act of embracing a to at that -- totalitarian movet create an image that this person is an intellectual? >> i wrote a great deal about this matter of the definitions of intellectuals. in both the political period and in this book. and it's a slippery concept and people disagree, especially when you see who is a true intellectual, and i propose that there have been positive and negative stereotypes of intellectuals and i forgot to mention as an explanatory concept of the misjudgment of intellectuals, that they, too, like ordinary people, have problems with their own sense of identity, and perhaps you were alluding to that, too. intellectuals have problems with their sense of identity and therefore taking certain political stance help to promote or bolster a sense of identity. don't think of intellectuals as people who i highly specialized and study insects, for example. they're people who are preoccupied with problematic matters which are social, cultural and political and not highly specialized and we expect intellectuals to be social critics. but we can take a more ideology of intel electrics as being fearless social cred critics or idealists or think of the impractical and not terribly competent true believers, idealists who are looking for something that is unobtainable. >> i don't want to comment too much on the particular status and nature of intellectuals after having made the point we shouldn't limit our focus to them. would not be the first by any means -- paul has obviously written a great deal on how we should think below the intellectual as a category of people -- but i would hart by be the first 0-point out that one big shift from the sort of high water marks of late 19th under and early 20th center intellectualizing is how much of a massive growth of universities and colleges since 1945 has changed the face of intellectualizing so the point where many people would use the term scholar or academic and intellectual almost interchange by as a lot of oxygen has been sucked out of -- who were intellectuals and not academics and the ranks of those who are academics has grown so enormously. that said, think most -- your instinct, if i understood your question right, is a lot of academics wouldn't properly be call intellectuals and that's rite. they're sort of bureaucrats of ideas but not intellectual innovators, not big thinkers, not living a life of ideas in sense way might have meant that earlier in the 20th century. one comfort that should come from that i think is that many of them are not the kinds of romantic idealists and theory riggss who might be attracted to full-blown totalitarian project, and i think daniel bell's notion we live after some age of high watermark totalistic ideology still feels past. that high water mark of 20th 20th century totalistic ideology does september as passed now as it did 20 years ago or 30 years ago. what should be more worrisome is the mundane erosion, not a big one. no resurgence of totalitarian insink on the part of average academics worry about. it's in the number that huge numbers may be relansing their concept of due process as an important concept and speech should be tolerated across a wide array of views. that's at the surface, at first blush, seems less worrisome than somebody coming out sim thetake a totalitarian experiment somewhere else in the world, and yet it -- i can't tell whether it's more worrisome or left. it's not obvious to me it's less disturbing, just because it seems more banal and less grand. >> let's go with that. >> american university. i'm just similarly curious, we have been talking bat lot of standards that are defined, considering ideologies, intellectuals and definitely the main source of debate in the united states as well as across the entire world has shifted a lot of the narrative and saying away from an ideological debate, away from debate that involves intellectuals so, rather, there's a claim of antiintellectual movement, sort of debate that is similarly was professor alexander just said, focus on rather your party winning, you taking opinions for your side rather than your ideology in moving forward in and of itself. and so in this sort of a society totalitarian where we have intel legal talk to jim going by the way side, what would we see when we come to positions where there's political influence that is negotiated under procedures if really all we have anymore is procedures. what, then, is the future of our political identities looking like? >> anybody else? >> i'm not sure how i can respond to your question. just would like to say something i should have said earlier, which is relevant to the current discussion that i didn't use the expression which i used in my book, that intellectuals present day modern intellectuals may be viewed as a moralizing self-reporting moralizing elite. tate important for understanding intellectuals, the second putt that the intellectuals have a conflict between high level odd individualism and the commune -- it's a conflict whether you're more interests in community than self-realization. >> okay, gentleman in the back and then we'll move to the center. let's make this round as quick as possible. >> john burton, a journalist. how would you regard intellectual admirationor benign and acceptable authoritarian leaders like lee quan yu who has been paraded by henry kissinger, paul voelker, and graham alison. >> i think it's susceptible to the same nasa, that it its one is more sympathetic to outcomes they were understood to have championed, there's a tendency to be more tolerant of the procedural nicety, very -- tom treat mound finding things admiral's beijing's crisp decisive decisionmaking on this issue or that. if you're asking whether this is applicable to across the spectrum issue think the answer is yes. i mean in a way we're being invited to have that conversation about some free marketeers the whole controversy surrounding nancy mcclain's notion and that buchanans and others have been -- pinochet -- whether it applies to buchanan is more clicked than she thought. certainly see no reason why we shouldn't have that conversation and investigate that because if we're right and these are psychological predilections then i see no reason why they shouldn't be common. >> the only thing i would like to add that intellectuals i have been talking about, ends orenned. not that interested in means. obviously some intellectuals are but their ins oriented because their idealistic and think that politicians in the pluralistic companies deal with trivial matters and are overly inclined to compromise and they disapprove of that. >> okay. to the back and then we'll have time for a couple more. >> roger, cato institute. question for gerard. picking up on your theme that paul's thesis is more broadly applicable, combine that with the utopianism and irrational human beings that you have both spoken of, that irrationality is not universal or at least some of us like to believe that. so i would ask, does your thesis that we're more polarized than ever, which seems to be correct, suggest that we're -- cries out for an explanation why that is so, and is one possible explanation that as the welfare state gets larger and larger, we want to look at the behavior at the margins where people are more inclined toward irrational explanation, toward the tribalism and so forth? is that possible explanation of why it is we're more divided and that it doesn't pay to be rational under those circumstances? >> i suspect paul will have thoughts on this as well but let me play a thought experiment. you may have season polls done in the last few years that find that liberals and conservatives are more like through to support even the same policy if it's proposed by politicians they identify with or by people described as republicans. if say that's something that my people are doing, i'm probably okay with it, even if in the question you asked about identical policies. they me a come across as too cute naturally hypothetical or laboratory ready kind of experiment in the sense that, well, but notice we don't see the two parties supporting the same policies. we do find will be recalls and progressives much more consistently supporting single payer, conservatives supporting something else, whatever that is this week. and in that sense notice that while respondented may say i'll endose whatever my side sinks the two sides stance for some rad disubstantially different thing you might say that doesn't carry into the real world because people support by different goals and also know that progress showed found mass surveillance techniques by the national security state really disturbing under george bush, found them extraordinarily tolerable under president obama and that is to say those laboratory findings don't -- aren't limited to the laboratory or just hypotheticals to which respondents are presented. does carry into some real world behavior and would appear. that said, the possibility is they're saying, those progressives in that ski anywheror, are saying i don't care if he does masulaance, because he is for health care and we knee the second half of the sentence. the tribalism i isn't just that these are my people but these are my people because. certain issues salient here now are what create in the identification and welfare issues may play a significant role in that. i wouldn't be surprised for what are called lifestyle issues, cultural connotations were for many equally important. i don't in the. that's interesting research alleged -- agenda right there. >> on a very, very general comment about porlarization in american society. i think this has always been a society or a culture of high expectations, and maybe -- you would say that modernity generates high expectations and in that sense this is the most modern society because people have the highest expectations and not just intellectuals but ordinary people, and i think high expectations are likely to lead to polarizes perception of a good society. this question is why at this particular time? i am not sure why now. but, yes there has been porlarization. it has to do with this conflicting expectations. >> the gentleman with his hand up, you, and then we move to the center and then finish. we have five minutes left. >> is the problem because we're self-segregating into groups able to say, i really don't know anyone like that? basically everything charles murray explores in in his coming apart and i've been thinking for some time that maybe we need a different kind of redistricting to maximize competitiveness and lessen the advantages of incumbent si and dominant political parties. thank you. >> anybody want to -- >> i'm not unsympathetic. unfortunately a fair amount of souths geographical and the redistricting would have to be transcendentally creative. have to rethink the fundamentals whether geographic sleepings be the basis choo we be a revolution in our thinking on that subject. >> i thought very interesting discussion, two brief points. i for one would not -- there's nothing really new in digging out quotations in the last 100 years of alleged intellectuals but there's an inherent bias in picking out people what have gone off the deep end on left and right. one could instructive to find intellectuals, many of whom lost their lives in defense of liberal, capital values and free democracy and there can be true conversions, a book called god that failed and moved toward the century. don't think it's always instructive just to take an accurate quotation of someone who said something as a drunken undergraduate and then ten years later sobered up. it's another story if people are quoted, never advance and go to their death beds with the same totalitarian totalitarian impulses through what sustained them as their past lives. >> i'm very minute aware of this. i have another book on the same topic called "the end of commitment" which i is about this phenomenon unanimous and in this book, too, i have the -- in the last chapter i have a list of intellectuals who belong to this more group who were foesed totalitarian systems and the big question is, why some people go one way and the others another way, and i have not been able to answer that question. >> well, i'm very sorry. i guess it's a testament to the quality of the conversation that there are still many questions in the audience that have been unanswered. unfortunately we have to end it here. i would like to invite you to please giant us for lunch on the second floor. thank you very much for coming and thanks to our speakers. [applause] >> here's a look at authors recently featured on "after words," weekly author interview program. >> the question is why i never thought this was a form of propaganda, had not thought to question where was this concept coming from and what was the job it was doing for individual americans? and i think that one thing i was realizing that this took a long time to realize in fact is that the very language that we used when we talked about foreign countries have been kind of determined for us a very long time ago because we tended to look at muslim countries and countries in eeast as were they catching up with us or behind us? and what that does is that prevents you from being able to see the country on its own terms. >> "after words" airs on booktv every saturday at 10:00 p.m. and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch all previous afterwards programs on the web site, booktv.org. >> next, sunday su hand -- suzie