Economist Thomas Sowell, one of America's finest thinkers, wrote an excellent book called Intellectuals and Society that I would encourage anyone to read.  Its main argument is that "elitists" who have been inflated with academic ideas and theories think of themselves as morally superior, and entitled to advance their idealisms by any means possible, including breaking the law, out of a sense of "justice" and especially if their causes can be characterized as urgent or an emergency.  Pretext is the fuel that powers the left's ideology.

This is a fascinating issue because the so-called intellectual class — embodied by the current political left and the "Biden" administration — are, in reality, living an illusion, both in their person and socially.  Sowell distinguishes intellectuals by their life, "which begins and ends with ideas."  This explains all the Biden administration's negative policy, from imaginary "green" energy systems to onerous carbon taxes, invasive biosecurity, illegal immigration, discriminatory affirmative action, hostile agricultural policy, deliberate war instigation, lack of U.S. military preparedness, and more.

This raises the "intellect versus intelligence" problem.  As Sowell puts it, "[i]ntelligence minus judgment equals intellect."  But this especially highlights the difference between the Biden and Trump administrations.  Trump was a businessman, and his Cabinet was drawn almost exclusively from business and industry, from people with work experience.  That filled the progressive left with irrational contempt and partly explains its obsession with silencing Trump (and its willingness to systematically violate election law and the Constitution).  The Biden team by contrast is made up of college students, intellectuals, ideologues, and even extremists using methods described as terroristic (such as the DNC-financed Summer of 2020 riots).

This naturally raises an alternative way of thinking, which might be called "American pragmatism."  Trump was clearly a pragmatist, and American pragmatism looms as a constant threat to the progressive left.

Pragmatism has a special history in American thought and culture.  What does pragmatism mean?  It generally holds out that meaning and truth come from practical outcomes and that foreign policy also reflects a "realpolitik" approach of realism.  It is inherently American.

When a society is focused on tangible problems that require human ingenuity and physical skill, the demands of such problem-solving suddenly make theories and internal division less important — it elevates practicality and cooperation as the predominant manner of thinking and acting.

This is also why "intellectuals" as a group are generally attracted to government (as they perceive it): government is a top-down institutional opportunity to bypass practical work.  Actual work comes from the ground up, in cooperation (and compromise) with others.  Intellectuals, on the other hand, don't like that, because they don't like to actually work, or cooperate, compromise, or do; they prefer to talk, divide, take, and imagine.  Conservatism defends the rule of law and consent.  The radical left's social psychology is the rule of rule and executive decree.  Trump instinctively knew this as a businessman, and this created an instant clash of cultures: one pragmatic, practical, and experienced, the other idealistic, theoretical, and naïve.

Perhaps nowhere is this psychology incubated and grown so systematically more than within our nation's law schools.  Unlike the other professional schools of business, engineering, and medicine, which have to focus on important, often inspiring challenges, the law school deals in ideas, so it generally attracts individuals who seek to work their ideas through the intellectual abstractions of legalism.

As an example, look only to the DoJ and its use of legal procedure to silence political opponents and harass a former U.S. president.  No other body of knowledge can so smoothly accommodate and facilitate political corruption.  Ironically, law is used to corrupt law itself.  When law becomes institutionalized, then the institution becomes the law.  In this way, all law is threatened by institutional force, which can be used to violate constitutional principles including due process, presumption, evidence, property, privacy, speech, religion, and affiliation.

Many conservatives are searching for an organizing concept to both understand and then competitively counter, the misguided and destructive impulses of the political left.  American pragmatism may be that concept.  It defends what the left hates most: Americanism, Americans, and America itself.

Matthew G. Andersson is the author of the upcoming book Legally Blind.  A former CEO, he has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times and by the National Academy of Sciences in law and economics. He has testified before the U.S. Senate and is a graduate of the University of Chicago.  He studied with White House national security advisor W.W. Rostow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Image: PxFuel.