I love
reading the editorial articles at Townhall.Com online. One can stay current on
what the best conservatives thinkers are pondering about and worrying about.
Today,
7/4/2025, conservative intellectual Victor Hanson writes about specious
experts, so I copied and pasted his entire editorial and will comment on it.
Here is his editorial:
Hanson (H
after this): “The Decline and Fall of Our So-Called Degreed Experts
Victor Davis Hanson | Jul 04, 2025
The
first six months of the Trump administration have not been kind to the experts
and the degree-holding classes.”
My
response: I have three general responses to totalistic, gloomy pronouncements
from the experts and degree-holding classes.
First,
we must not sneer at experts and dismiss them summarily as a class as silly
airheads. Though now terribly specialized, they might have real expertise in
their specialty, and their holding degrees in that area of expertise is not
without value or deserving respect.
Second,
experts and degree-holding intellectuals of all stripes, many of them end up
being part of the elite or ruling class, so they automatically crave power over
the masses, and want us to worship and obey them without blinking. That is not
going to happen in a new generation of freshly self-minted individuating
anarchist supercitizens. They will hear and respect experts, but the masses
will work out among themselves private and personal policy and joint public policy
based upon their making their own final decisions, not just blindly accepting
as binding and final what some uppity, magisterial expert hands down to them as
the final word. Ain’t happening no more.
Third,
as we create a new generation of American citizens, super-smart,
super-creative, super-critically thinking individuating supercitizens, with two
or three areas of expertise in specialties apiece, be they credentialed or
uncredentialed amateurs, experts will still be heard and taken seriously but
each independent, brilliant thinking individuator will make up her own mind as
how to proceed, and she will negotiate with other individuated members of the
masses as to how the public should proceed, and elite experts will just have to
adjust to this new, wonderful reality.
H:
“Almost daily during the tariff hysterias of March, we were told by university
economists and most of the PhDs employed in investment and finance that the
U.S. was headed toward a downward, if not recessionary, spiral.
Most
economists lectured that trade deficits did not really matter. Or they insisted
that the cures to reduce them were worse than the $1.1 trillion deficit itself.
They
reminded us that free, rather than fair, trade alone ensured prosperity.
So,
the result of Trump's foolhardy tariff talk would be an impending recession.
America would soon suffer rising joblessness, inflation--or rather a return to
stagflation--and likely little, if any, increase in tariff revenue as trade
volume declined.
Instead,
recent data show increases in tariff revenue. Personal real income and savings
were up. Job creation exceeded prognoses. There was no surge in inflation. The
supposedly "crashed" stock market reached historic highs.”
My
response: Hanson illustrates how the PhD experts were not just mistaken, but
dramatically, consistently mistaken.
H:
“Common-sense Americans might not have been surprised. The prior stock market
frenzy was predicated on what was, in theory, supposed to have happened rather
than what was likely to occur. After all, if tariffs were so toxic and
surpluses irrelevant, why did our affluent European and Asian trading rivals
insist on both surpluses and protective tariffs?
Most
Americans recalled that the mere threat of tariffs and Trump's jawboning had
led to several trillion dollars in promised foreign investment and at least
some plans to relocate manufacturing and assembly back to the United States.
Would that change in direction not lead to business optimism and eventually
more jobs? Would countries purposely running up huge surpluses through
asymmetrical trade practices not have far more to lose in negotiations than
those suffering gargantuan deficits?
Were
Trump's art-of-the-deal threats of prohibitive tariffs not mere starting points
in negotiations that would eventually lead to likely agreements more favorable
to the U.S. than in the past and moderate rather than punitive tariffs?
Would
not the value of the huge American consumer market mean that our trade
partners, who were racking up substantial surpluses, would agree they could
afford modest tariffs and trim their substantial profit margins rather than
suicidally price themselves out of a lucrative market entirely?
Economists
and bureaucrats were equally wrong on the border.”
My
response: Dead wrong on the border too—wow.
H:
“We were told for four years that only "comprehensive immigration
reform" would stop illegal immigration. In fact, most Americans differed.
They knew firsthand that we had more than enough immigration laws, but had
elected as President Joe Biden, who deliberately destroyed borders and had no
intention of enforcing existing laws.
When
Trump promised that he would ensure that, instead of 10,000 foreign nationals
entering illegally each day, within a month, no one would, our experts scoffed.
But if the border patrol went from ignoring or even aiding illegal immigrants
to stopping them right at the border, why would such a prediction be wrong?
Those
favoring a reduction in illegal immigration and deportations also argued that
crime would fall, and citizen job opportunities would increase, given an
estimated 500,000 aliens with criminal records had entered illegally during the
Biden administration, while millions of other illegal aliens were working off
the books, for cash, and often at reduced wages.
Indeed,
once the border was closed tightly, hundreds of thousands were returned to
their country, and employers began turning to U.S. citizens. Job opportunities
did increase. Crime did go down. Legal-only immigration regained its preferred
status over illegal entry.
Trump
talked of trying voluntary deportation--again to wide ridicule from immigration
"experts." But why would not a million illegal aliens wish to return
home "voluntarily"-- if they were given free flights, a $1,000 bonus,
and, most importantly, a chance later to reapply for legal entry once they
arrived home?
Many
of our national security experts warned that taking out Iran's nuclear sites
was a fool's errand. It would supposedly unleash a Middle East tsunami of
instability. It would cause a wave of terrorism. It would send oil prices
skyrocketing. It would not work, ensuring Iran would soon reply with nuclear
weapons.
In
fact, oil prices decreased after the American bombing. A twenty-five-minute
entrance into Iranian airspace and bombing led to a ceasefire, not a
conflagration.
As
for a big power standoff, World War III, and 30,000 dead, common sense asked
why China would wish the Strait of Hormuz to close, given that it imports half
of all Middle Eastern oil produced?
Why
would Russia--bogged down in Ukraine and suffering nearly a million
casualties--wish to mix it up in Iran, after ignominiously fleeing Syria and
the fall of its Assad clients?
Russia
usually thinks of Russia, period. It does not lament when tensions elsewhere
are expected to spike oil prices. Why would Russia resupply Iran's destroyed
Russian-made anti-aircraft systems, when it was desperate to ward off Ukrainian
air attacks on its homeland, and Iran would likely again lose any imported
replacements?
As
for waves of terror, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis have suffered enormous
losses from Israel. Their leadership has been decapitated; their streams of
Iranian money have been mostly truncated. Why would they rush to Iran's side to
war with Israel, when Iran did not come to their aid when they were battling
and losing to the Israelis?
Has
a theater-wide war really ever started when one side entered and left enemy
territory in 25 minutes, suffering no casualties and likely killing few of the
enemy?
As
far as the extent of damage to Iran's nuclear infrastructure, why should we
believe our expert pundit class?
Prior
to the American and Israeli bombing, many of them warned that Iran was not on
the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon, and therefore, there was little need
for any such preemptive action.
Then,
post facto, the same experts flipped. Now they claimed, after the bombing that
severely damaged most Iranian nuclear sites, that there was an increased
threat, given that some enriched uranium (which they had previously discounted)
surely had survived and thus marked a new existential danger of an Iranian
nuclear bomb.”
My
response: Wrong again.
H:
“Was Trump really going to "blow up", "destroy" or
"cripple" NATO, as our diplomatic experts insisted, when his
first-term jawboning led from six to twenty-three nations meeting their two
percent of GDP defense spending promises?
Given
two ongoing theater-wide wars, given Trump's past correct predictions about the
dangers of the Nord Stream II pipeline, given the vulnerability of an anemic
NATO to Russian expansionism, and given that Russian leader Vladimir Putin did
not invade during Trump's first term, unlike the three presidencies before and
after his own, why wouldn't NATO agree to rearm to five percent, and appreciate
Trump's efforts both to bolster the capability of the alliance and the need to
end the Ukraine war?
Why
were our "scientific" pollsters so wrong in the last three
presidential elections, and so at odds with the clearly discernible electoral
shifts in the general electorate? Where were crackpot ideas like defund the
police, transgender males competing in women's sports, and open borders first
born and nurtured?
Answer:
the university, and higher education in general.”
My
response: The University and higher education in general generated experts now
often so wrong, and who came up with these crackpot ideas. What happened?
My
belief is that Academia and others bastions of Leftist clerisy are replete with
highly educated, credentialed groupists who run in packs, though expert in
their area, and their true believership as zealots of the cultural Marxist mass
movement has made them stupid, foolish, conformist, and their ideology has led
to their living inside a bubble of coherent lies, which has divorced them from
reality, commonsense and access to the truth. Therefore, many perhaps most of
their predictions, conclusions and recommendation are off-target and embarrassingly
wide of the mark. It is predictable that ideological groupism breeds groupthink
anti-intellectuality among zealous, credentialed experts and intellectuals, so
their research and suggestions often are junk to be discarded.
H:
“The list of wrongheaded, groupthink, and degreed expertise could be vastly
expanded. We remember the "51 intelligence authorities" who swore the
Hunter Biden laptop was "likely" cooked up by the Russians. Our best
and brightest economists signed letters insisting that Biden's
multitrillion-dollar wasteful spending would not result in inflation spikes.
Our global warming professors' past predictions should have ensured that
Americans were now boiling, with tidal waves destroying beachfront communities,
including Barack Obama's two beachfront multimillion-dollar estates.”
My
response: Wow, ideological experts that run-in packs end up being dumb, even
dangerous if heeded let alone obeyed.
H:
“Our legal eagles, after learning nothing from the bogus Mueller investigation
and adolescent Steele dossier, but with impressive Ivy League degrees,
pontificated for years that, by now, Trump would be in jail for life, given 91
"walls are closing in" and "bombshell" indictments.
So
why are the degreed classes so wrong and yet so arrogantly never learn anything
from their past flawed predictions?”
My
response: The degreed classes are so wrong and yet so arrogantly never learning
anything from their past flawed predictions, because theses altruist-collectivistic
experts are fanatics, and fanatics never doubt their excellence, and can explain
away any failure with their flawed predictions. They also genuinely believe
they are smarter and better than the masses, and one who is just innately superior
does not make mistakes. These learned groupists are the epitome of Luciferian
pride that Jordan Peterson rails against, but they are not egoists but pack creatures.
H:
“One, our experts usually receive degrees from our supposedly marquee
universities. But as we are now learning from long overdue autopsies of
institutionalized campus racial bias, neo-racial segregation, 50-percent-plus
price-gauging surcharges on federal grants, and rabid antisemitism, higher
education in America has become anti-Enlightenment. Universities now wage war
against free-thinkers, free speech, free expression, and anything that freely
questions the deductive groupthink of the diversity/equity/inclusion
commissariat, and global warming orthodoxies.
The
degreed expert classes emerge from universities whose faculties are 90-95
percent left-wing and whose administrations are overstaffed and terrified of
their radical students. The wonder is not that the experts are incompetent and
biased, but that there are a brave few who are not.”
My
response: I cannot dispute anything Hanson writes in the two paragraphs above.
He is articulate and accurate, and he knows the psychology of degreed experts
who are totally clique creatures, and that makes them arrogant, mistaken, and
dangerous if given power.
H:
“Two, Trump drove the degreed class insane to the degree it could no longer,
even if it were willing and able (and it was not), offer empirical assessments
of his policies. From his crude speech to his orange skin to his Queens accent
to his MAGA base to his remarkable counterintuitive successes and to his
disdain for the bicoastal elite, our embarrassing experts would rather be dead
wrong and anti-Trump than correct in their assessments -- if they in any small
way helped Trump.”
My
response: Their hatred of Trump makes them always oppose him, and this Trump-derangement
syndrome poisons their capacity to assess his policies and programs fairly and
accurately.
H:
“Three, universities are not just biased, but increasingly mediocre and ever
more isolated from working Americans and their commonsense approaches to
problem solving. PhD programs in general are not as rigorous as they were even
two decades ago. Grading, assessments, and evaluations in professional schools
must increasingly weigh non-meritocratic criteria, given their admissions and
hiring protocols are not based on disinterested evaluation of past work and
expertise.”
My
response: The new degreed experts are inferior to what they were 20 years ago,
weighed down by non-meritocratic criteria.
H:
“The vast endowments of elite campuses, the huge profit-making foreign
enrollments, and the assured, steady stream of hundreds of billions of dollars
in federal aid created a sense of fiscal unreality, moral smugness, unearned
superiority, and ultimately, blindness to just how isolated and disliked the
professoriate had become.”
My
response: What powerful, stinging criticism—moral smugness, unearned claims of
superiority, and ultimately blindness—but, again, I say, listen to experts but
the masses should make the final decisions and run the government, the economy,
and the country.
H:
“But the public has caught on that too many Ivy-League presidents were
increasingly a mediocre, if not incompetent, bunch. Most university economists
could not run a small business. The military academies did not always turn out
the best generals and admirals. The most engaging biographers were not
professors. And plumbers and electricians were usually more skilled in their
trades than most journalist graduates were in their reporting.
Add
it all up, and the reputation of our predictors, prognosticators, and experts
has been radically devalued to the point of utter worthlessness.”
My
response: So true.
It
occurs to me that experts are often mistaken in their recommendations and
predictions for two additional reasons. First, their elite lifestyle, and no
longer working with their hands, somehow cuts them off from living, working,
thinking, and adjusting to life in the real world, and that divorce from
reality often increases the intellectual’s tendency to think poorly, unclearly,
and practically, because he is divorced from reality.
The
groupist and ideological bent often distorts the elite intellectual’s ability
to think straight; his ideological fanaticism disconnects him from original
thinking, and severs his objective link to objective reality, and these faults
discolor his view of the future.
Second,
commonsense is affiliated with living and working in the world, and that
inherently makes the amateur intellectual more rational and moderate, more
connected to truth, so her predictions and recommendations would more often be
correct.
