I think if anything could stand as a symbol of our present age, it is that annoying series of "Mac versus PC" commercials, where the smug, metrosexual Mac fellow repeatedly "one ups" the pudgy, square PC guy.  It perfectly captures the tenor of our pop culture. Just look at the internet, where time after time people strive to show that they are more clever than everyone else, constantly nit pickling over trivial mistakes, adding irrelevant "clarifications" or drowning Wikipedia in mountains of trivia, the zeitgeist of our culture is shown there perfectly.  We have become obsessed with cleverness.

No, I do not mean to make this sound like an anti-intellectual diatribe. In fact, I would welcome a culture which cherished intelligence. But that is not what our culture does. True intelligence recognizes its limits. it couches its statements in qualifications and cautions. True culture is modest, it knows its limits. What our culture value sin cleverness, the mindset of the smart aleck, the fellow who can show up someone else, who can quip, who can point to some tidbit of trivia, who is good at cocktail party banter. That is our culture.

"But", some are likely asking, "why should we care? What is the point of all this? We know you go off topic quite frequently, but usually you warn us beforehand. So what is the political import of this observation?"

And, as I would not present such a fictional inquiry if I lacked an answer, I obviously have one, and a good one. (Or so I think.)

The problem with clever people, at least when contrasted with intelligent ones, is that clever people think they are smarter than everyone else. That is why they delight in showing up others, it demonstrates to the world just how superior they are. Intelligent people, in most cases, either assume most others are their equals -- perhaps not possessing the same education, or the same interests, but potentially their intellectual match -- or else have no thought one way or the other, having never asked the question. It is all part of the modesty that seems to go along with truly disinterested inquiry*. But the "clever", those who find delight in showing up others, they tend to assume they are superior to "the sheep" they think make up most of society. They may sometimes make PC statements of an egalitarian nature, but they are for show. In their heart,t hey are certain they are but one of a handful who truly understand things.

And that is why it troubles me that we now relish such a mindset.

As I have written in "Liberalism, Its Origins and Consequences", and many other essays, all of our modern theories of interventionist politics are founded upon the idea of the masses' incompetence. In fact, once one accepts the premise that most people are incompetent, it is very difficult to put forth a valid argument for limited government. The whole foundation of the "night watchman" view of government, as well as the very limited federalist system I favor, is the belief that people are capable of pursuing their own interests and (eventually, at least) learning form mistakes. If we demolish those two principles, in other words if we accept the world view of "clever" guys, then we have undermined the whole basis of free government.

Which gives us yet one more reason to despise the smug Apple guy.

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* I don't mean to exaggerate the saintliness of the intelligent. Surely there are arrogant geniuses.  But, as those who work on a certain level tend to interact with others who have equal intelligence, they tend not to overvalue their own intelligence. In addition, as every true researcher has had the experience, usually many times, of either having a theory collapse when tested against the evidence, or, even more embarrassing, having a cherished presentation demolished by an unexpected critic, those engaged in research tend to be quite aware that they can be wrong as often as right, if not more often. And so they rarely achieve the self-centered conceit of the clever person. Some may, there are always a few representatives of a given extreme in a group, but they are relatively rare among intelligent people.
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POSTSCRIPT

When I write such essays, there are certain individuals who complain about "taking things too seriously", or accuse me of saying "the Mac guy is destroying the world." Now, obviously I am not saying anything of the kind, nor am I ascribing any special power to those Apple ads. What I am saying is that such trivial things, such as what we find interesting or worthy of our attention ARE important, as they tell us something about what we are thinking at the moment. And that is why I focus sometimes on seeming trivia, or why I spend so much time "overthinking" things that seem obvious. Sometimes the trivial or the obvious can reveal some important hidden aspects of our present state of mind,

UPDATE (2011-09-01): I forgot when I wrote this that I made several similar comments about Quentin Tarantino embodying the same mind set in his films in the postscript to my post "IMDB Makes My Case".