Ahh, such fresh blogger enthusiasm! Rick Hills has burst onto the Prawfs scene, battling to defend Phyllis Schlafly, scorning Judith Butler, and now claiming the mantle of anti-intellectual. He has been scorched by Brian Leiter, Kevin Heller, and Patrick O’Donnell, among others. But today Tommy Crocker offers an extended comment to Hills’ anti-intellectualism post that is both sharp and smart. Read it while it’s hot!
Update: As Kevin Heller points out in the comments (but I want to be obvious in the post) there is yet another smart and thorough retort to Rick Hills offered by Pam Karlan at Balkinization.
Hi Dan,
You actually missed one — at Balkinization, Pam Karlan gives Rick quite the smackdown for his recent post on Riley v. Kennedy. I have no idea who has the better of the argument, but Pam's guest-post, entitled "Rick Hills' Marshall McLuhan Moment," is well worth a read:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/06/rick-hills-marshall-mcluhan-moment.html
If anyone is interested, I elaborated on my remarks about "intellectuals" in the comments to a related post by Paul Horwitz at Prawfs: http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2008/06/why-i-am-um-not.html#comments
Today (June 7), Rick attempts to enlist Orwell on behalf of his "anti-intellectuallism:" http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2008/06/orwell-the-inte.html#comments