I neglected to mention
You need not pick all five from the list.
Assuming you couldn't find all your favorite candidates within (or for that matter even know more than 2 of them), vote for 2 or 3 and click onto the next prompt.
With that, type in your remaining potential candidates.
My remaining three candidates were....
Doctors....
Marc W.D. Tyrrell
Montgomery McFate
Steven Metz
Hey, the way I figure, we're about 3,000 strong and a vote is a vote.
If you want to blend in, take the bus
From the FP list I voted for:
Fethullah Gulen
Steven Pinker
Muhammad Yunas
Malcolm Gladwell
William Easterly
Write in:
David Kilcullen
Ron Paul
Last edited by bourbon; 04-25-2008 at 07:41 PM.
And the whole exercise is indicative of why State has difficulty relating to other organizations. The "Foreign Policy" elitist school is clearly at work here. There is not one military or defense figure from any country listed in the 100. There is not a single leader in the business world listed among the "intellectuals". Al Gore is the single example of a US poltical "intellectual"? Samantha Power is a world class intellectual?
Steven Colbert might be too high speed
Go with Alfred E. Neuman
Thomas...
You are too kind.
Really.
Ah, Gen. Petraeus is on there.Originally Posted by Tom Odom
Tom,
Did you miss Dave Petraeus? I suspect the lack of business folks has to do with the nature of the list--it is "public" figures--that is folks who are paid by the public, not-for profit sector. Larry Ellison and Jack Welsh are private sector, for-profit kind of folks. Nonetheless, your point is well taken. I don't dispute that circumscribing the list to "public" figures is a receipe for disaster
Yea, but a "public intellectual" is someone who shapes the way people think, not just a smart person. I might have added Charles Krauthammer, Andrew Sullivan, Bill Kristol, and Eliot Cohen. I would not have included Niall Ferguson. Love his books, but don't think he's shaped public thinking all that much.
Agree with Steve and JW's points (particularly that about the former Senator from Tennessee). After reading a lot of the bios, it seems that the principle crierion for selection was "been published in FP" Sort of reminds me of the Groucho Marx line about not wanting to belong to any club that would have him as a member.
Yep I did miss GEN P
and while that lessens some what what I had to say it does not change my intended message....the whole exercise reeks of disdain for those who actually do versus those who observe
I like Steve M's description of public intellectual in shaping thought and WM I think you probably have it exactly correct...said exercise is a marketing tool for FP
My apologies to GEN P
Tom
I would assert that most on the list are raking in a fair amount of dough for a pure profit motive and satisfying their desires for attention and notoriety in the process. I find it hard to take Al Gore's "passion" for climate change seriously when his carbon footprint is larger than that of some small towns and his net worth is in the tens of millions after a lifelong career as a "public servant." Likewise, I find it hard to take such a list seriously. It is a bad idea to put pontificators and critics on a pedestal instead of the people who actually implement and execute. I think guys like Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Eric Prince, and Billy Graham belong on this list. They might not spend much of their time writing, but that is most likely because instead of theorizing about what could be, they're making it happen. Must one put pen to paper for an idea to be considered intellectual?
Who is it whose tagline says, "I don't care if it works in practice... I want to see it work in theory!"?
Bill Gates with his extreme track record of completely wrong "predictions"? No great intellectual.
The list was explicitly about intellectuals, not about leaders or anything else.
I would have used "Al Gore" and "intellectual" in the same sentence in a dramatically different way.
John Wolfsberger, Jr.
An unruffled person with some useful skills.
I find myself in total agreement. Noam Chomsky!! Give me a "stag on till Summer" break!
It's a list of mostly media/writers entertainers, that seems to value "credentials" over "thought."
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Popularity contest.. Did I miss Hawkings?
Sam Liles
Selil Blog
Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.
I am suffering from Thomas Friedman fatigue. I should probably wait until I read Beirut to Jerusalem to weigh in. But everything else I have read from him is either utter garbage or an articulate restatement of the obvious. The world may be hot and crowded, but it is certainly not flat just because Hamas can post videos on Youtube or Facebook.
OK, I'll bite. Care to enlarge on this a bit.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Wow, you revived a thread that rested for more than half a year.
I recall that I wanted to complain about a "Top 100 intellectuals" list that had 37x "United States" people in it, but didn't it because I had already heated up some feelings before.
Seriously; such lists (and there are dozens like this; I recall a 'Best 100 songs of all time' from Rolling Stones magazine or similar; all songs were in English language and only half a dozen wasn't Anglo-American) only show the distorted view of the world that many people have.
This certainly applies to most people; I bet the Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Russians and all Europeans would create similarly distorted lists (and do; ).
It's sad to see such a ridiculous list originating from a foreign policy-interested organization that should know better (well, 63% foreign entries is probably the best that you could hope for).
Imagine how much we miss, how often we err - only because of those terrible language barriers (and because the media weighs news from certain countries much more important than news from others)!
I've still found no way how to research Finnish military art in any meaningful way. I am convinced (due to anecdotes) that they have a lot to share, but the language isn't even a remote relative of any language that I can read (German/English/French/Spanish/Dutch).
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