[I]f Obama were actually smart his community organizing efforts would have effected change in Chicago. But the David Brooksian “educated class” isn’t to be judged by something as pedestrian as performance. They tend not to engage in jobs, such as installing a light switch, unclogging a drain, or fixing a transmission, that can be objectively evaluated as done or not done. Perceived failures in community organizing, academics, column-writing, and governing are open to interpretation and can be explained away. Not so with a car that still doesn’t start.

From an excerpt of Thomas Sowell’s new book Intellectuals and Society at Investors Business Daily:

Another common misconception among the intelligentsia is that individual business entrepreneurs should — or could — be “socially responsible” by taking into account the wider consequences of the entrepreneur’s business decisions. This idea goes back at least as far as Woodrow Wilson, another intellectual in our sense, because of his academic career before entering politics:

“We are not afraid of those who pursue legitimate pursuits, provided they link those pursuits in at every turn with the interest of the community as a whole; and no man can conduct a legitimate business if he conducts it in the interest of a single class.”

In other words, it is not considered sufficient if a manufacturer of plumbing fixtures produces high-quality faucets, pipes and bathtubs, and sells them at affordable prices, if this entrepreneur does not also take on the role of philosopher-king and try to decide how this business affects “the interest of the community,” however that nebulous notion might be conceived. It is a staggering requirement which few, if any, people in business, academia, politics or other occupations could meet.

John Dewey likewise lamented that workers, like their employers, had “no social outlook upon the consequences and meaning of what they are doing.” Intellectuals may choose to imagine what are the wider social consequences of their own actions, inside or outside their fields of professional competence, but there is little or no consequential feedback when they are wrong, no matter how wrong or for how long. That both business owners and workers usually avoid taking on such a cosmic task suggests that they may have a more realistic assessment of human limitations.

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Sowell:

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

H/T Mike B.