Ken Hanly asked, >How can intelligent people come up with such >mindless uncritical drivel and Pavlovian reactions? That's a rhetorical question. Don't you just love it when somebody answers a rhetorical question? The answer to this question requires rephrasing the redundent expression "intelligent people". People are intelligent animals. That is, people ARE intelligent, by definition. I think what Ken means to ask is how *articulate, well-educated* people can come up with drivel. Any school teacher knows. Articulate, well-educated people are schooled in the practice of producing analytical prose abstract from the individual's real political and personal interests and capable of persuading an authority that it is the right answer or, at the very least, "a" right answer. This is called "composition skills", see Richard Ohmann's 1976 _English in America: A Radical View of the Profession_. The hitch is that in the accepted method of schooling the "audience" is implicitly always the teacher, the authority. The coerciveness of this authority-as-implicit-audience rule is magnified as one progresses up the educational ladder. The more educated one is, the more oriented towards authority the presentation of one's views becomes, even if one is a "radical" or "dissident". The in-doctorated dissident's rhetorical purpose becomes persuading one's dissertation committee and eventually one's colleagues that one's views are "sensible" in spite of their "eccentricity". By the way, citing Ohmann's critique may be a good way to get oneself ostracized from a PhD program. Especially if your academic advisors consider themselves respectable "critical theorists". It worked for me. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
