In the NPR sting, they guy claimed that Tea Party people were anti-itellectual. The guy from NPR assumed that he was an "Intellectual" and thus the Tea Party was against him. I want to see if we can come up with a definition of intellectual and try to see why this guy from NPR felt that he was different and special in some way and that he saw himself as an intellectual.
What you might find interesting is to ask friends what their definition of intellectual are. You will be very surprised by what you hear. The dictionary definition says that an intellectual is a person who sets personal feelings aside and looks at the clear facts to form their opinions. It goes on to call people who make their living by non-manual labor methods intellectuals and give the example of writers and teachers. This last detail sounds like it was written by the guy from NPR. He must be a writer. I taught at a major university and know a lot of union teachers, but I did not consider very many of them as intellectual.
