"The Treason of the Intellectuals"

I had never heard of Theodore Dalrymple (aka Anthony Daniels) until recently, but I find his essays helpful in understanding a number of issues here in Progressive Land:

Question: That’s one of the ideas that comes through in the book ["Life at the Bottom"] very strongly—this idea of the treason of the intellectuals and the trickle down of their ideas so that a generation on they appear in the thinking of the lower classes.

Dalrymple: Yes, and then the intellectuals refuse to see what they’ve done. I describe in the book how intellectuals simply refuse to believe what I’m telling them I see. My sample is a selective one, it’s true, but I don’t think a sample of 50,000 people can be called insignificant. I have no reason to think people coming to my hospital are any different from those at at least two other hospitals in the city—and that’s only the ones that come to me. And I ask ordinary people, good solid working class people, completely honest, ‘Am I exaggerating? Am I hearing things?’, and they say no, absolutely no.

Dalrymple on why an Islamist killed Theo Van Gogh.