Atheist Tells Anti Pope Benedict Anti Christians Intellectuals To Grow Up (Great Piece)

Tip of the Hat to The Anchoress for discovering this must read piece. I agree there is so much good here it is difficult to excerpt.

See Did we prove that guy wrong or what? While it is directed toward a UK audience it could pretty much be directed to folks here.

The only way to dispute Ratzinger’s stature as a major intellect is to refuse to listen to anything he has to say; the only way to deny that his view of modern society’s ills is cogent and valid is to deny his central thesis, and cling to the ‘everything is wonderful in our secular paradise’ mantra that Dawkins and all the rest so shamefully endorse.Ratzinger is a bigger thinker, a better thinker, because he starts from the premise that there is something deeply wrong: the grown-up’s premise.
To merely accept this as a starting base takes courage, but without doing so nothing can be achieved. A world view – still more one that assumes entitlement to authority – that does not begin from this base is dangerous, cowardly and irrelevant.
If, like me, you don’t like some of Ratzinger’s answers then great – let the civilised adult debate begin. But if you’d rather attach condoms to an umbrella and parade through London with a bunch of dipsticks you rule yourself out of all serious consideration. Ratzinger is asking for a debate on some big subjects, and the best these supposed intellectual heavyweights can do is call him names, ignore the questions, and congratulate each other as the waters rise around their ugly necks.

Read it all. It is refreshing.

There has been a lot of discussion about throwing out the ruling elites. I really have no problem with the need of the elites in governing ourselves. Like the Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence Charles Carroll of Carrollton ,I get a tad nervous with the populist impulse and see the need for that that to be moderated. Thus the need for the elites for balance.

This is one reason we have the U.S. Senater where it was envisioned that it moderated the populist democratic impulse.

However something happened along the way. The elites got stupid. Somewhere somehow the classical liberal arts education that the elites received and which gives the elites their value got corrupted. A prime example of this is that the paper of Record in the USA , The New York Times, thinks that Maureen Dowd is a good voice to comment on such things such as religion and political/ social movements.

Thus we see supposed intelligent people using high school like taunts and logic against serious people like Pope Benedict. All the while they lampoon the uneducated masses.