Churchill: "I had to read this twice to determine that it wasn't satire...I wouldn't allow my daughter to marry an Aussie male...they fall into two categories: Limp Wristed "intellectuals" and drunken chauvinists...both pretty much useless..."

Churchill, you're a great satirist (albeit an unconscious one).

The intellectual arrogance of this article is unbelievable. Under the 14th amendment to the US constitution all persons born or naturalised there are citizens, and are entitled to vote. I am surprised that the author is not suggesting intellectual tests for either voters or candidates or both. Their views are just as good as yours at the ballot box. As other posters suggested, Pauling Hanson filled the same role here, and had many of her ideas, particularly about illegal immigrants, adopted by the major parties. This process is called democracy. Obviously the author does not believe in it.

I did not realise pandering to the "intellectual vote" was a prerequisite for the position of vice president of USA.

Strangely, I never realized “intellectuals” were the sole arbiters of knowledge in what is a practical world.

Lets face it, when the pipes back up, we phone for a plumber, not an expert in Aramaic text.

Because one is not an “intellectual” or because one does not make jokes in Sanskrit (which, when out to dine in company, are so obscure that only the teller laughs at them), does not mean ones “human” credentials and ability to lead and direct are lessened.

We have a couple of “intellectuals” here, a wannabe emeritus professor comes to mind ( that is he is not a EP but the closest thing without being it, so he says, and like I said, “wannabe”), we have another, who indulges in peeing on the common folk from the pinnacle of his ivory academic tower and is renown for the images of his sister and brother which he has posted to this forum.

They are equally as snide and "up themselves" as the author of this article is, with his outflow of rancid effluent, but that is the most bountiful product of the academic political left (including the intellectuasl ones).

So whilst the left rant and roll in their own filth,

I will revel in the joys of fornication and suggest they would be better deployed going "off" to do the same.

Anyone who is “too intellectual” and struggling to understand just what I mean, read plerdsus’s post, I agree with him entirely,

Hey Doug9732,
The past 8 years have given you

# higher unemployment
# smaller working class
# disappearing manufacturing base
# tax breaks for the wealthy
# electoral fraud
# millions fewer with health cover
# bourgening class of working poor
# Wall Street deregulation and all that now entails
# industry largely geared towards war
# an unhinged foreign policy w.r.t. Israel and Palestine
# massive worldwide disapproval of current administration (yeah I know you don't care. Wanna know why it's massive?)
# around 90% of the population believing the US is heading in the wrong direction

We know of America's great past Doug. You're resting on your laurels.

Too bloody right examinator. Why cogitate when you can vote republican?

This reference re the Republican Noise Machine has much relevance to the tactics now being used by the right-wing psychotics in the current campaign.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Propaganda/Republican_Noise_Machine.html

It is by another man who found that he still had a heart and couldnt stand the nauseating STENCH of the people he was working with.

The responses to this thread have, to me, illustrated this problem in microcosm. Once the word "intellectual" is waved, the bulls charge.

So lets remove it from the debate. Surely, what one requires from the leader of any country - be it first world or not - is statescraft. A thoroughgoing knowledge of how ones country works, how the world works, and how ones' country works in relation to the rest of the world.

No matter whether one views thier term in office positively or negatively, it is undoubtable that the world leaders who have had the most effect, Roosevelt, Churchill, Indira Ghandi, Thatcher, (and, at the risk of inflaming people, Lenin) et.al. have had a background in politics, statescraft, and international relations.

Whoever becomes President of America is taking charge of a superpower in crisis. Now, more than ever, America's position within the rest of the world is in the balance and objective, trained minds need to be brought to bear upon solutions whose outcomes go way beyond any one person's term of office.

I don't think its terribly productive to squabble about the I.Q. or formal education of the candidates. Surely the primary consideration should be which candidate can be envisaged as being best fitted to steer America - and the world - in a world of recession, climate concerns, increasing violence, increasing religious division, increasing division between rich and poor and changes in the balance of power?