Should-Read: Daniel Johnson: Have Public Intellectuals Ever Gotten Anything Right?: "What [is] it... that gives gravitas to a public intellectual[?]...
...It is... a breadth and depth of learning... invisible masters whose apprentice one has been.... Do the economists who, as Bradford DeLong points out, now monopolize our op-ed pages still possess private libraries as the likes of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek did? To serve the public, intellectuals must have a private hinterland.
