Tony Judt: "Reapprisals. Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century" // Endorsing Jeremy Corbyn

( yippieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!! yippieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!! )

(past endorsements in this blog have not gone the way we would like it -- but elementary decency and common sense advice a vote against theresa may's brand of nationalistic pettiness -- for the eu, for britain, for the world, for the belief that we are all human way before nationals of country x or country z -- vote corbyn!! ) 

"Of all the transformations  of the past three decades, the dissapearance of 'intellectuals' is perhaps the most symptomatic.    The twentieth century was the century of the intellectual:  the very term first came into use (pejoratively) at the turn of the century and from the outset it described men and women in the world of learning, literature, and the arts who applied themselves to debating and influencing public opinion and policy.  [...]  We are all familiar with intellectuals who speak only on behalf of their country, class, religion, 'race,' 'gender,' or 'sexual orientation,' and who shape their opinions according to what they take to be the interest of their affinity of birth or predilection. But the distinctive feature of the liberal intellectual in past times was precisely the striving for universality; not the unworldly or disingenuous denial of sectional identification but the sustained effort to transcend that identification in search of truth or the general interest. . ."