Smart People® to James Bowman: touché.
Over at Armavirumque, he writes:
For the undeserving winners of the genetic lottery known as the intelligent have been so flattered and petted and made much of by the official culture of the last half century or so that their natural sense of disdain for other sorts of human excellence than the intellectual has almost been written into the popular culture as legitimate envy of the rich, the strong, the beautiful and the honorable — historically their chief competitors for public esteem.
…But I wonder if Mr Taylor would apply the same argument to the gifts of the intellect, which are quite as unevenly distributed as wealth, beauty and power and which also afford far more chances to the well-endowed than to those of more modest capacities. Would he be in favor of stigmatizing high intelligence in the same way that he stigmatizes high incomes? Would he approve of a system of handicapping by which the brighter sort of people, like himself, were held back in order that the dimmer sort should have greater opportunities to shine their light, such as it is, before the world?
Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.