Image from: http://www.theatricalcombat.com/Image%20Files/gallery/stickysituation/sticky3.jpg Intellectuals often feel a certain affiliation to cosmopolitanism. They are by and large concentrated in cities (and even there within universities), and are products of the modern refinement and departmentalization of knowledge and inquiry. Their thoughts, concerns and communications span the globe, but are generally so focused at an elite audience that between their cloistered mental departments and the smallness of their community they must formulate and nourish defensive attitudes and stances against the various localisms they must participate in but see beyond. In a quintessentially postmodern way (which is still quite modern nevertheless), they often choose to defend against localisms by celebrating the rootlessness of their modern condition--by celebrating ALL localisms. This is the elite sort of cosmopolitanism Friedman describes in his insightful article which I referenced weeks ago. ...
Candid evaluation of assumptions as well as musings on consequences of political, religious, moral, scientific, linguistic and literary truths and pretensions thereto. Dissecting representations, critiquing arguments, discussing liberty, equality, justice, faith, values, facts, and the principles and institutions that make them all possible.