It may seem strange that so many people of great intellect have saidand done so many things whose consequences ranged fromcounterproductive to catastrophic. Yet it is not so surprising when weconsider whether anybody has ever had the range of knowledge requiredto make the sweeping kinds of decisions that so many intellectuals areprone to make, especially when they pay no price for being wrong.
Intellectuals and their followers have often been overlyimpressed by the fact that intellectuals tend, on average, to have moreknowledge than other individuals in their society. What they haveoverlooked is that intellectuals have far less knowledge than the totalknowledge possessed by the millions of other people whom they disdainand whose decisions they seek to override.
We have had to learn the consequences of elite preemption the hard way-- and many of us have yet to learn that lesson.