Thomas Sowell reminds us that public intellectuals helped make WWII the most devastating war in human history. Public intellectuals "played a major role in creating the atmosphere of both military weakness and political irresolution within democratic nations[.]" That atmosphere of appeasement invited aggression and limited the democracies' ability to defend themselves when aggression came. Public intellectuals did terrible harm and paid little or no price for it.
Sowell's general point is that public intellectuals create a climate of opinion in democracies that limits what democracies can do. That climate of opinion can cause the adoption of policies that violate plain common sense.
"Abolishing the police" is a perfect example in our time. Abolishing the police is the precise domestic analog to adopting a policy of military weakness. Calls to abolish the police will invite criminal acts by those who don't respect the law and it will limit the ability of the police to protect us from crime and violence in precisely the same way promoting appeasement invited aggressor nations to attack and weakened the ability of the democracies to defend themselves.
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