I just heard a new cool phrase – intellectual mercenary. I like the implications of it. People renting out their brains to find justification for any cause, no matter how vile, is not okay. Lawyers do it, and that’s when we hate them the most. Child psychologists who work for ad agencies do it, and everyone agrees that they are creepy. And now “think tanks” are getting into the business of “conclusions first, justification second” that characterizes this behavior.
So let’s be clear: these aren’t values-neutral neutral jobs any more than they are value-neutral (because the perpetrators definitely get paid). Finding justification for evil, no matter how sophisticated and high-falutin your words are, is generally not a necessary job. Lawyers kind of have to do it, but that’s because they have promised to both defend and prosecute, and one side in those battles is going to be in the wrong. But agencies designed to manipulate the truth are much more fundamentally in the wrong.
I’m looking at you Competitive Einterprise Institute, with your CO2 == Life bull. And you CATO, with your rolling over to the radical right agenda.
