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Near the end of Public Intellectuals, Richard Posner observes that Richard Nixon was forced from office in 1974 “because people were outraged.” This was perhaps the public’s most dramatic gesture of the second half of the 20th century. But the people Posner defines as public intellectuals would never have understood this, since his public intellectuals concern themselves only with public policy—not with public philosophy, public ethics or public theology, and not with matters of moral and spiritual outrage.