It is worth noting that there’s a reason for the skewed ranking of public intellectuals.
Consider that Noam Chomsky won and Milton Friedman wasn’t even on the
ballot. Many voters obviously had their New York Times open in front of
them as Paul Krugman, the former economist, was sixth and Thomas
Friedman was 16th.

Paul Wolfowitz seems mainly to have made the
top 20 because of his new role at the World Bank. I’ll grant Richard
Dawkins a spot for “the selfish gene” and its influence on the later
concept of “memes,” but the other thing about most of the top
intellectuals, other than their general disposition against the market,
is a virulent anti-religion streak — Chomsky, Dawkins, and Hitchens
most notably.