Asserting vs showing

There was a guy on Usenet three decades ago who would boast of his self-perceived superiority over people who disagreed with him; a superiority that he would trace back to his supposedly having drunk deep of the philosophy of John Dewey. This guy would go on at great length about how John Dewey advocated for a liberalism based in the best scientific thought; and, him being a devotee of Dewey's, about how his own opinions were themselves so based, as opposed to the opinions of his pitiful opponents.

But, really, "John Dewey" and "science" were just talismen the guy was waving around. He would transcribe quotations, then clearly misunderstand what he had quoted. They were fetish objects external to him, rather than texts and ideas that he had absorbed into his understanding.

And there is a lesson in that for all of us. If we consider ourselves to be devotees of a particular philosopher or a particular philosophy, would anyone else be able to see that without our having to tell them?