The American Anti-Intellectual Part 1

“Scientists are convinced that there’s more going on than meets the eye. They keep seeing clues to a world lying beyond that of daily reality....The Other World is hard to see. It does not lie about us so obviously as tables and chairs. You have to work to catch a glimpse of it.”

Republican operative Peggy Noonan

America today, as evidenced by the likes of Peggy Noonan and George W. Bush is a profoundly anti-intellectual society. This is what is dragging America down and virtually guarantees its continuing global decline.

Intellectuals are born not made. I know this from my earliest days in school. I was always the one who asked the difficult or non-conforming questions. I wasn’t trying intentionally to make trouble or make people feel awkward, but there it was…

This reminds me of a very old Beetle Bailey cartoon. Sarge is after Beetle and says, “I’m going to pound you to smithereens.”

Beetle interrupts, saying, “You know I’ve always wondered about a smithereen. How big is it? Is it larger or smaller than a smither?

In the next panel he and Sarge are looking it up in a book and Sarge says, “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.” In the background, Killer, says: “And he wants to keep it there.”

Now America

In a 1980 campaign speech Ronald Reagan said, "Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity.”

Indeed.

Paul Krugman’s column in last week’s New York Times was called “The Uneducated American”. He wrote:

“Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies.” And, because education is a state responsibility, and because states are forced to cut back in so many areas, the prospects for continued American decline in education are high. Cutbacks in education are happening today in every state in the nation.

In 1958 William Lederer and Eugene Burdick coined the term Ugly American from the title of their book which was made into a 1963 movie starring Marlon Brando. The term is generally defined pejoratively as Americans traveling or living abroad who remain ignorant of local culture and judge everything by American standards.

Alas, the Ugly American is alive and well—the most recent instance being Serena Williams's outburst at the 2009 US Open semifinal against Kim Clijsters. Domestically, there’s the reaction of Chicagoans to not being awarded the 2016 Olympics (Americans are entitled, are they not?). As columnist Gary Mason wrote in the Globe and Mail: “Only in the United States, or today's United States anyway, could a decision by a sitting U.S. president to support what turned out to be a losing Olympic bid ignite such debate, prompt such insidious personal attacks and reveal such profound ignorance.”

A key factor in the loss, Mason says, “is an utter failure by the Chicago group to understand and appreciate the sometimes Byzantine politics of the Olympic movement.” Chicago got 18 votes in the first round and Mason reports that “an IOC member told me yesterday that 35 IOC delegates told Chicago officials that they'd voted for their city in the first round.” Hmmm.

Rush Limbaugh admires many aspects of Reaganism, but is especially animated by Reagan’s belief in American exceptionalism.

“Reagan rejected the notion among liberals and conservatives alike who, for different reasons, believed America was in a permanent state of decline…He had faith in the wisdom of the American people. . . . He knew America wasn’t perfect, but he also knew it was the most perfect of nations. Reagan was an advocate of Americanism.”

What wisdom of the American people???

American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 countries in math literacy, and their parents are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution; roughly 30 to 40 percent believe in each.

There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, (D-Tex) over the summer. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.

The best argument against so-called "intelligent design" has always been humanity itself. At a time when only 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution, and only 13 percent know what a molecule is, America is an argument for "substandard design."

But put aside the evolution debate which is only a symptom of something much deeper and more serious: an overwhelming nationwide illiteracy about science and math as a whole.

One-fifth of Americans still believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, instead of the other way around. And only about half know that humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs. (The Flintstones was not a documentary.)

If there was ever an argument against the universal franchise of democracy, America is that argument.

If you look at American politics overall (Sarah Palin et al), it’s like an insane asylum. And, America is being run by the inmates. Representative Joe Wilson in his famous “You lie,” attack against President Obama last month was clearly, demonstrably, irrefutably wrong in his assertion. But the result was increased support for him by constituents back in South Carolina. Most of the voters across the country are just as ill informed.

The fundamental failing in American democracy is an ill founded belief in egalitarianism—the belief that all citizens are equal. Before the law, this is ostensibly true, but in the voting booth it is demonstrably and tragically, false. (This is true in all democratic nations, but it is most damaging in the United States.)

The eventual failure of America was built-in from the start. The founding fathers were all intellectual products of the Enlightenment, an eighteenth century cultural mood that extolled the power of Reason over mysticism and religion. It turned out to be a false understanding of human nature. The founding fathers were correct in their initial denial of the franchise to the rank and file of people working in fields and factories across the new nation. To limit the franchise only to those holding property was not a guarantee that the electorate would be more intelligent, but at least it ensured that the electorate was more likely to be educated.

When I was in high school, I read a book called The Fate of Man by Harvard historian Crane Brinton. I lost the book decades ago but I found a copy again recently and reread it. At the beginning, what Brinton says jumps right out. He says:

“I think it is clear that not all human beings can think. Of course I use that word snobbishly, imprecisely—and usefully—to mean a particular kind of thinking, the kind of manipulation of ‘abstraction’ you and I are indulging ourselves in, thinking ‘philosophically.'” Brinton was talking about intellectuals, his readers, sharing ideas through the medium of his book. (I once proudly showed a very large tome to a friend and told her how great I thought it was. She said: "Do you know what I'd do with that book? I'd close it.)

Michael Ignatieff in Queens Photo: www.queensjournal.ca

When Michael Ignatieff was an historian at Harvard, and before he returned to his native Canada to go into politics, he described the intellectual in a 2000 CBC radio interview:

“An intellectual is not an academic. An intellectual is not a specialist. And an intellectual is not a journalist. We've got plenty of academics, plenty of specialists, plenty of journalists. What we don't have enough of are people who ask questions of principle, fundamental principles about political and moral issues and who put together general propositions from a host of different sources.