By Susan Harper
Reading the great documents of American history is a startling reminder of the kind of thinking that went on a couple of centuries ago. Our “new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” was created almost a century before those descriptive words were penned on the back of an envelope — created by committee, if you will, and in language so ringing and incisive that we still recite it today.
About our anti-intellectualism
Imagine crafting a constitution so broad and far-seeing that it could encompass our progress from transportation-by-horseback to rockets-into-outer-space — and with a mission statement (the preamble) that could condense all of the constitution’s goals into just a few majestic lines.
Yet our country has also had, from the beginning, an anti-intellectual streak as wide as the Mississippi — from the Puritan John Cotton, who wrote in 1642 that “the more learned and witty you become, the more fit to act for Satan will you be”; to the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s, an actual political party whose members replied “I know nothing” whenever they were asked a question, and who had gained 43 seats in Congress with this brilliant repartee by 1855; to the tea-bagger politics of today, in which candidates whose intelligence becomes apparent are labeled “brainacs” and “elitists.” For Republican senatorial candidate Tom Campbell, of California, the current anti-intellectual climate means that his intelligence and his policy expertise “now seem to be handicaps,” according to Connie Bruck of the New Yorker staff.
Mr. Campbell is running against Carly Fiorina. An advisor to John McCain in the 2008 elections, Ms. Fiorina said on national television toward the end of his campaign that Senator McCain would have been unable to run a major corporation — thus prompting, according to the book “Game Change,” one of the most famous whisper-shared comments of the campaign: “Carly will now disappear.” (If only.) The irony of her assessment of McCain was that she herself had just recently been kicked out as CEO of Hewlett Packard, with a record so dismal that one Wall Street analyst said, “Nobody liked her leadership much. The Street had lost all faith in her, and the market’s hope is that anyone will be better.”
Why does a country whose founding fathers had keen minds and formidable vocabularies demonstrate such deep misgivings with regard to intellect? A lot has been written about that — most famously a book in 1964 by Richard Hofstadter, who pointed out that our country was also founded on the hard work of farmers, laborers, and refugees whose educational opportunities had been limited. They mistrusted the fancy mental footwork and hifalutin’ language of smart politicians whom they could neither understand nor relate to.
Anti-intellectualism can keep us grounded in the realities of our life as a people, but it can also be a dangerous force. We have a lot of challenges to overcome right now, and common sense can tell us that common sense alone is not going to be enough. Quick! Bring on the brains! And educate the children!
Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers for the Commerce Library Board and the Jackson County Literacy Program.
Yet our country has also had, from the beginning, an anti-intellectual streak as wide as the Mississippi — from the Puritan John Cotton, who wrote in 1642 that “the more learned and witty you become, the more fit to act for Satan will you be”; to the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s, an actual political party whose members replied “I know nothing” whenever they were asked a question, and who had gained 43 seats in Congress with this brilliant repartee by 1855; to the tea-bagger politics of today, in which candidates whose intelligence becomes apparent are labeled “brainacs” and “elitists.” For Republican senatorial candidate Tom Campbell, of California, the current anti-intellectual climate means that his intelligence and his policy expertise “now seem to be handicaps,” according to Connie Bruck of the New Yorker staff.
Mr. Campbell is running against Carly Fiorina. An advisor to John McCain in the 2008 elections, Ms. Fiorina said on national television toward the end of his campaign that Senator McCain would have been unable to run a major corporation — thus prompting, according to the book “Game Change,” one of the most famous whisper-shared comments of the campaign: “Carly will now disappear.” (If only.) The irony of her assessment of McCain was that she herself had just recently been kicked out as CEO of Hewlett Packard, with a record so dismal that one Wall Street analyst said, “Nobody liked her leadership much. The Street had lost all faith in her, and the market’s hope is that anyone will be better.”
Why does a country whose founding fathers had keen minds and formidable vocabularies demonstrate such deep misgivings with regard to intellect? A lot has been written about that — most famously a book in 1964 by Richard Hofstadter, who pointed out that our country was also founded on the hard work of farmers, laborers, and refugees whose educational opportunities had been limited. They mistrusted the fancy mental footwork and hifalutin’ language of smart politicians whom they could neither understand nor relate to.
Anti-intellectualism can keep us grounded in the realities of our life as a people, but it can also be a dangerous force. We have a lot of challenges to overcome right now, and common sense can tell us that common sense alone is not going to be enough. Quick! Bring on the brains! And educate the children!
Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers for the Commerce Library Board and the Jackson County Literacy Program.
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