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How could anyone 'corner the market' on independent thinking or curiosity? If there are many on the right who fail to exhibit very much of these, it isn't because the left is somehow hogging the entire supply of them. Tell me where this premise that 'universities cloister their world view' (whatever that actually means) has been established such that anyone has to explain it? If universities actually cloistered their world view, nobody would know what it is. There are meanwhile conservatives all over the academy. Much of supply-side economics and all this recent property rights hullabaloo has come straight from a bunch of conservatives at the University of Chicago. The Hoover Institution is a part of Stanford. And by the way, how many liberals and atheists are on the faculty at Regent, Liberty, and the dozens of other Christian colleges around the country? Are these open institutions that encourage curiosity and independent thinking by presenting to students the full range of challenge offered by modern scholarship?
You may consider that if those on the right persist in putting up evidence that does not hold up under the rigors of examination and scrutiny (i.e., re Iraq, re global warming, re evolution, re various social issues), they are quite liable to earn themselves a reputation for shoddy thinking. If you wish to demonstrate that something is within your grasp -- grasp it!
Intellectualism is simply the desire to be educated and learn about the world. Any person who loves to read can be an intellectual.
Elitist are a group of people, especially rich who decide what is "high brow" or "low brow".
Golf is seen as a high brow sport as opposed to say lets say basketball or football- but there is nothing intristically "intellectual" or high class about it.
Elitism is basically "classism." Those with wealth and power gravitate towards certain activities and buy certain items.
In the media, especially talk radio, the hosts often mention "elitists", mostly in a negative way.
It is my opinion that many who criticize "the elite" are proudly and openly anti-intellectual, but prefer to descibe themselves as anti-elitist because it sounds more gallant.
I also think that when the ignorant encounter a point of view for which they can't produce a logical or reasonable counter-point, they will accuse others of being elitist.
Unfortunately, a significant segment of America's population is most certainly anti-intellectual, although they will not admit it. They are like bricks in the wall that hold back human progress.
What's your opinion?
No. Because an elitist is somebody who forms his set of values and imposes them upon others without really worrying if his values were welcome in the first place.
These people are typically the limousine liberals who grow up in privilege, attend Ivy League schools, and move from one insular bubble to the next without really ever meeting a blue collar worker, a minority, a Southerner, or any other constituency. Instead of actually meeting these people and understand what motivates them and what makes them tick, an elitist makes pronouncements based on what is usually sketchy knowledge. Or maybe they watched an independent film on the Sundance Channel, making them an expert on the subject at hand.
They view the world through the prism of a limousine window, speak of the area between the coasts as "flyover land", and disparage any view that doesn't sync with theirs as the product of bigotry or a lack of education--and that the people who hold differing views cannot possibly have good intentions, for elitists only can have noble and pure motivation.
Case in point? Obama's speech back in the Spring about working class people clinging to guns and religion in the face of change. That speech, in effect, was an incredible distillation of an elitist at work, a man who has never actually had a conversation with a shop-owner or a blue collar worker except while pressing the flesh. Yet he wants to speak for them. The problem with that is that the working class really distrusts a lot of the elitists ideals from a social standpoint, if not from an economic standpoint.
From pub's description:
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon--one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, she surveys an anti-rationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of "junk thought." Disdain for logic and evidence defines a pervasive malaise fostered by the mass media, triumphalist religious fundamentalism, mediocre public education, a dearth of fair-minded public intellectuals on the right and the left, and, above all, a lazy and credulous public.
Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the American addiction to infotainment--from television to the Web--and cites this toxic dependency as the major element distinguishing our current age of unreason from earlier outbreaks of American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. With reading on the decline and scientific and historical illiteracy on the rise, an increasingly ignorant public square is dominated by debased media-driven language and received opinion.
At this critical political juncture, nothing could be more important than recognizing the "overarching crisis of memory and knowledge" described in this impassioned, tough-minded book, which challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what the flights from reason has cost us as individuals and as a nation.
To be fair, America has always had a particular strain of anti-intellectualism. We are of course the home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Going a little farther back, President Andrew Jackson famously based much of his campaign on a backlash against what he believed was the elite intellectual class. This cumulated in probably one of the worst incidents in early US history; Jackson's response to the Worcester v. Georgia decision. Hell going even further back into Colonial America you get the Salem Witch Trials at a time when such superstitious nonsense was coming to an end in Europe.
But clearly modern America is strangely anti-intellectual given our status as one of the richest, most successful countries in the world. There is a huge gulf between the US and other modern industrialized countries. But we also have arguably the best higher education system in the world; our universities are really the envy of the world. I think it is a mixed bag in many ways. We have some of the best scientists, intellectuals, lawyers, doctors, etc but our country on average can be shockingly uneducated and ignorant. I guess it is understandable, given the fairly wide disparity in wealth and income in the US.
Intellectuals never get past the theoretical so when the rubber meets the road they are pretty much useless to society. They can theorize, criticize, ponder, envision and espouse but when it comes to "doin'" they don't have it in their DNA. That's why they gravitate to universities where they don't actually have to do anything outside of their little safe cocoon. The "little people" who make the world work, know this and mock them.
What?
Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, doctors, attorneys, teachers, etc.
Quite intellectual, quite the doers.
Nothing wrong with some education and action.
I'm really surprised that you are so anti-intellectual. Very strange to me.
To be fair, America has always had a particular strain of anti-intellectualism. We are of course the home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Going a little farther back, President Andrew Jackson famously based much of his campaign on a backlash against what he believed was the elite intellectual class. This cumulated in probably one of the worst incidents in early US history; Jackson's response to the Worcester v. Georgia decision. Hell going even further back into Colonial America you get the Salem Witch Trials at a time when such superstitious nonsense was coming to an end in Europe.
But clearly modern America is strangely anti-intellectual given our status as one of the richest, most successful countries in the world. There is a huge gulf between the US and other modern industrialized countries. But we also have arguably the best higher education system in the world; our universities are really the envy of the world. I think it is a mixed bag in many ways. We have some of the best scientists, intellectuals, lawyers, doctors, etc but our country on average can be shockingly uneducated and ignorant. I guess it is understandable, given the fairly wide disparity in wealth and income in the US.
Agreed. Think back to high school, and you'll probably have similar memories of the brainy kids getting picked on and the seemingly functionally retarded "bad boys" ruling the roost. Popularity was inversely proportional to grade quality. What is that, exactly? Do we celebrate mediocrity? Is it, as all "smart kids" like to think, simple jealousy?
There are important points to be made -- and perhaps Jacoby's book makes them -- about the costs and dangers of a growing ignorance and anti-rationalism. Those points are only underscored in a political environment that deliberately elevates ignorance and emotion while demeaning knowledge and rationalism. That's what leads to things like the simplistically foolish post quoted by <chielgirl> above, as well as to things like support for bone-headed ideas such as the invasion of Iraq. The costs of becoming an increasingly stupid society are not trivial...
This is nothing wrong with being an intellectual. To be anit-intellectual is just silly and makes you unable to adjust with different levels of idealogy and free thought. It is the elitist attitude that is the problem. For them to believe they are smarter or can run everyone life better then you is the elistist idealogy. It is better to be an intellectual that is humble when it comes to practicing your beliefs and those you interact with. It is better to have an informed nation then an uninformed nation.
A informed nation will never let the elite run their country.
We, as a society, do not celebrate meritocracy we celebrate stupidity. Just look at the tabloids. They are written in third grade English and make heroes of dysfunctional alcoholic druggies with big boobs and the dumb*** fools that squire them around. We do this because the brainless are fodder for the consumer economy and keep the doors of Wal-Mart open to sell the latest fad to the credulous.
When I was in the Navy I was accused many time of “acting smarter than us”. My usual response was “I’m not acting.” I have kept this attitude and am not about to change it.
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