@farmerman,
Quote:Theyll put up Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin to demonstrate their fierce support of anti-intellectualism
I understood that anti-intellectualism is popular in the US. I read Mr Hofstadter's book on the subject. And there are the evolution threads to consider. Leaving my self aside, as I do, anti-intellectualism is endemic on those threads. It is described in some detail in Mr Veblen's book The Higher Learning in America. And Mr Salinger's side-swipes at it.
Intellectuals are playful creatures. In a "get-up-and-go", upthrusting "noses-to-the-grindstone" economy intellectualism as a movement is no good.
Kids are intellectuals whether they are playing in a sand pit or stirring up the **** in the potty with Mom's wooden baking spoon. The one that's been handed down.
Education is designed to knock it out of them. It teaches them the common sense of "our heritage". As well it might. The US must do it best on evolutionary principles judged, at this time, as a success. Top Gun. Not the sort of evolutionary principles Mr Darwin understood, which are easy. He couldn't have imagined a billion dollars let alone flashing ten of them from New York to Tokyo with a submit button in 1/7th of a second.
Imagine, if you can, 301 million intellectuals in the US. The gas pumps would have to deliver to the Fair Sales Force guidelines correct to a milli-milli-milli gallon, (That sounds daft--A mixed imperial), and the ladies would all be in hiding seeing as they are all intellectuals.
And Mr Jindal is a Rhodes Scholar. And I hope you don't think that by asserting his anti-intellectualism you are laying claim to being an intellectual, your reverse invidious comparison trick, the RIC, because I'll back his intellectualism over your's any day of the week.