Ethics

Susan Jacoby on American Anti-Intellectualism

By Ed Brayton

Susan Jacoby of the Center for Inquiry has a new book, The Age of American Unreason, which argues that America is damaged not only by rampant ignorance but by a perverse pride taken in that ignorance that results from a deep strain of anti-intellectualism in our culture. In this she follows in the footsteps of Richard Hofstadter and agrees with one of the core ideas I have long argued about American culture. She has an op-ed piece in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that outlines some of the book's basic ideas, beginning:

Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing their hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on February 27, 2008 (boomark / email).