Are Americans hostile to knowledge?

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A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Featured Topic | Posted 1 year 19 weeks ago

Are Americans hostile to knowledge?

A new book argues that Americans aren't just blissfully ignorant, they're actively, happily, unabashedly ignorant. "The Age of American Unreason," by Susan Jacoby, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology, emotion, or ideology. But Jacoby says that too many Americans now think that scientific, civic and cultural knowledge doesn't matter.

Are Americans dumber than ever? Or is ignorance just a fact of American life?

Ben likes: The stupid party?

James Ceaser/The Weekly Standard

Today, the Democratic party mainstream has its values, its instincts, and, as usual, more than its share of 10-point programs. It even has its "isms," represented by its leading troika: the pragmatism of Hillary Clinton, the idealism of Barack Obama, and the populism of John Edwards. Yet its intellectual reservoir has shown itself to be lacking in depth and confidence. Today's Democratic mainstream is no more willing or able to stand up to the party's present leftist insurgency than the older mainstream was to stand up to the New Left. The tenor of the current left is best captured by something Lionel Trilling said in 1949 about conservatives: They do not "express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas."

Joel likes: The dumbing of America

Susan Jacoby/The Washington Post

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a "change election," the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.