The problem is that k-12 is designed to kill the critical thinking ability so that nobody is taken aback by controls imposed on us, one of which is a political correctness. In addition, everybody is just afraid for the very valid reasons, except for few brave souls. We are done, it will continue going down to the hole that is used by other countries so unsuccessfully. k-12 system is getting progressively worse, magnitude of brainwash is increasing by the hour, and nobody dares to speak up. Those who do, get attacked by pack of wolves and dismissed by everybody on every political side and corner. The hole has a name, but again, I cannot speak up, I am a rabbit, like everybody else, I am afraid.
Good try, fc, but the whole article is nothing but political opinion of the author. Of course, everyone who disagrees with him is ignorant (aka, “anti-intellectual”). 
It applies to anyone you (and anyone who liked your post) thinks has a clue and and is intellectual. So, yes, it runs the gamut. For example, if you think the guy down the streets who believes he is horse is an intellectual, then it includes him too.
It also includes the whiny losers who think they get to determine that asking “Where you are from?” and “What music do you like?” are microaggression expressions of racism and hatred and all that other nonsense. No, I just want to get to know you better.
It has reached the point that the people who think they are intellectuals really just look and are acting like big babies whose psyches are so fragile that they can find offense in anything. And, if they find offense, then it must be wrong.
Even that article that started this thread is a self-annoted “intellectual” whining and complaining that others do not think like him and if you are not like him then you must be “anti-intellectual,” as Post #241 points out.
But here is the irony - if someone went around calling the article’s author names, he will scream and claim some offense and hatred toward him and want the name-caller censored - however, you cannot censor him. They are becoming a parody of themselves and just do not know it yet.
Who ever said the author was an intellectual. He certainly never did. He also never whined or complained that others didn’t think like him. Maybe you should go read the article again. He simply states that people who are unable to see both sides of an issue and have a reasonable debate are to blame for America’s troubles. He finds fault with people who have been essentially brainwashed into thinking one way and are unable to think for themselves.
In many of your posts on this and other threads you have complained about the same issues.
So, do you think that, overall, as a collective society, Americans are open minded?
Do you think they reasonably look at both sides of an issue?
Do you think they are informed enough about most issues to even understand the basics of the issue, let along the subtle nuances?
Judging by your previous posts I am thinking that you will answer no to most, if not all, of these questions, and that is all the author of the article is saying.
Maybe the author overreached in trying to make his point. Without dragging in climate change etc, it would have been more valuable to examine how the greatest country in the world (said without sarcasm) produced a young man as profoundly ignorant as Dylan Roof.
Anti-intellectualism is certainly part of it…a perverse contempt for education…and a narrowing of “trusted” sources of information on his part.
As writer Isaac Asimov once said: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
There was also on the Psych Today website this response to the OP’s article, written by a Christian college professor. Has some great discussion points for a college discussion forum…
Reading books is to study somebody else’s opinions. Not everybody likes it and enjoys it. Those, who despite of all school hard trying to kill their critical thinking, somehow are resilient enough to protect it and develop it further by analyzing constantly events around them, making logical pictures for themselves and making independent decisions in their lives. They do not know how to take it from the books, and they do not want to take it from the books.
But TV/Internet are boring, everybody just repeats everybody else, some kind of collective, singing in unison. There are very few independent voices out there and out of these few, there is a tiny number who is not afraid to actually utter out what they think, they know that they will be put down and condemned by all others who are scared to death for their own skin.
Not necessarily. Some books are written without noticeable bias and include a recitation of facts, sans the opinions.
I recently read a book that really got me thinking. It was called “History’s worst decisions, and the people who made them”. The fascinating part to me was trying to discern why each decision was made. Also, what were the effects both short and long term. There is everything from decisions made during war, to decisions made by the power brokers in various corporations.
One chapter dealt with the CIA and the coup it engineered in Iran to install the Shah in office. Another dealt with our decision to fund, and arm, our enemies in Afghanistan just because they were fighting the Russians, and the mentality that thought “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”.
Those of you who like to think independently and have a greater understanding of why people/countries make some of the big decisions that they make might enjoy it.
@tv4caster:
Books like that are a rarity, must books, especially about history, have biases. For example, with the Mohajeen in Afghanistan, I have seen historians who of a conservative bent who will tell you that we supported the Mohajeen to fight the Russians, then “left it to the Afghanies to figure out, our mission wasn’t nations building”. Likewise with the CIA and putting the Shah in power, there are those who say it was necessary to fight ‘soviet influence’ even to this day. So even in citing facts, the fact that the author for example said what we did in Afghanistan was a mistake is basically an opinion, since others could argue the fault was not with doing what they did, but other things;). Barbara Tuchman wrote a book like that, called The March of Folly, that detailed some classical historical blunders, the Renaissance Church and its failings that led to the reformation, the Trojan Horse/Trojan War, Vietnam and British policy towards the US that led to the revolution, it is interesting to read, even if you don’t agree.
But even science books have a POINT – to prove or disprove a thesis. Not to read books because they express an opinion, a bias or a point, is not to read, period.
@musicprnt That is certainly true. One person’s fact is another one’s fiction (or bias). I was thinking of some of the other books I have read, not necessarily the one I listed. Even then, I prefer to make my own decisions about whether something is biased or not. For example, did we leave “it to the Afghanies to figure out, our mission wasn’t nations building”? Maybe. Maybe not. Like many things it was probably a combination of factors. The decision makers at the time weighed what they thought were the plusses and minuses.
When I was thinking about books I had recently read, and whether they had any biases in them or not, I first thought of the story of J. Craig Ventner and the book about his attempts to sequence the human genome. Then I realized that even that could have sections that someone might think were biased: “Ventner decided to try to sequence the human genome to…”. Well, there might be someone who would think “BIAS! Ventner decided to sequence the human genome to make a fortune” or “Ventner really did what he did to feed his huge ego”. Who knows which one is correct. For all I know they all could have played a role but I really don’t care. I can make my own decisions (or not) and still enjoy the book anyway and the parts of it that I know are fact.
I cannot disagree with busdriver11 about the incivility, and those who with prop 8 turned to vandalism and attacked people or even stole the signs was wrong (by the way, busdriver11, during the prop 8 campaign, anti prop 8 signs mysteriously disappeared, too, and anti prop 8 activists were harassed, got threatening phone calls, death threats and so forth, so it wasn’t just the proponents). While I think that people losing their jobs is wrong (though to this date, I have only heard of one person who did so, Bernard Eich, the ex head of Mozilla, resigned because of his support of prop 8 and a backlash against the company, despite all the claims of right wing websites, I cannot find a claim on any website that documents real people being fired or losing their jobs, only Eich). More importantly, people lose their jobs all the time for being who they are, same sex couples who get married have been fired for getting married, and in most places, they have no job protection, being openly gay can get you fired a lot of places, even these days. People who work for Catholic associated hospitals and groups like Catholic Charities (which are NOT directly tied to the church) have been fired for being gay or being gay and getting married. Gay couples who belonged to churches, openly, have been asked to leave the church because they got legally married, that doesn’t exactly sound very civil, does it?
More importantly, before chiding the prop 8 opponents for what they did, take a look at what prop 8 proponents did. Mormon businessmen donated somewhere close to 40 million dollars to the pass prop 8 campaign, most of that money came from outside California. The Knights of Columbus spent several million dollars, money that supposedly goes to Charity, on the campaign. And a lot of it wasn’t simple “yes on 8” kind of thing, a lot of it was in vicious, disgusting attack ads, that had things like is you pass same sex marriage, your little kids will be forced to go to the bathrooms with adults, and will allow pedophiles to molest them. Others denigrated gays, arguing that this was just a cover for their agenda, which included marrying animals, marrying children, you name it. Does that sound like civic discourse to you? And those people who donated 100 bucks or whatever, they didn’t see the ads, they didn’t hear the rhetoric of supposedly "traditional family’ supporters they were sending their money to? Or did they see the ads and agree with them? Again, I don’t think anyone should face consequences, but it is also the pot calling the kettle black to whine about the way "traditional marriage proponents’ were treated, when ‘their side’ didn’t exactly treat the other side civilly.
a lot of the right wing sites complaining about what happened to prop 8 supporters focused on businesses, how they were boycotted and lost business and so forth because they supported proposition 8. So suddenly boycotts are evil, discriminatory, etc? So people for example refusing to do business with companies that did business with South Africa were ‘victimizing’ those companies? Boycotts are a form of speech, and if a business owner takes a stand, they are out there representing their business when they do what they do. More importantly, so when the religious right tried boycotts of companies like Ford Motor Company, Disney, IBM and other companies that promoted fair treatment of gay people? When conservatives used boycotts back in the 50’s to target companies they said were ‘communist fronts’ or used the threat to get actors and news people fired, that was okay? Boycotts are a form of speech, and a business owner who wants to make a stand, one that may be unpopular, is a fool if he thinks it won’t affect his business, it will, and always has.
I would love to see civility, too, but you see it all over, on both sides. Rachel Maddow and her like are vile, but then again, how about Sean Hannity, Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing talk brigade? How about Anne Coulter, she is civil? I realize these are celebrities who make a ton of money out of being bullies and so forth, but if you are going to call for civility, it means mutual respect. Words like “intellectual” and “liberal” have been turned into epithets, yet conservatives get their nose bent out of joint when words like ignorant, bigoted and nasty is assigned to ‘their’ side of things…
With the ‘democracy’ of proposition 8, the fact that so much money and organizing came from outside the state puts that in doubt. The ballot proposition itself was confusing (an old trick), and polls before the election showed people were against prop 8, and it barely passed if I recall correctly. With 50+ million dollars in spending from groups outside california, was that really the will of the people or a fantasy bought by outside money? Not to mention that ‘the democratic’ will of the people is notoriously fickle, and often ends up trampling on the rights of a minority, it is why we have courts in the first place.
As far as proponents of traditional marriage being bigots, technically they are, if they want their religious belief ensconced as law, that is a technical definition of bigotry, when because of your beliefs, you want to deny someone else something. The racists down south believed blacks were inferior and that as a group, blacks presented a threat to whites unless they were 'hemmed in". More importantly, if the traditional proponents of marriage were upset that marriage was being redefined, how come they never pushed to have legal recognition made civic unions for everyone, and leave marriage up to the churches? Some did, but very few, they wanted marriage as a legal term and deny it to same sex couples, and that showed the real reason for their displeasure, they wanted to deny legal recognition to gays that was worth something. If it was the term marriage, they should have been yelling and screaming to take marriage out of the law books, to make the term something churches used, instead of insisting that marriage be kept for straight people in the law and giving gays either nothing, or some watered down mess that didn’t count. Put it this way, the supporters of proposition 8 admitted in the Supreme Court that the basis for not legalizing same sex marriage was religious in nature, that there was no rational basis for the bans, which means it was bigotry to ban legal recognition of same sex marriage. On top of everything else, it also is tremendous arrogance, since a lot of faith groups, most jewish sects, many mainstream protestant groups, Wiccans, Buddhists, Quakers, and so forth, thought same sex marriage was fine, why should one faith groups religious views be law?
Musicprnt, how is Rachel Maddow vile? You may disagree with her, but she is unfailing polite to guests, never raises her voice and doesn’t interrupt them. How is that vile?
musicprnt, it’s just not that complicated. People shouldn’t be harassed, threatened, vandalized, in fear of losing their job or their life, for their opinion. Not in this country. No matter what side they choose on an issue. It doesn’t have to be defended and reasoned out infinitely because of other peoples bad behavior. It’s just wrong. Plain and simple as that.
The Mormons didn’t just bankroll the vast majority of funds concerning Prop 8, they bullied their own members into donating money and time for this cause. People were told they would be kicked out if they did not donate. A documentary was made about it. I was very surprised at how relatively quiet the LDS church was in the next big election. Maybe it was because Romney was running and they didn’t want to scare anyone.
Talk radio isn’t involved & the token supporter could be Rush Limbaugh and it wouldn’t matter to my point - which is a social uplift program that’s no more than a 50 year aid airlift can’t be deemed an intellectual solution to a problem, unless your talent pool’s deemed genius for being able to pour liquid from one boot to another. The effect of cash/benefits in lieu transfer aside, poverty rates are essentially unchanged. Humanitarian as all get out but neither a new idea nor a particularly deep one.
Yet they created the framework that saw the country survive and settle the issues they couldn’t… or didn’t, if your prefer. Never said they were omnipotent gods, just that their surviving record isn’t something today’s legal or social science intellectual stands much hope of besting. Not if the last 50 years is any indication.
Not being what passes for a historian around here, I have an honest question:
How many other countries suffered civil wars that can be laid entirely at the feet of slavery issues?
^ None that I’m aware of. Other countries dealt with the tension legislatively. Cf life of William Wilberforce. Other countries (Spain, for,example) had monarchs who dictated an end to enslavement of indigenous peoples.
^ I’m confused as to how it matters, whether it was “none” or “100”.
Thank you for your answer, hayden.