Is Anti-intellectualism To Blame For America's Problems?

Parent Cafe
281

@awcntdb - why not get rid of seat belts and just pretend that we can all drive perfectly? Because we can’t.

I also question your numbers regarding recent immigrants. Where I used to live, teen pregnancy and crime were big problems among recent immigrants and their children. Not many went on to college. These were Latino immigrants, largely from Central America. Do they count or not? I feel like you are romanticizing immigrants and there are many who are quite motivated and do well but their success should be used as a good example, not as a bludgeon on everyone else.

282

@busdriver11:
I cannot disagree with your last post, I think people should be able to express positions, and not fear violence or vandalism or being killed, death threats are not acceptable, nor is wrecking a car, a home, or for that matter someone’s business (talking physically harming it).

However, in terms of jobs, we work in a country where in most places, people live in right to work areas, which means employers can fire you for almost anything, as long as it doesn’t violate laws in place, and laws don’t cover free speech in the workplace. People are fired for posting stuff on facebook, people are fired because the boss doesn’t like gay people or the idea of gay people marrying, so they get fired. Activists for various causes over the years have been fired from jobs, anti segregation people were fired down south, people have been fired for supporting a political candidate the boss doesn’t like, companies have outright made statements that unless the employees vote X way, they will be fired,it happens.Arguing people shouldn’t be fired for what they support or stand for is all nice and good, but that is not a reality. Especially as with the case of someone like Eich who worked for a company in a sector known for being diverse and inclusive, having a CEO come out against same sex marriage could be considered harmful to the company’s business. Put it this way, if an executive of Koch Industries came out and said global warming was man made, how fast do you think he would be fired?

Same with boycotts, boycotts are a form of speech, too,. and have been used by all kinds of groups when they are displeased with something. If same sex marriage supporters for example noted the businesses and businessmen who supported prop 8 and people used the boycott to show their displeasure with what they were doing. People did that with companies with ties to South Africa, they did it with companies with labor practices they felt were unfair, the religious right tried boycotts against companies like Ford and Disney for openly supporting LGBT people.

This comes back to my original point, that someone who makes a stand, voices an opinion, cannot expect there not to be consequences. While violence and physical intimidation and bullying and death threats and vandalism are not or should not be a logical consequence of speaking out, you also cannot assume you are doing so in a vacuum. The liberal person in God’s little acre who owns the local dry cleaning store who advocates for Gun Control isn’t going to be very popular with some and will probably lose business, it is the way things happen, the person who advocates putting gays in concentration camps wouldn’t be very popular in San Francisco and would face consequences if they owned a business. I have heard the complaints about donors names being public, but there is a reason for that and it covers anyone who donates to anything, it is to stop abuses of the law covering how much you can donate to campaigns like these and stops them from being hijacked by a few wealthy people and so forth. Many of the people complaining about losing jobs (which, by the way, I can find no credible examples of anyone losing their job over supporting prop 8, other than Eich, groups like the Heritage foundation and Newsmax claim this, but can’t cite specific examples other than EIC) are hypocrites, because they don’t bother reading the news and seeing all the cases where people who, for example, get legally married and get fired, gays and lesbians who come out and are fired for that, people who are fired for writing something on social media, they want to ‘have the strength of their beliefs’ but don’t want to pay the very real consequences for it yet are amazingly quiet when it happens to other. Put it this way, if tomorrow I introduced legislation nationally that forbid employers from firing employees for their political speech and so forth, want to be how long it lasts before being scream down by right wing talk radio and the like for being ‘socialism’ or 'anti business?".

283

I have trouble with the term “anti-intellectualism.” For the author of the linked piece, anti-intellectualism is synonymous with religion, and the assumption is that you can’t be intellectual and religious at the same time (obviously the author is unfamiliar with, say, Kierkegaard or St. Thomas Aquinas). What he really means by “intellectual,” I think, is scientific-rationalist. I find it funny that’s he’s publishing in Psychology Today, which isn’t a very intellectual forum (associated as it is with the vulgarization of social science studies). Psychology itself, like sociology, economics. political science and the rest of the “social sciences,” is really more a branch of philosophy than of natural science, even though it attempts to use the scientific method to derive laws of human behavior that it wants us to accept as much as we accept the laws of physics.

The history of the past century was soaked in blood because of ideas dreamed up by intellectuals sitting in libraries and conference rooms. Some of these bad ideas were pseudo-scientific (i.e. eugenics) and others were political (i.e. Marxism). I think a little pragmatic skepticism is well-warranted from the public when we are told that we are just too dumb to understand what the social science experts have in mind for us.

284

@awcntdb In commenting on teen pregnancies and the IUD problem you say that

So who are these “certain groups” that you say make bad choices and are “waiting for others to solve their problems” and “need other people’s money to stop them from having kids as teenagers and making bad choices” and who “don’t get proper training at home”. Who is it that have “fundamental destructive behaviors that are part of the larger problematic culture”?

Well, you answer that question in a subsequent paragraph when you say

[quote]
It is too depressing to give the stat for the black kids who are interns at the same time and who have the same opportunity to intern from the same poor high school and represents just over 35% of our interns. Same neighborhood, same schools, and all too predictable outcomes based on their familes. (sic)/quote

So now your quotes become:

Nice racist views.

285

NJSue, while I largely agree with your post, I do have a comment about your last line. I don’t see social scientists pushing eugenics as a good example of social science in general. For one, the first is not science at all. I also fail to see how a healthy skepticism (or adherence to rules of science) can dismiss the results of the IUD experiment in Colorado. Is that what intellectuals do? Apply critical skills to differentiate between the one and the other? If so, we should have way more intellectuals in our society.

286

That is not true. The author gives a couple of examples of fundamentalist religious views as being anti-intellectualism (AA). He does not say they are the only ones who are AA. He also never says (or even implies) that you can’t be intellectual and religious at the same time.

I am curious why you would take 2 small examples and extrapolate them to the author linking religion with AAism. Why didn’t you use the example of the Senator and say that the author claims that all of Congress is synonymous with AAism?

287

Probably better to take it and use it to improve the US infrastructure.

288

“That is not true. The author gives a couple of examples of fundamentalist religious views as being anti-intellectualism (AA). He does not say they are the only ones who are AA. He also never says (or even implies) that you can’t be intellectual and religious at the same time”

Don’t you know who the author is? Do you think he’s just some unbiased guy who has no axe to grind against religion, and is just laying out a rational case against a few extremists?

289

@busdriver11 ^^^I have no idea who he is. I am only basing my comments on this article.

290

In general, if the intellectual definition of racist is to point that certain behaviors are destructive and harmful to a community or a society, then OK, I am guilty as charged.

Note the post did not say that the people’s behaviors are not destructive and harmful to them or society in general. Of course not, as that cannot be disputed. However, the intellectual meme is cannot say the truth openly. Or, even more nonsensical, if you are not of the same skin color, you must look the other way and mention it.

It does beg the following questions - how can one help anyone if: 1) cannot openly acknowledge their problems, and 2) cannot openly tell them which behaviors are destructive to them and to their ability to join mainstream society? May explain why none of the intellectual social program solutions ever work really, except on the edges - they never acknowledge or address the fundamental issue.

And this post is case in point why there will always be those who are dependent on others and will never get out of the destructive cycle they are in - the tact is to call others racist who point out behaviors and culture, which are antithetical to societal advancement.

I am consistent in that I do use my money to support my racist views. I made sure couple decades ago my company stopped giving any donations to public-private partnerships that just kept feeding the problems. Instead, we back a wonderful all-black catholic school where the kids, from the same bad neighborhood, excel like no one’s business. 90% go on to college and teenage pregnancy rate are like 1 every couple years, a rate of under 0.5% as opposed to 50%+ where they live. And maintain at least a 3.3 and the kids do not have to worry about college costs. That school is doing wonders, and I and my racist self love being on its board. I joined that school only because they were openly saying exactly what I was, as well.

Therefore, yes, if understanding what attitudes and behaviors do not work to the benefit of a community and openly stating as much is considered racist, then put me down as #1 racist on the list.

291

My problem isn’t that you point out destructive behaviors of certain groups. I actually agree with you on much of post #289. My problem is that you seem to blame only 1 group of people when there other groups with similar problems and statistics etc. I would have to look it up to double check but I seem to remember that the poor in general have teen pregnancy rates and college attendance rates that are pretty consistent across racial lines.

Edited to add: I just looked up the teen pregnancy rates and Hispanics actually have higher teen pregnancy rates than blacks. Again, my problem wasn’t pointing out destructive behaviors, but limiting your implications to one particular group.

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“busdriver11 ^^^I have no idea who he is. I am only basing my comments on this article.”

David Niose is one of the more visible atheists around. He is an attorney who spends his time litigating things such as trying to get “Under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, and launching billboard campaigns that advertise, “Yes, Virginia, there is no god”. He has been the president of the American Humanist Association, and the Secular Coalition for America. Agree with him on those endeavors or not, but understand that he is not coming from a neutral background that just objects to religious extremism, but any visible display or indication of religion. He believes that progressive goals cannot be accomplished because of the religious right. He is the legal director of the AHA. This is his occupation, and his obsession.

293

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/income-inequality-and-teenage-pregnancy/?_r=0

More proof that @awcntdb 's original post that I labeled as racist would have been more accurate if he had changes the word “blacks” to “poor teens”.

294

It’s their own fault, TV4caster, for not being able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. (Never mind that they’re too poor for boots. Minor point from some suspect social science report.)

295

Would that be the post that you rewrote to replace phrases like “some groups” and “certain native born American populations” with “black?”

296

Yes it would. The one where he started with words like you quoted (eg some groups, etc), but then in his summary changed those words to “blacks”.

297

^^^
He works with at-risk kids in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. Why wouldn’t he draw from that experience when providing an example? Seems to me you’re really stretching to play the race card here, but whatever.

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I don’t think a black reader would characterize it as “stretching.” Just calling a spade a spade, since the conclusion was pretty obvious.

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Ah yes. The evil man who spends his time and money helping African-American children get a better education so they can get out of poverty. How dare he point out the obvious connections between things like teen pregnancy and poverty! You have a curious definition of racism. It wouldn’t surprise me if awcntdb has done more to help the African-American community than you or TV4caster ever will.

300

(Smile.) A gentle reminder that you don’t know me. You have no idea what I do, for the AA community, or otherwise. You know that saying “when you assume you make an ass of you and me”? Hint: I’m not an ass.

And now I await a post in which you’ll tell us what YOU do for the African American community.