{"quotes":[{"text":"The problem arises when a society respects its scholars lesser and lesser and replaces intellectualism with anti-intellectualism. Such society forces the most intellectual members of its, toward alienation and instead develops populism and irrationalism and then calls it anti-elitism. On the other hand, scholars, due to being undermined by the society, find any effort hopeless and isolate themselves into their work. For a scholar, personally, nothing changes because the scholar always is a scholar no matter having someone to share the knowledge with or not, but the true problem forms in the most ordinary sections of the society, which eventually creates an opportunity for propaganda, conspiracy theories, rhetoric, and bogus.","author":"Kambiz Shabankare","tags":["alienation","anti-elitism","anti-intellectualism","bogus","conspiracy","conspiracy-theories","intellectual","intellectualism","irrationalism","knowledge","problem","propaganda","respect","rhetoric","scholar","scholars","society","undermined"],"id":9115,"author_id":"Kambiz+Shabankare"},{"text":"The older America, until the 1890s and in some respects until 1914, was wrapped in the security of continental isolation, village society, the Protestant denominations, and a flourishing industrial capitalism. But reluctantly, year by year, over several decades, it has been drawn into the twentieth century and forced to cope with its unpleasant realities: first the incursions of cosmopolitanism and skepticism, then the disappearance of American isolation and easy military security, the collapse of traditional capitalism and its supplementation by a centralized welfare state, finally the unrelenting costs and stringencies of the Second World War, the Korean War, and the cold war. As a consequence, the heartland of America, filled with people who are often fundamentalist in religion, nativist in prejudice, isolationist in foreign policy, and conservative in economics, has constantly rumbled with an underground revolt against all these tormenting manifestations of our modern predicament.","author":"Richard Hofstadter","tags":["anti-intellectualism","history","intellectual","intellectualism","politics","politics-of-the-united-states","united-states-history"],"id":27703,"author_id":"Richard+Hofstadter"},{"text":"Anti-intellectualism is virtually our civic religion. 'Critical thinking' may be a ubiquitous educational slogan—a vaguely defined skill we hope our children pick up on the way to adulthood—but the rewards for not using your intelligence are immediate and abundant.","author":"A.O. Scott","tags":["anti-intellectualism","criticism"],"id":74060,"author_id":"A.O.+Scott"},{"text":"If mind is seen not as a threat but as a guide to emotion, if intellect is seen neither as a guarantee of character nor as an inevitable danger to it, if theory is conceived as something serviceable but not necessarily subordinate or inferior to practice, and if our democratic aspirations are defined in such realistic and defensible terms as to admit of excellence, all these supposed antagonisms lose their force.","author":"Richard Hofstadter","tags":["anti-intellectualism","character","democracy","intellectual","intellectualism","intellectuals","sentimentality"],"id":100666,"author_id":"Richard+Hofstadter"},{"text":"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.","author":"Isaac Asimov","tags":["anti-intellectualism","cult","culture","democracy","ignorance","intellectual","political","politics","united-states","willful-ignorance"],"id":156841,"author_id":"Isaac+Asimov"},{"text":"In a neurotic society, insane ideas can become 'normal', the current triumph of tribalism is the result of rabid global anti-intellectualism.","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["anti-intellectualism","insanity"],"id":184848,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"},{"text":"Finally, the work of the minister tended to be judged by his success in a single area - the saving of souls in measurable numbers. The local minister was judged either by his charismatic powers or by his ability to prepare his congregation for the preaching of some itinerant ministerial charmer who would really awaken its members. The 'star' system prevailed in religion before it reached the theater. As the evangelical impulse became more widespread and more dominant, the selection and training of ministers was increasingly shaped by the revivalist criterion of ministerial merit. The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter. Theological education itself became more instrumental. Simple dogmatic formulations were considered sufficient. In considerable measure the churches withdrew from intellectual encounters with the secular world, gave up the idea that religion is a part of the whole life of intellectual experience, and often abandoned the field of rational studies on the assumption that they were the natural province of science alone. By 1853 an outstanding clergyman complained that there was 'an impression, somewhat general, that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety, and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect.","author":"Richard Hofstadter","tags":["anti-intellectualism","christianity","church","evangelicalism","evangelism","great-awakening","ministry","pastors","revivalism"],"id":275236,"author_id":"Richard+Hofstadter"},{"text":"Drilling without thinking has of course been Republican party policy since May 2008. With gas prices soaring to unprecedented heights, that's when the conservative leader Newt Gingrich unveiled the slogan 'Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less'—with an emphasis on the now. The wildly popular campaign was a cry against caution, against study, against measured action. In Gingrich's telling, drilling at home wherever the oil and gas might be—locked in Rocky Mountain shale, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and deep offshore—was a surefire way to lower the price at the pump, create jobs, and kick Arab ass all at once. In the face of this triple win, caring about the environment was for sissies: as senator Mitch McConnell put it, 'in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas, they think oil rigs are pretty'. By the time the infamous 'Drill Baby Drill' Republican national convention rolled around, the party base was in such a frenzy for US-made fossil fuels, they would have bored under the convention floor if someone had brought a big enough drill.","author":"Naomi Klein","tags":["2008","2008-in-united-states","2008-rnc","alabama","anti-arabism","anti-intellectualism","arabs","arctic-national-wildlife-refuge","deepwater-horizon-oil-spill","drill-baby-drill","drilling-rigs","employment","environment","environmentalism","fossil-fuels","louisiana","may-2008","mississippi","mitch-mcconnell","natural-gas-prices","newt-gingrich","offshore-drilling","offshore-oil-gas-in-us","oil-platforms","oil-rigs","oil-wells","petroleum-industry","political-campaign","republican-national-convention","republican-party-us","rocky-mountains","shale-gas","shales","slogans","texas","united-states-senate","us-offshore-drilling-debate"],"id":282356,"author_id":"Naomi+Klein"},{"text":"When libertarian sentiments take a populist form, it looks like this: a mix of anger, fear, anti-intellectualism, and fierce government hostility. Welcome to the Tea Party movement.","author":"David Niose","tags":["american-politics","anti-intellectualism","libertarian","libertarianism","neoconservatism","politics","populism"],"id":283193,"author_id":"David+Niose"},{"text":"High culture can never be obliterated as long as the species continues to produce individuals with the inclination and fortitude to pursue their interests and talents against the grain of the mass culture surrounding them.","author":"Susan Jacoby","tags":["anti-intellectualism","infotainment","intelligence"],"id":333155,"author_id":"Susan+Jacoby"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":15,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}