The Killing of Intellectualism and What It Means for the Practice of Politics

[AthenaAwakened]

Rational argument supported by facts did not lead to sound societal decisions, Buckley claimed; it led people astray. Christianity and an economy based on untrammeled individualism were truths that should not be questioned. Impartial debate based in empirical facts was dangerous because it led people toward secularism and collectivism—both bad by definition, according to Buckley. Instead of engaging in rational argument, Buckley insisted, thinkers must stand firm on what he called a new “value orthodoxy” that indoctrinated people to understand that Christianity and economic individualism were absolute truths. Maintaining that faith in reasoned debate was a worse “superstition” than the Enlightenment had set out to replace, Buckley launched an intellectual war to replace the principle of academic inquiry with a Christian and individualist ideology.

Buckley’s radical idea didn’t go far at first, but Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy provided a new rhetorical tool to advance the Yalie’s intellectual premise. In the early 1950s, McCarthy revealed the power of the outrageous lie. He sought to gain power by claiming to defend Christianity and individualism from the secret plots of the godless Communists in the American government. Since he had no evidence to support his crusade, he replaced substantiated arguments with outrageous accusations designed to grab headlines and rile voters. There were 205 Communists in the State Department, he trumpeted, or maybe there were 57 “card carrying Communists” there: after newspapers reported his attacks, McCarthy quickly moved on to new accusations. By the time fact-checkers condemned his statements, new headlines made the corrections old news. McCarthy’s hit-and-run smears suggested that a compelling lie could convince voters so long as it fit a larger narrative of good and evil.

In the same year that McCarthy self-destructed in front of a national TV audience during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Buckley and his brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell turned Buckley’s ideological stand against academic inquiry into just such a narrative. In their telling, a few brave men were standing against an evil majority trying to destroy America. Their “McCarthy and His Enemies” (1954) conflated Soviet-style communism with the popular New Deal consensus. They claimed that Liberals—a name they capitalized to suggest an organized political group—were forcing communism on America. Opposing this cabal were “Conservatives,” who stood for God and individualism. Until they converted it into a capitalized label, conservatism was understood to be a political philosophy that embraced popular programs that had been proven to work–like the New Deal— and rejected radical political experiments based on ideology. Movement Conservatives coopted the word “conservative” to do exactly what traditional conservatives opposed: advance a radical program. “Movement” Conservatives rejected the American consensus. They wanted to purge the country of the Liberals who made up the majority and create a new “orthodoxy” based on the ideology of strict Christianity and individualism.

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/01/its...o f_conservatives_decades_long_war_on_truth/

This was epitomized by the recent National Review story by Charles C. W. Cooke titled “Smarter Than Thou” in which he fussed and whined about “the extraordinarily puffed-up ‘nerd’ culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States.” An illustration of the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson graced the cover, drawn to look self-satisfied, even though deGrasse Tyson hardly gives off that vibe in real life.
Cooke’s actual article more than lives up to the cover art’s promise of the green-eyed monster unleashed, as he expands his attack beyond one of the country’s preeminent scientists to include policy-oriented journalists, economists, other scientists, and “anybody who conforms to the Left’s social and moral precepts while wearing glasses and babbling about statistics.”

Of course, realizing that he’s issuing a broadside against anyone who dares to actually do things like examine evidence or consider the logic of an argument, he hastens to add, “The pose is, of course, little more than a ruse — most of our professional ‘nerds’ being, like Mrs. Doubtfire, stereotypical facsimiles of the real thing.” Instead, he argues that it’s all a pose and all these people are just dummies who are pretending to be smart because they are “popular kids indulging in a fad.”

Cooke knows that calling Tyson a poseur is a stretch even his extraordinarily gullible audience won’t buy, so be grudgingly admits that Tyson “has formal scientific training,” though he doesn’t go so far as to allow that the director of the Hayden Planetarium is actually, you know, a scientist and not just some hipster in a lab coat costume. But he simply straight up denies that any of the other people he mentions—including Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman or evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins—should be considered the real deal. Instead, he argues, the emphasis amongst liberals on things like evidence, rationality, and empiricism is purely insincere, nothing more than a way to signal that you are better than “southern, politically conservative, culturally traditional” types.

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/31/why... e_rights_anti_intellectual_paranoia_partner/

 

[TV and credit cards]

Youth is viewed as to their purchasing power: A teet to be milked.
Who would hire those without critical thinking skills? That will be your pool to select from. It's the long game. It's always the long game, goddammit!
Removal of civil disobedience from text. Solution: Create more.
The Koch brothers bought a business school to teach their curriculum. When in history has this ever happened? When hasn't it?
That's “the extraordinarily puffed-up ‘nerd’ culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States.” with money and power, motherfucker.
But fear not. Money is the one ring to rule them all.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Altruism is a misnomer.

 

[Derec]

The issue of critical thinking and anti-intellectualism would have been much more interesting and valid if it was at least attempted to be discussed in a non-partisan manner. The way it was presented by Papantonio was that anything left-wingers believe in is intellectual, anything else is anti-intellectual.