The Decline of the Intellectual

For the past decade, there has been an increasing divide between the highly educated and the barely graduate (if even that) classes in America. We all see this in the consistent push by the Republican party to sneer at elites and intellectuals as a method of gaining popular support.

Today's New York Times has an article by David Brooks called "The Class War Before Palin" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin), which provides a succinct description of the evolution from what he describes as "disdain for liberal intellectuals" to a denigration of educated Americans as a whole. Now, Mr. Brooks is the Times' conservative columnist and represents traditional Republican values, not those mired in moral politics but those concerned with fiscal conservatism and small govenments (lets not be deceived that the McCain/Palin ticket stands for either of these latter values), and his criticism of the Republican party comes of as far more weighty than many other liberal columnists' work would.

I have bemoaned for a long time this anti-education push in American politics and society. It's antithetical to the values of a country which prizes ambition and progress. Reading the responses to the column, I found one which accurately pinpointed the unfortunate consequence of this class battle:

"What a pity, indeed, that the Republican party, as a result of this sort of truculence, has alienated thinking people, even as it devoted itself to the destruction of its unthinking allies' lives, as the last week has shown. Proud and defiant ignorance may win votes among the ignorant--they identify with it-- but it hasn't done much for their pensions, mortgages, or their children's futures. The current administration, whose titular head shows an arrogant lack of curiosity and contempt for any intellectual endeavor, has sold the American people down the river for generations to come, by appealing to the stupidest among them. The Founding Fathers didn't envision government by the most easily duped; as a result we are now rather worse off than some South American countries we were used to describe as tin-pot dictatorships. We are now a whole nation that is owned by the company store.--M Carter, Endicott, NY"

I also want to point out that Republicans are very hypocritical about their stance on the educated class, sneering at candidates who are well-educated and pushing their "ordinari-ness" and simultaneously proclaiming America as a technologically superior nation during Presidential debates etc. It's not Joe Sixpack who is achieving the breakthroughs which have made America a leader in scientific discovery, nor who has caused American scientists to be the most frequent recipients of Nobel prizes, nor made America the location where science students flock to for the best possible higher education in the world.

The Republican Pary is no longer the same party as founded by William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman and no longer the one that follows the values of Edmund Burke. It's high time conservative intellectuals accept that fact and distinguish themselves from the religious conservative right that has taken over the Republican party.