(HOST) Vermont Humanities Council Executive Director and VPR Commentator Peter Gilbert recently went back and read a classic book that remains as thought-provoking today as it was when it was published 45 years ago.
(GILBERT) In his 1964 Pulitzer Prize-winning classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, the distinguished historian Richard Hofstadter explores that fascinating theme in our culture – which, he notes, is older than the nation itself.
The roots of anti-intellectualism in America are many and complex, but, in summary, Hofstadter emphasizes four: the values and culture of democracy, egalitarianism, business, and evangelicalism.
He asserts first and foremost that anti-intellectualism is rooted in our country’s democratic institutions and egalitarian sentiments. He examines the Jacksonian movement, which, he says, was spurred by a distrust of expertise, a dislike of centralization, a desire to uproot the entrenched classes, and the fundamental notion that crucial governmental functions are actually simple enough to be performed by the average citizen. During the 1828 presidential campaign, Andrew Jackson was seen as a man of the people, a man of action, someone who had, according to Jacksonian literature, "practical common sense . . . more valuable than all the acquired learning of the sage." In contrast, the learning of his more intellectual opponent, incumbent John Quincy Adams, was seen as a detriment. Jackson beat Adams in a landslide.
Hofstadter argues that the world of business also plays a role here. Americans have long prided themselves as being doers, builders of bridges and railroads, conquerors of a continent – a practical people, energetic, ambitious, impatient. Even back in the early 1800s, de Tocqueville noted that the emphasis in American business on constant action put a premium on quick decisions, the rough and ready mind, and the intuitive leader over the deliberative, thoughtful approach. Americans have long been more fond of the so-called "wisdom of intuition," which is deemed to be natural or God-given, than we are of rationality and learning, which are cultivated and artificial.
Another root of anti-intellectualism, according to Hofstadter, is our religious history. Evangelical religion, he argues, relates more to the heart than it does to the rational mind. Over time, he asserts, "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." Forty-five years ago, he wrote that "in modern [American] culture the evangelical movement has been the most powerful carrier of this kind of religious anti-intellectualism."
Hofstadter acknowledges that those who are fearful of intellect have cause to be: thinking and intellect are, in a way, dangerous. If we start thinking deeply about things, he notes, there’s no way to know what facets of the status quo or one’s own deeply held assumptions might be challenged, including political, social, economic, religious, and scientific sacred cows. A threatening prospect indeed.