“Americans are in serious intellectual trouble, in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations. (Susan Jacobs, The Week, February 29th, 2008).

Ignorant about science, art, history and geography, Americans are generally proud of their ignorance, labeling anyone who has a command of the English language, or (horrors!) speaking a foreign one, an “elitist”. If the Republicans want to destroy an opposing candidate they rejoice in accusing him or her of being an “elitist”, and the sad thing is that usually they win the argument. Few in America appreciate literature, reading books or even newspapers, and many would recoil at the vocabulary used on the blog. Somebody ( I forget who) described the United States as the quintessential working class nation. This may be so, but it used to be the case that the working classes everywhere in the West regarded knowledge and education as a passport out of poverty or relative poverty.  It seems this fine aspiration is fading. You now have 1 out of 5 Americans believing that the sun moves round the Earth, that the earth was created 6000 years ago and that dynosaurs are invented by scientists.

The know-nothing culture is fueled by the rise of the video image, which damages the vocabulary, the attention span and the concentration. Studies have shown that TV and video are rendering a new generation gormless and dumb – – and no one in authority dare comment on it for fear of losing their jobs.

How long will it be before Americans can no longer launch a rocket to the moon or anywhere else, let alone lead the world in scientific research?  Meanwhile the toxic brew of anti-rationalism and pride in ignorance makes public discussion of foreign policy increasingly problematic.  The current debate between Obama and McCain is a fine example.  We should all be ashamed (of course we should talk to our enemies!).  We are not.