America: Land Of The Free, Home Of The Anti-Intellectual

The surest way for an American to draw the suspicions of his compatriots—short of the commission of some heinous crime—is to develop an intellect whose existence he does not attempt to hide. A person of intellect need not flaunt his intelligence to elicit the ire of others; it is simply enough to let others know he possesses it. For not only is anti-intellectualism a rampant force in the country’s social and political circles, it is proudly practiced by its adherents. When a Palin denounces the president for being a “Professor-in-Chief” to uproarious applause, we know full well what is occurring in that sorry scene. In American politics education is not an asset but a liability, and strangely, good educations must be ignored or explained away by the candidates who have them. Bush the Younger was not elected because he was a good orator or because he came across as intelligent, or because he went to Yale and Harvard. He was elected because he was not a good orator and did not come across as intelligent. It was as if he had no instruction at an institution of higher learning whatsoever. As such, Bush was the quintessential American candidate: a Christian everyman, a politician without any intellectual baggage, and a man of fixed convictions who was incapable of seeing shades of gray, let alone green.

Like the European feudal lords who feared the potential ramifications of Gutenberg’s press, Americans give intellectualism all the due reverence of an influenza virus. To them it is an unfortunate fact of life and a potentially serious condition. It cannot be eradicated, and so it is recommended that the most vulnerable are vaccinated against its dangerous effects. In order to achieve this, the American is taught, as soon as she is able to comprehend and speak, that her country is god’s gift to humanity. To say otherwise is heresy, which is why—by this criterion—the universities are littered with apostates of the Americanist religion.

But are they? Without question, liberalism is the dominant ideology on American campuses of higher education. As polls consistently demonstrate, the more education one has, the more liberal he is likely to be. There are several reasons for this, but chief among them is the propensity of universities to teach students nuance and to refrain from drawing simplistic conclusions of an either-or variety. A competent professor of political science or history does not teach that the United States is wholly good while its enemies are wholly evil. Although this is a core principle of Americanism, these distinctions are not intellectually serious. Indeed, such rhetoric is common in the public discourse, and the dialogue always suffers immeasurably because of it. The American cannot examine a foreign policy question divorced from moral considerations. His inner puritan will not allow it. Thus it should come as no surprise that he regards American foreign policy as only motivated by the loftiest of intentions. Gott mit uns, always. And when some foreign venture fails miserably, such as the debacle in Southeast Asia or some other place Americans cannot locate on a map, it is due to some problem with Them, and not Us. As one bombastic television personality put it years later, “The South Vietnamese didn’t fight for their freedom.” Apparently, it matters not that the South Vietnamese were busy being bombed, sprayed with Agent Orange, and rounded up into concentration camps called “strategic hamlets,” by the Americans. According to Americanism, if the United States ever fails, it is most likely due to a foreign culprit.

Despite the perception that the universities are incubators for anti-Americanism, they are often the source for reinforcing the inherently honorable nature of the American state. The phrase “American Exceptionalism” entered the public discussion during the 2008 presidential campaign in a few fleeting references. However, a rather significant contingent of university professors fervently believes in this ethnocentric doctrine which, despite its presentation as a novel theory, is as old as the oldest empire in the annals of history. There are many ways in which America is “exceptional,” just as there are many ways in which France and Brazil and Indonesia are “exceptional.” But the proponent of American Exceptionalism means something more specific (but still nonetheless vague)—that the United States holds a special place among nations in world history with its commitment to republican values and its benevolent foreign policy designed to free the unfree from the treacheries of tyranny.

Any honest American with a modicum of sense will immediately see the self-serving nature of this doctrine. Second, she will recognize that the reality of American history fights this theory every step of the way. The Founders of the country have achieved a mythical status and are regarded as supremely moral geniuses who loved liberty and freedom more than anything else. But what exactly is exceptional about a collection of white male property and slave owners in the 18^th century gathering to form a government that excluded blacks and women, and who wrote a clause into their founding document declaring that a slave is three-fifths of a person? What is so exceptional about a nation that provoked a war with its neighbor in order to acquire its territory in an exercise euphemistically called Manifest Destiny? What is so exceptional about a global hegemon insisting that it is indeed exceptional? This is why American Exceptionalism is a stale tale. It is simply a recycling of the Pax Romana, of the Pax Britannica, of any number of nationalist narratives that paint the hegemonic home country as a beacon of progress and civility for the rest of the world to emulate. But if the country’s founders had freed the slaves, or if they had given women the right to vote, then we should certainly consider those acts “exceptional,” as they would have defied the norms of their day.

Whenever the Founders are brought up in some discussion by talking heads, they are always invoked to justify some sort of policy, regardless of what the Founders actually thought. When recently a former House Majority Leader was asked how he could cite the Federalist Papers to advocate for states’ rights when one of its authors proposed a plan that would have given the national government veto power over the actions of the states, he responded simply by saying could not believe that was so. Of course it was so, and the matter is hardly a secret and is well-known to those with even a superficial knowledge of the Founding. This misinformation and lack of historical knowledge is not an accident. It is the natural product of a society that shuns intellectualism and embraces revealed wisdom, which is promulgated by the ideological torchbearers of Americanism who know as much history as the yokels they pander to with their platitudinous declamations.

- Max