Bravo, Ed! The anti-intellectualism you rightly condemn is so pervasive that I really fear what it could do to our country in the 21st century.

Firstly it means yet another area in which we fail to look in the mirror and be honest with ourselves. I willingly admit that I am smarter than quite a few people. I also admit quite willingly that there are lots of people in this world who are so much more intelligent than I am that I just stand in awe of them. That's just the way that things are. It's reality and huge numbers of Americans have a problem separating reality from myth. They can't distinguish between the concept of equal before the law and some sense of "I'm just as good as anyone else.", which is of course complete nonsense. What they really are is better than some, as good as others and worse than some others.

Secondly it means that the approach to rejecting science shown in the rejection of evolution, the willingness to change or reject results of scientific research if it's politically unpalatable and the acceptance of non-expert opinions as being "just as good" as that of the people who've really thoroughly studied an issue by large segments of the public will lead to decisions based on false information and it can have deadly effects in the long run.

But, Ed, does it follow from the observation that anti-intellectualism is a pervasive phenomenon in American life (with the implicit premise that this is a unique quality of the mainstream culture of our polity) that we should regard some cultures as objectively "more accomplished" and "more worthy of study?" The latter might be true, but I think there's a gap between the personal and societal scale that can't be bridged by rhetoric alone--which Henry valiantly attempts to do.

(I would also question the notion that the rule of law can, in any meaningful, holistic sense, apply equally to the rich and to the poor. There is the wonderful aphorism about how the rich and the poor alike are forbidden to sleep under the bridges of the Seine; more concretely, a rule of law which protects property, allows for inheritance, and is renewed and administered by a hyper-literate clerisy is one which, in practice, certainly does not treat rich and poor alike, though both benefit from it.)

Paul wrote:

But, Ed, does it follow from the observation that anti-intellectualism is a pervasive phenomenon in American life (with the implicit premise that this is a unique quality of the mainstream culture of our polity) that we should regard some cultures as objectively "more accomplished" and "more worthy of study?" The latter might be true, but I think there's a gap between the personal and societal scale that can't be bridged by rhetoric alone--which Henry valiantly attempts to do.

Let me make two comments. First, I do not mean to imply that anti-intellectualism is unique to America. I've not lived in any other nation, as you have, so I can't speak to that question with any real knowledge. I am simply saying that it is pervasive in American culture, based on my experiences here. For all I know, it is every bit as pervasive in other countries.

Second, I think Henry is using "accomplished" in a very broad sense here. Or at least, that is my particular spin on it and what I mean by it. I would not argue, for instance, that we shouldn't study aboriginal cultures because our culture is so much more accomplished than theirs, but I wouldn't do that primarily because I view study as an end all its own and would reject the notion that accomplishment should determine what is and isn't worth studying. I take it to mean, for instance, that we should not get stuck with an intellectual and moral relativism that says that all truth is culturally determined. To use an example I just used in response to a commenter on my own blog, I would argue that American culture today is far better than American culture 150 years ago, simply because we do not allow slavery anymore. That is a moral accomplishment, and it will not do to pretend that it is merely a matter of convention and not a matter of actual, objective change for the better.

Anti-intellectualism is not entirely born of perverted egalitarianism. Academic support of Soviet and Chinese communism, for instance, were (and are) worthy of disdain). The prevalence and hyping of untested theories of catastrophic climate change are also examples of "experts" not having any "common sense".

You can be an elitist disdainer of intellectuals as well as an egalitarian one. Obviously, not all intellectuals deserve such disrespect.

"I would argue that American culture today is far better than American culture 150 years ago, simply because we do not allow slavery anymore."

I'm sceptical, as a rule, of arguments of moral superiority--not just this one!--so let me throw out an easy response (one I don't believe, incidentally): American society is morally worse than antebellum America, because we countenance, as a matter of state policy, the extermination of cities, even whole nations, in an effort to achieve our national ends.

Paul wrote:

I'm sceptical, as a rule, of arguments of moral superiority--not just this one!--so let me throw out an easy response (one I don't believe, incidentally): American society is morally worse than antebellum America, because we countenance, as a matter of state policy, the extermination of cities, even whole nations, in an effort to achieve our national ends.

I'd say that's just a question of ability, not what we would countenance. If we'd had the technological ability to do so in the Civil War, or the War of 1812 for that matter, we would have done so then. So on that score, I'd call it a wash as a moral question.

Discussions of Americans' hyperbolic egalitarianism are made more difficult by Americans' equally radical meritocratism. My experiences (as a red-stater, perhaps) suggest the following distinction: while it is heartily encouraged, in America, to be better than others at various valued activities, it is nonetheless impermissible, in America, to take yourself to be better than others, simpliciter. All the '3's on our cars are not there because we take ourselves to be drivers anywhere near DE's equal; but our veneration of him lies at least in part in our sense that he was still, for all that excellence, one of us. (Cf. also more recently: "A Mississippi girl doesn't change her ways/just 'cause everybody knows her name.")

Comparative excellence of the intellect, however, is often read as attempted comparative excellence of persons; not least of all, I think, because the products of the intellect -- especially in abstract or legal areas, as opposed to, say, engineering or medical -- are not particularly widely valued. (In no small part, this is because they are simply not appreciatable to those who do not aim for such excellence themselves. Their fruits are just not easy to taste.) So claims to differential smarts can come off badly, as we are now seeing.

In terms of the above exchange over moral evaluations of different time-slices of the American experiment: my fundamental sympathy is with Paul's expression of a certain form of judgmental humility; but Ed is winning on points.

This is a load of crap, and simply an argument ad absurdum. Nobody is saying to put hairdressers on the court. At most, people are saying that possessing ivy-league credentials provides no guarantee that a person is a sage. As for anti-intellectualism, how do you expect people to act towards intellectuals such as Pete Singer? Or when a college administrator answers charges of liberal bias on the faculty by arguing that it is expected given that professors tend to be smarter (and hence more likely to be Democrats)? I think the commenter Jacob is spot on. Anti-intellectualism is not pervasive; dogmatism among intellectuals is pervasive. Just ask Bjorn Lomborg. And blame the media for making celebrities out of most clownish intellectuals, such as Singer.

And the "my opinion is just as good" is not trivially dismissed, given that one can find opinions across the spectrum from experts with comparable and impeccable credentials. It stands to reason that if high IQ correlated with good opinions, then intellectuals would show greater unity on political questions—but there is no evidence of that.

Paul wrote: "American society is morally worse than antebellum America, because we countenance, as a matter of state policy, the extermination of cities, even whole nations, in an effort to achieve our national ends.

I would put it this way: American society is morally worse than antebellum America, because we countenance, as a matter of state policy, the extermination of children through abortion.

Abortion was my first thought, but the dynamics are rather different, since nuclear policy is government-situated and abortions are, in the end, private decisions (though public debates may influence and affect the women who have them). (This leads to questions like: If we had a black-box policy that could reduce the abortion rate 90% compared to pre-Roe rates but we had to keep abortion legal to achieve it, would American society be more moral or immoral to formally sanction, but practically reduce, abortion? It is true that mentioning nuclear weapons brings up deterrence, but the principal rejoinder to that is that it is unclear that the expected return of superpower deterrence is less than the expected return of occasional great power wars.)

My argument, though, and why philosopher is wrong to judge the debate on 'points,' is that it is at once difficult to judge a society's moral worth, as if a society were an entity possessed of a conscience and/or an eternal ssoul, and impossible to compare societies' moral (or other) worth throughout time, simply because the circumstances in which societies find themselves are so different.

The slipperiness of the terms themselves should caution against facile comparisons. Is American society today better morally than the antebellum United States because it has no slavery? Possibly--but then what of New York state? Is it a 'society' that has morally improved over the same period? Thinking over a thousand-year time span, could we not instead postulate an Anglophone moral community? And how to judge "societies" like China under Mao or the USSR under Stalin, in which people were, inherently, much the same as contemporary Americans but were forced by the system into acting in ways we consider awful? Is it then the system, and not the mass of individuals, that is to be morally judged? And if so, then what about a totalitarian state...You get the idea.

Most damningly, of course, is the notion of "better" itself, which is grounded in priors which cannot be proven but only asserted (no matter how desirable we may find them). From the point of view of the Aztecs, I suppose, we are guilty of not sacrificing enough of our captive enemies in order to sate the gods' hunger for human blood. (It may be a good thing that the Aztecs never got nukes.)

"American society is morally worse than antebellum America, because we countenance, as a matter of state policy, the extermination of children through abortion."

I would say that the institution of slavery was morally worse than abortion is today, and I don't even agree that all abortion is 'immoral' (sorry David, what's being aborted is not always anything you would reasonably call a 'child'). The main difference to me is suffering, and I don't think there's any question that slavery in the US resulted in more suffering than abortion does.

"At most, people are saying that possessing ivy-league credentials provides no guarantee that a person is a sage." This is either false as a claim of what 'people' are saying, or the 'people' are wildly committing some variant of denying the antecedent. The question is whether Miers has sufficient qualifications to be on SCOTUS; that some qualification that she does not herself possess may in itself prove not sufficient is irrelevant as a matter of basic propositional logic. That is, the qualification might be necessary, even if not sufficient, and thereby still disqualify her from being elevated.

Now, I don't think anyone is arguing that literally Ivy League credentials are a necessary condition here, but if we consider that just as shorthand for "significant evidence of intellectual achievement in the sphere of Constitutional law", then it is the case that many people are arguing for that as a necessary condition. One that she apparently lacks; and, again, one which may require still further conditions in order to reach sufficiency, but this does not make it any less likely to be a necessary condition.

(Yet more evidence from David that someone's being smart & an evangelical is no guarantee that they can produce a cogent argument.)

"My argument, though, and why philosopher is wrong to judge the debate on 'points,' is that it is at once difficult to judge a society's moral worth, as if a society were an entity possessed of a conscience and/or an eternal soul, and impossible to compare societies' moral (or other) worth throughout time, simply because the circumstances in which societies find themselves are so different."

To clarify, Paul, I'm in overall agreement with you here -- and there was meant to be something a bit thin-sounding about winning an argument on such a matter 'on points'. But I wanted to flag also that the kind of countermove that Ed had offered to your move about the destruction of cities (which is a separate move than the one you just made) seemed to me a sound one. (I don't think you needed to make that last, relativist-sounding argument about the Aztecs, though.)

Well, I think the relativist move does carry its own baggage--I can simply declare my yardstick to be right--but the slipperiness identified elsewhere is, I think, sufficient...

Philosopher,

I think you missed the boat. My argument was that Ed's resorting to a "hairdressers" argument is downright silly.

You wrote: "(Yet more evidence from David that someone's being smart & an evangelical is no guarantee that they can produce a cogent argument.)"

While my thought is: Yet more evidence from Philosopher that someone's being smart is no guarantee that they can produce anything beyond an overly pedantic argument.

David, you don't even seem to understand what you just wrote! Here's what you wrote: "This is a load of crap, and simply an argument ad absurdum. Nobody is saying to put hairdressers on the court. At most, people are saying that possessing ivy-league credentials provides no guarantee that a person is a sage."

What you are doing is flagging Ed's hyperbole as an argument ad absurdum, and then you're asserting what you take the truth to be, which (your claim is) Ed has distorted. (If that's not what your doing, then that whole part of your remark is simply incoherent.) And my remarks are thus perfectly well in order, as a way of saying: the argument that you think it makes sense to attribute to 'people' is a fundamentally fallacious argument. And you sure sound like it's an argument you're endorsing (especially given your comments on earlier posts, you yourself should count as one of the 'people' in question), but that's not even necessary for my point.

And it's not 'pedantic' to think that there's a difference between good and bad arguments; and to be willing to point out that difference in public fora like this one.

David Heddle wrote:

This is a load of crap, and simply an argument ad absurdum. Nobody is saying to put hairdressers on the court. At most, people are saying that possessing ivy-league credentials provides no guarantee that a person is a sage.

Perhaps you need to reread the two quotes I was responding to in the original post. Coats was not merely saying that the possession of ivy league credentials is not, by itself, proof of wisdom (a statement I couldn't possibly disagree with, making your argument mostly an attempt to beat up a straw man). He is arguing, like Hruska before him, that in picking Supreme Court justices we are skewing toward intellectuals as opposed to non-intellectuals. In other words, it's an argument for putting non-intellectuals on the court.

As for anti-intellectualism, how do you expect people to act towards intellectuals such as Pete Singer?

You're missing the point completely. I expect them to act toward Pete Singer in a manner commensurate with what Pete Singer deserves. But to use the behavior or ideas of a particular intellectual as justification for a general anti-intellectualism is exactly like condemning all black people for OJ Simpson. I am not arguing - good lord, who would argue? - that all intellectuals are correct on everything, so pointing out intellectuals who are wrong about something has no bearing whatsoever on my argument. My position is that it is folly to suggest that you don't need to be really smart and knowledgable (i.e. intellectual) to do a job that requires that you be really smart and knowledgable.

And the "my opinion is just as good" is not trivially dismissed, given that one can find opinions across the spectrum from experts with comparable and impeccable credentials.

See, that is exactly the kind of relativism that I'm objecting to - "Experts disagree on this, therefore my opinion is just as likely to be true as anyone else's." Sorry, that's complete nonsense. It may well take real effort to study the question to determine which of two (or more) competing positions is likely true, but to claim that the mere existence of disagreement means there's no objective means of determining which one is likely true is not only false, it's extremely damaging to the entire notion of an objective truth. Surely you would not make this argument when it comes to your religious views, that the existence of different theological views means that none of them can claim any justification for being viewed as true and therefore one opinion is just as valid as any other. I wouldn't accept that claim, I certainly hope a Christian wouldn't accept it as it would quickly reduce their religous views to mush.

Philosopher:

Yes I am asserting it as truth that the bulk of the arguments swirling around elitism are of the "ivy-league credentials are no guarantee" flavor and not of the "let's put a common man in the street or a big haired trailer park gal on the court" variety. And that Ed is attacking the former sentiment by equating it with the latter. I don't think that argument is hard to understand, independent of whether you agree.

You wrote,

"And it's not 'pedantic' to think that there's a difference between good and bad arguments; and to be willing to point out that difference in public fora like this one."

I never said such a thing was pedantic, please do not misrepresent me. I said (in effect), your arguments are pedantic.

Ed,

I understand why you were arguing, and I also disagree with Coats's statement. I am commenting on how you argued. Your argument was not very, well not very intellectual. I think you need to come up with something better than "Such imbecility is almost impossible to parody."

Suddenly they become a "pointy-headed intellectual" who may be "book smart" but surely must lack "common sense", or at least that's what they tell themselves.

I don't think there is a large segment of society which thinks that anyone with a Ph.D. is a "pointy-headed intellectual." However, there are many examples of pointy-headed intellectuals out there, and "regular folks" rightly give them less respect than they give similarly well-educated people like physicians.

I also think it's important to keep in mind there's a difference between "intelligent" and "intellectual." I don't know if this is anything like what Coats had in mind, but I'd rather have a bright justice who has a practical, strict constructionist approach to the Constitution than an "intellectual powerhouse" who would see his/her appointment as some kind of academic exercise.

David Heddle wrote:

I understand why you were arguing, and I also disagree with Coats's statement. I am commenting on how you argued. Your argument was not very, well not very intellectual. I think you need to come up with something better than "Such imbecility is almost impossible to parody."

I commend you on the smart move of bailing out on most of what you said above and not trying to defend the absurdity of making arguments like justifying relativism because experts disagree.

Eric Seymour wrote:

I don't think there is a large segment of society which thinks that anyone with a Ph.D. is a "pointy-headed intellectual." However, there are many examples of pointy-headed intellectuals out there, and "regular folks" rightly give them less respect than they give similarly well-educated people like physicians.

You don't bother to define "pointy-headed intellectuals", though you say there are many of them. I presume you don't refer literally to the shape of their heads, and further presume that you mean many examples of intellectuals being wrong. Please see my above answer to David. I am not making the argument that all intellectuals are right about everything. Only an idiot would make such an argument. And I'd also point out that physicians are wrong just as often as other well educated people. I simply am not equating "intellectual" with "correct" here.

I also think it's important to keep in mind there's a difference between "intelligent" and "intellectual." I don't know if this is anything like what Coats had in mind, but I'd rather have a bright justice who has a practical, strict constructionist approach to the Constitution than an "intellectual powerhouse" who would see his/her appointment as some kind of academic exercise.

I think this is a false dichotomy. It seems to imply, at least, that the judicial theory that you prefer - strict constructionism (though this isn't really a judicial theory at all, but a label applied generally to a couple of different legal theories) - is somehow more "practical" and less "intellectual" than other judicial theories. But of course one could point to serious academic scholars like Michael McConnell and Lino Graglia who argue for that judicial theory on the same intellectual level as the advocates of these other judicial theories that you appear to be dismissing as academic flights of fancy.

I think this speaks to exactly what I'm talking about, this notion that one can contrast some sort of "no nonsense" or "common sense" approach to complex issues that is better than what are presumed to be "ivory tower" or "academic" approaches. Now I don't doubt that there are specific issues where this would turn out to be the case in regards to specific ideas advocated by specific intellectuals, but that doesn't justify having this general idea, very common in this country, that "real" wisdom resides with the people and not with those fancy pants college professors who think they know it all.

This pervasive attitude is found throughout our culture, most obviously in the almost universally held dichotomy between being "book smart" and having "common sense", which I maintain is little more than a myth that allows the uneducated to feel better about themselves. In this, I must point out, I am taking a profoundly conservative position and am a little surprised at having people who regard themselves as conservatives disagreeing with it.

"Yes I am asserting it as truth that the bulk of the arguments swirling around elitism are of the "ivy-league credentials are no guarantee" flavor and not of the "let's put a common man in the street or a big haired trailer park gal on the court" variety."

Yes, and I'm pointing out that arguments of the former flavor, if they are meant (as surely they are) as replies to those who accuse Miers are baldly fallacious arguments. They are, as I said, versions of the classic fallacy of denying the antecedent.

"I never said such a thing was pedantic, please do not misrepresent me. I said (in effect), your arguments are pedantic." No, I didn't mean to misrepresent you as intending to conflate the two; rather, I thought I was clearly accusing you, by implication, of being confused as to what counts as upholding proper dialectical hygiene, and what counts as pedantry. Please consider yourself now explicitly accused of that confusion. And I'll just have to remember to spell things out more clearly for you in the future.

Sorry, that should read not just as "those who accuse Miers" but as "those who accuse Miers of having inadequate stature, experience, and credentials".

You don't bother to define "pointy-headed intellectuals"

Well, I'm sorry, but neither did you when you used the term...

and [I] further presume that you mean many examples of intellectuals being wrong.

No, to me a "pointy-headed intellectual" is not wrong, he or she just misses the point or fails to produce anything useful. They focus on minutia which are unlikely to ever have any practical import.

To put it another way, most readers of this blog will remember having late-night dorm room philsophical discussions when they were in college. If you're still engaging in those discussions, only now instead of blogging on them you are given tenure for it, you might be a "pointy-headed intellectual."

I think this is a false dichotomy.

I did not intend to describe a dichotomy, but only to say that in a hypothetical situation where I had to choose between a well-grounded bright person and a head-in-the-clouds brilliant person, I'd choose the former. Obviously, the best choice would be a well-grounded brilliant person.

No, having "book smarts" and "common sense" are not mutually exclusive. But they aren't directly correlated, either.

David Heddle ordained: "I would put it this way: American society is morally worse than antebellum America, because we countenance, as a matter of state policy, the extermination of children through abortion.". Thank you for your judgement from on high. Guess what? Some of us, in fact many of us don't agree with you on the definition of the start of life. Therefore by our standards abortion is not murder. Of course being a perfect human being who knows the word of God you shouldn't have any hesitation in telling everyone who disagrees with you that they are not simply someone who doesn't believe what you do but are willful murderers. Nothing makes me consider atheism more than self-righteous gits like you.

Jim S, I find your comment quite fascinating. It boils down to: because you (or people like you) have an opinion and are not willing to keep it to yourself, it makes me consider atheism. Now in fact, I don't think that is actually possible (that you can choose atheism in the sense that you weigh the options) but that's another question.

Is my opinion on abortion the only opinion, that when expressed publicly, makes you consider atheism? Or are there others?

You wrote:

Guess what? Some of us, in fact many of us don't agree with you on the definition of the start of life.

I wonder if you stated that because you thought it to be new information? To me it sounds like Guess what, many of us voted for Bush or Guess what, many of us voted for Kerry.

You wrote:

you shouldn't have any hesitation in telling everyone who disagrees with you that they are not simply someone who doesn't believe what you do but are willful murderers.

Actually, if by "willful murderer" you mean that I think someone who is entering a clinic to have an abortion says to herself, "today I'm going to commit murder," then I don't believe that such a woman is a willful murderer. I think it fairly obvious that does not consider what she is about to do to be murder. If you simply mean that I consider abortion murder, in the sense that a defenseless human life is taken by violence, then you are correct.

If you though abortion was murder, would you keep your opinion to yourself?

"No, to me a "pointy-headed intellectual" is not wrong, he or she just misses the point or fails to produce anything useful. They focus on minutia which are unlikely to ever have any practical import."

What many people don't seem to understand is that, in order to make progress in academia (especially science), you simply have to focus on minutia. Many groundbreaking scientific advances have come about because certain very obsessive people have been willing to devote obscene amounts of energy to topics that most people would find esoteric, boring, and pointless. The first 70 pages of "On the Origin of Species", for example, are a soporific rant about pigeons, a fact that lends me cheer during my darkest moments.

As for "practical import", the whole reason for doing what's known as "basic research" is that it's very hard to predict in advance what will have practical import. The most obvious example is quantum mechanics, which on its surface seems to be the most esoteric, useless theory imaginable, but ended up spawning the computer and the laser.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just being defensive since I'm hoping to study the neuroscience of music for a living, a topic few people would characterize as "practical."

Tierney-

You just reminded me of my friend Ian Musgrave, a biochemist from Australia who, as he puts it, spends all of his time doing research on a protein "so obscure that only 3 other people believe it exists."

Tierney,

Being a scientist myself, I certainly appreciate the basic research and minutia which are important for scientific progress. It is mostly in non-technical fields where I see potential for "pointy-headed intellectuals" to wile away their time producing little of use to society.

Eric,

Hmm--in that case, I think we might actually agree.