Anti-intellectualism

> The term "anti-intellectual" came to my attention about 40 years ago. I assumed that it referred to new-age fascination with crystals and pyramids, the growth of cults, society's absorption with meaningless entertainment, young people dropping out of established systems and into counterculture or self-destructive pursuits, or growing mental sloth.
> Whatever it meant then, it seems to characterize today's Republican party with its penchant for name-calling (elitist liberals, femiNazis, tree huggers, gutless peacenics, godless socialists) and its irrational doctrines (making our grandchildren pay the taxes that we should pay for today's programs, failure to make progress away from polluting fuels, abandoning international conventions on the justification for war, labeling as "unpatriotic" those Americans with the insight to suspect Bush's lies and to predict the Iraqi mess, labeling as "ungrateful cowards" those foreign leaders trying to dissuade us from this misadventure).
> The noblest voices of the past 100 years were not those of the establishment. Consider where women, blacks, rivers, children, forests and retirees would be today if conservatives had won every legislative argument. Since half of the population is female and most of the other half have sisters or daughters, electoral successes of conservative politicians over the past three decades suggest failure of memory or of gratitude.
> Modern conservatives have promulgated ancient paradigms causing most Americans to believe that invading Iraq would be justified, beneficial and welcome. Had their thinking prevailed in the '50s, we would be in a nuclear winter. I dream of an administrative Department of Reason or a congressional Office of Intellectual Liaison to solicit, receive and weigh policy ideas from creative citizens, among other things to consider paradigms of peace, e.g. ideas for promoting gender equality and responsible reproduction worldwide.