Bush Gives 12-Letter Word a Bad Reputation

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be"--Thomas Jefferson

I thought it a good time to revisit this Jeffersonian creed. In the post 9/11 world, we have severely put this notion to the test.

Why is the word intellectual, which simply means to involve the mental processes of abstract thinking and reasoning, the dreaded 12-letter word?

For some it is totally understandable--such lunacy reaps financial rewards. Notable among this group are right-wing talk show hosts Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. Former 1960's Marxist, David Horowitz has transformed into the pied piper of anti-intellectualism as he goes from college campus to college campus articulating what he believes to be the corrosive nature of the academic left.

This, however, hardly accounts for the current climate. America has had leaders such as Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan that I would not consider intellectuals. Likewise, Nixon and Carter were perhaps two of our smartest presidents, whose failings in the Oval Office have been well documented.

Though anti-intellectualism appears more pervasive with conservatives, neither party is immune.

We don't want our elected officials to flip-flop, we want them to stay the course--mean what they say and say what they mean.

Wasn't that part of the attraction of candidate George W. Bush in 2000? He was the plainspoken, Will Rogers type, who you wouldn't mind having a beer with. We mocked Al Gore for being the kid who sat in front of the class with all the answers.

For some people, it became endearing to listen to the president mangle the English language. He also boasted about not reading morning newspapers--a far cry from Teddy Roosevelt, who was known to be a voracious reader.

As the president languishes, according the latest New York Times/CBS poll, at 31 percent approval, what was once endearing is now a miserable failure.

As historian Sean Wilentz wrote this month's Rolling Stone, the president has demonstrated, "an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities."

We accept the amorphous concept of a war on terror, which is essentially a war on an adjective. How do you know when you've won?

In the post 9/11 world we liked the tough rhetoric of, "Wanted dead or alive, Mission Accomplished, and bring 'em on." We prefer John Wayne as commander in chief to Vaclav Havel--a true renaissance man prior to becoming the first President of the Czech Republic--not realizing that in real life Wayne does not have the benefit of John Ford directing him.

We are far more likely to support the candidacy of a former athlete or actor than a writer or professor. It is this anti-intellectual climate that put the tragedy of Terri Schiavo front and center and stem cell research on the back burner.

We allowed the presidential candidate who served his country in Vietnam to be Swift Boated by the presidential candidate who avoided service. But the anti-intellectual climate has more to do with our collective willingness to embrace it.

We don't have to be John Kenneth Galbraith, but we must be willing to ask critical questions at critical times and hold our elected leadership accountable. The failure to do so will render us closer to the people that Jefferson warned us about.

At what point do we say enough is enough? If not the unnecessary war in Iraq, the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, how about the latest disclosure, which appeared in USA Today that Verizon, AT&T and Bell South have been providing domestic phone call information to the National Security Agency on millions of residential and business phone calls made by Americans?

Correction Karl Marx, it is not religion that is the opiate of the masses in the 21st century, it's anti-intellectualism.