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Evil terrorists and innocent folks
THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON
By Susan Jacoby
356 pp. Pantheon $26.00
Reviewed by Bob Sanchez
America doesn’t love intellectuals. We have gone through periods where they were tied to communism and godlessness—they were effete, elite eggheads with a secret love for the U.S.S.R., and not at all like us God-fearing Christians. Now they are simply liberal know-it-alls who want to tell the rest of us how to live our lives. They are out of touch with real Americans and their real values.
In The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby presents an impressive critique of America’s anti-intellectual and anti-rational society. Our founding fathers were a fortunate mix of thinkers and doers, she notes; without heroes like Washington, we might never have separated from the British; without intellectuals like Jefferson and Madison, we would not have the strong democracy we have today, with its firm separation of church and state. We were off to a great start.
But Jacoby fears that “the scales of American history have shifted heavily against the vibrant and varied intellectual life so essential to functional democracy.” How we speak, how we teach and learn, how we think and evaluate others are some of the concerns she addresses in this provocative book. For example, have you noticed that we tend to call each other “folks”? It’s a recent phenomenon that Jacoby notes as being inclusionary or exclusionary, as in “Those evil terrorists. Our innocent folks.” This, she notes, is symptomatic of debased, politicized speech and the erosion of our cultural standards.
One of her major concerns is the widespread belief that we are a Christian nation and that religious concepts such as intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in public schools. The United States is the only country where students are taught to “debate the controversy” over evolution, as though there were one among serious scientists. The battle over the teaching of evolution goes beyond a perceived conflict between faith and science; it goes to our attitudes about thinking, and is a “microcosm of all the cultural forces responsible for the prevalence of unreason in American society today.”
We are a nation of declining standards, Jacoby writes. We have lowered the educational bar, and No Child Left Behind doesn’t help much, unless the only goal is to ensure that children pass standardized tests. Do our schools prepare children to compete in a world economy? When children from affluent homes breeze through “undemanding standardized tests,” are they “learning what citizens of a functional democracy need to know”? Clearly, she doesn’t think so.
And what value does society place on thoughtful, informed opinions? Jacoby spends a couple of pages on the demise of book reviews in print, a subject near and dear to the The Internet Review of Books’s collective heart. She states, “Online book reviews can’t take the place of print reviews, which are disappearing from newspapers. Anyone can write online reviews, and they often come across as the aggrieved ramblings of frustrated writers.” (Hey, wait a minute, folks. Does she mean us?)
In only one case does she drift from the broad critique into the personal. If you believe that George W. Bush is God’s gift to America, you may want to brace yourself. Jacoby hammers his quirky “nuculer” mispronunciation with more attention than it deserves. She and I both apply the word “stupid” to 43, but I do so with a liberal’s consciously partisan glee; such an ad hominem conclusion feels out of place in a book decrying the demise of reason. Still, she ties her low opinion of him to the overarching problem:
“If Bush’s election was not a measure of conscious anti-intellectualism on the part of voters, it was certainly a measure of the public’s indifference to demonstrable mental acuity and knowledge as standards for the presidency.’
But she assigns some of the responsibility to liberals as well, as they have been reluctant to admit to the serious consequences of public ignorance. Jacoby’s thought-provoking and readable book effectively spells out the problem of American unreason. If only the solution were as clear.
Bob Sanchez is an associate editor and the webmaster of The Internet Review of Books. His novel, When Pigs Fly, has received rave reviews.
Bob invites you to check out his blog and his website.
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