Just Finished Reading: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter (FP: 1962)

This is not an easy book to precis. For one thing it covers a lot of largely unfamiliar ground (to me). My knowledge of American history – to say nothing of American political and educational history – is….well, patchy. For another I was, again largely, unfamiliar with around 75-80% of the people mentioned throughout the book. It did not make it an easy read. However, to say that this book was difficult, obscure or simply unfamiliar would to miss the point. As a winner of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in Non-Fiction it is, understandably, very well written. Anything less would, I think, have made this unreadable – at least for me.

Focusing initially on the recent (to the author!) excesses of McCarthyism and its attacks on Communism and Intellectualism (often conflated as the same thing) the author contended that this was far from a new phenomenon and that it had actually existed throughout American culture almost from the very beginning. Although the Founding Fathers were arguably intellectuals almost to a man those who followed them were anything but and, far too often, the very opposite. There developed a thread, which ran throughout American life that the Intellectual was at best unnecessary or a distraction from the work needed to be done in the New World, and at worst a subversive or questionably element that might undermine the very fabric of the new society being built on the new continent. Indeed the intellectual was tinged with the smell of European corrupt values that many had come to America to escape. What was needed now was hard work and common sense not deep thought and pseudo-European elitism.

This is not to say that America turned its back on intelligence – far from it. Even more than before intelligence was needed to grow the economy, manage the republic’s Manifest Destiny and plan the bright future clearly ahead of them. What they didn’t need was perverted intelligence produced in the elite schools, colleges and universities (at tax payers expense no less!) that thrived on criticism of the status quo and called common sense solutions into question. The irony was, of course, that as the economy grew and technology became more and more pervasive these very intellectuals became more and more needed to help run things. Business was still in the driver’s seat though – and intellectuals became generally low paid and underappreciated, if not actually invisible, hired-help brought in to fix problems and propose practical solutions to real-world problems rather to spout theory in their cloistered ivory towers. Once the crisis passed they, more often than not, returned to their universities to write books and argue esoteric points with other, even more out of touch, intellectuals. Even more ironic was the effect of anti-intellectualism on the American education system which, over the decades, slowly abandoned the idea of training the mind (thereby producing useless elites) and instead concentrated on training the body and more closely integrating a diverse population and inculcating democratic values on a whole generation.

The paragraphs above do scant service to this very interesting book. Although, as mentioned above, the personalities and some of the cultural nuance went straight over my head, I do feel I understand the often perplexing American psyche a lot more than before reading this book. I’m even starting to appreciate why some people can see the idea of President Trump as a ‘good thing’ rather than a joke in very poor taste. It also helped to explain (or at least hint at) why any kind of claim to specialist knowledge, rather than simple hard won experience in the ‘real world’ is often characterised, by Americans in particular, as unacceptably elitist. Rather than having the best qualified person in post there are those who would rather have an untrained amateur instead – no matter what the consequences. It’s weird but at least I’m starting to appreciate where that ideas comes from. Recommended and definitely worthy of a Pulitzer.
  
Coming next – Three books on the Working Class.