Interesting Read... Perhaps.

From TYWKIWDBI:

Here's a wonderful quote from Isaac Azimov:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

That was quoted in Newsweek magazine in January of 1980.   The situation doesn't appear to have improved in the past 30 years.

Quote found at Reddit, where someone recommended a book from 1966 by Richard Hofstadter: "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," the Amazon review of which offers this excerpt:

Unfortunately, America's practical culture has never embraced intellectuals. The intellectuals' education and expertise are viewed as a form of power or privilege. Intellectuals are seen as a small arrogant elite who are pretentious, conceited, snobbish. Geniuses' are described as eccentric, and their talents dismissed as mere cleverness. Their cultured view is seen as impractical, and their sophistication as ineffectual. Their emphasis on knowledge and education is viewed as subversive, and it threatens to produce social decadence.

Instead, the anti-intellectuals believe that the plain sense of the common man is altogether adequate and superior to formal knowledge and expertise from schools. The truths of the heart, experience, and old-fashioned principles of religion, character, instinct, and morality are more reliable guides to life than education. After all, we idolize the self-made man in America.

Hofstadter goes on to cite examples of anti-intellectualism from the nations founding to today. For example, the founding fathers were sages, scientists, and men of cultivation, yet the Federalists attacked the brilliant Thomas Jefferson by portraying the curiosity of his active mind as too trivial and ridiculous for important affairs...

Turning to education, Hofstadter points out that broad public education in the US was started not for developing the mind or the pride of learning for its own sake, but for its supposed political and economic benefits. Children were viewed not minds to be developed, but as citizens to be trained for a stable democracy.

Might be an interesting book.  Anyone read it?

TYWKIWDBI intends to remain a refuge for intellectuals.

The only point with which I disagree is the last one. TYWKIWDBI isn't really a "refuge for intellectuals". There is nothing in their content which would indicate any tendency toward sophistication nor toward higher thought. It is, however, an interesting blog for autodidacts. I find their statement about being a "refuge for intellectuals" to be showy and disturbing- something akin to getting a crest embroidered onto a blazer for honors students in a public school.

As you might have guessed, I am personally anti-intellectualism. In all the years I've lived, I've learned that the more verbose and wordy an individual or an idea is, the more likely it is to be flowery bullshit. The great minds I've known have universally been able to express complex and complicated ideas clearly and plainly. Once someone starts to use math to explain Einstein's Theory of Relativity, I know they don't really understand it.