The Age of American Unreason

Citation preview

S U S A N

I

A

C

O

B

Y

author of FREETHINKERS

The AGE of AM E RIC AN UNREASON

$26.oo U.S.A. $30.00 Can.

COMBINING HISTORICAL

analysis with contem­

porary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon—one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, she surveys an anti-rationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudointellectual universe of "junk thought." Disdain for logic and evidence defines a pervasive malaise fos­ tered by the mass media, triumphalist religious fundamentalism, mediocre public education, a dearth of fair-minded public intellectuals on the right and the left, and, above all, a lazy and credu­ lous public. Jacoby offers an unsparing indictment of the American addiction to infotainment—from televi­ sion to the Web—and cites this toxic dependency as the major element distinguishing our current age of unreason from earlier outbreaks of Ameri­ can anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. With reading on the decline and scientific and historical illiteracy on the rise, an increasingly ignorant pub­ lic square is dominated by debased media-driven language and received opinion. At this critical political juncture, nothing could be more important than recognizing the "overarch­ ing crisis of memory and knowledge" described in this impassioned, tough-minded book, which chal­ lenges Americans to face the painful truth about what the flight from reason has cost us as individ­ uals and as a nation.

SUSAN JACOBY

is the author of seven previous

books, most recently Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, which was named a Nota­ ble Book of 2004 by The Washington Post Book World and The Times Literary Supplement. She lives in New Y^rk City.

Author photograph © Chris Ramirez Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde

PANTHEON BOOKS, NEW YORK www.pantheonbooks.com 2/2008

"The Age of American Unreason picks up where Richard Hofstadter left off. With analytic verve and deep historical knowledge, Susan Jacoby documents the dumbing down of our culture like a maestro. Make no mistake about it, this is an important book." — DOUGLAS BRINKLEY,

presidential historian and author of The Great Deluge "This is one of the most eye-opening books I've read in a long time. Jacoby charts the intellectual and cultural currents that have characterized the United States since its founding and explains just how and why Americans have recently become so, well, dumb. Anyone who cares about the future of our country will want to read it." — MARCIA ANGELL,

editor in chief emerita, New EnglandJournal of Medicine "Jacoby has written a brilliant, sad story of the anti-intellectualism and lack of reason­ able thought that has put this country in one of the sorriest states in its history." — HELEN THOMAS,

author of Watchdogs ofDemocracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public "Jacob/s fearless jeremiad, at once passionate, witty, and solidly grounded in facts, arrives at a propitious moment, when many Americans are perceiving that ignorance con­ joined to arrogance can be deadly This book deserves to be widely read, and especially by concerned parents. As Jacoby insists, it is only within families that some immunity to mind-numbing 'infotainment' can now be acquired. First, however, there must be a will to resist—and if this stirring book can't rally it, nothing can." — FREDERICK CREWS,

author of Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays "To a country of underachievers and proud of it, this book delivers a magnificent, occa­ sionally hilarious kick in the pants. Snap out of it, Jacoby says: Getting it right matters. Tough talk and wicked wit in the tradition of Richard Hofstadter'sAnti-Intellectualism in American Life and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death." —JACK M I L E S ,

author of God: A Biography

ALSO BY SUSAN JACOBY Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism Half-Jew: A Daughter's Search for Her Family's Buried Past WildJustice: The Evolution of Revenge The Possible She Inside Soviet Schools Moscow Conversations

THE AGE OF A M E R I C A N UNREASON

T H E AGE OF

AMERICAN UNREASON SUSAN JACOBY

mum Pantheon Books

• N e w York

C o p y r i g h t © 2008 b y Susan J a c o b y A l l rights reserved. Published in the U n i t e d States b y Pantheon B o o k s , a division o f R a n d o m H o u s e , I n c . , N e w Y o r k , and in C a n a d a b y R a n d o m H o u s e o f C a n a d a L i m i t e d , T o r o n t o .

Pantheon B o o k s and c o l o p h o n are registered trademarks o f R a n d o m H o u s e , Inc.

A n excerpt f r o m I. F. Stone: A Portrait b y A n d r e w Patner appears courtesy o f Pantheon B o o k s .

Library o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data J a c o b y , Susan, [date] T h e age o f A m e r i c a n unreason / Susan J a c o b y . p.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9 7 8 - 0 - 3 7 5 - 4 2 3 7 4 - 1 United S t a t e s — C i v i l i z a t i o n — 1 9 4 5 - 2 . United States—Social c o n d i t i o n s — 1 9 4 5 . M a s s m e d i a — S o c i a l a s p e c t s — U n i t e d States. 4. Popular c u l t u r e — U n i t e d States. 5. R e a s o n — S o c i a l a s p e c t s — U n i t e d States. 6. Social v a l u e s — U n i t e d States. Social p s y c h o l o g y — U n i t e d States. 8. N a t i o n a l characteristics, A m e r i c a n . I. Title. E169.Z83J33 2008 973.91 — d c 2 2

20070215 62

www.pantheonbooks.com Printed in the U n i t e d States o f A m e r i c a First Edition 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

For Aaron Asher

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. — T h o m a s Jefferson, 1816

CONTENTS

Introduction ONE

xi

T h e Way We Live N o w : J u s t U s Folks

3

TWO The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation 31 THREE Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars 61 FOUR R e d s , Pinkos, F e l l o w Travelers FIVE Middlebrow Culture from N o o n to T w i l i g h t six

Blaming It on the Sixties

82 103 131

SEVEN Legacies: Y o u t h Culture and Celebrity Culture

163

EIGHT T h e N e w O l d - T i m e R e l i g i o n

183

NINE Junk Thought TEN ELEVEN CONCLUSION

210

T h e Culture o f Distraction

242

Public Life: Defining Dumbness D o w n w a r d

279

Cultural Conservation

307

Notes

319

Selected Bibliography

329

Acknowledgments

333

Index

335

ix

INTRODUCTION

It is the dream o f every historian to produce a w o r k that endures and provides the foundation for insights that may he decades or centuries in the future. Such a b o o k is R i c h a r d Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, published in early 1963 on the hopeful cusp between the M c C a r t h y era and the social convulsions o f the late sixties. " O n e of the major virtues o f liberal society in the past," Hofstadter w r o t e in an elegaic yet guardedly optimistic conclusion, "was that it made possible such a variety o f styles o f intellectual life—one can find men notable for being passionate and rebellious, others for being elegant and sumptuous, or spare and astringent, clever and c o m p l e x , patient and wise, and some equipped mainly to observe and endure. W h a t matters is the openness and generosity needed to comprehend the varieties o f excellence that could be found even in a single rather parochial society. . . . It is possible, o f course, that the avenues o f choice are being closed, and that the culture o f the future w i l l be dominated by single-minded men o f one persuasion or another. It is possible; but in so far as the weight o f one's w i l l is thrown onto the scales o f history, one lives in the belief that it is not to be s o . " I was moved by those words w h e n I first read them as a college stu­ dent more than forty years ago, and I am still m o v e d by them. Y e t it is difficult to suppress the fear that the scales o f American history have shifted heavily against the vibrant and varied intellectual life so essen­ tial to functional democracy. D u r i n g the past four decades, America's endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been grievously exacer­ bated by a n e w species o f semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by an ignorant popular culture o f v i d e o images and unremitxi

xii

Introduction

ting noise that leaves no r o o m for contemplation or logic. This new form o f anti-rationalism, at odds not only w i t h the nation's heritage o f eighteenth-century Enlightenment reason but w i t h modern scien­ tific k n o w l e d g e , has propelled a surge o f anti-intellectualism capable o f inflicting vastly greater damage than its historical predecessors inflicted on American culture and politics. Indeed, popular antirationalism and anti-intellectualism are n o w synonymous. I cannot call myself a cultural conservative, because that term, hijacked by the religious right and propagated by the media, is customarily used to describe a person preoccupied w i t h such matters as the preservation o f the phrase "under G o d " in the Pledge o f Allegiance; the defense o f marriage as an institution for heterosexuals o n l y ; the promotion o f premarital chastity; and the protection o f cancer patients from mari­ j u a n a addiction. I do, however, consider myself a cultural conserva­ tionist, committed, in the strict dictionary sense, to the preservation o f culture "from destructive influences, natural decay, or waste; pres­ ervation in being, life, health, perfection, etc." Hofstadter's examination o f American anti-intellectualism, an exemplary specimen o f cultural conservationism, appeared at a time w h e n the nation was taking a more critical look at the entire array o f self-congratulatory pieties connected w i t h the P a x Americana after the Second World War. T h e three years between the election and assassination o f President J o h n F. K e n n e d y generated considerable optimism among most Americans, but no group had greater reason for hope than the intellectual community. Intellectuals had become accustomed during the late forties and early fifties to a political cli­ mate that equated academic and scholarly interests w i t h communist and socialist leanings or, at the v e r y least, w i t h a dangerous tolerance toward those w h o did harbor left-wing sympathies. Even when "eggheads" w e r e not being portrayed as potential traitors, they were often dismissed as incompetents. In 1954, President D w i g h t D . Eisen­ hower, speaking at a R e p u b l i c a n fund-raiser, described an intellectual as "a man w h o takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he k n o w s . " W h e n the Soviet U n i o n bruised the nation's ego by launching Sputnik in 1957, it dawned on Americans that intellectuals might actually have some practical value. Public interest and money, h o w ­ ever, w e r e largely reserved for scientific endeavor—with its obvious

Introduction

xiii

importance for both national defense and bragging rights. Intellectu­ als w h o devoted themselves to scholarship or ideas w i t h no obvious utilitarian purpose had little stature or status as far as the general p u b ­ lic was concerned. W h e n I m o v e d to N e w Y o r k in the early seventies, I was astonished to meet intellectuals w h o , in the fifties, had actually believed that Adlai Stevenson could defeat Eisenhower for

the

presidency—a wishful misconception that was surely a measure o f their psychological and social distance from ordinary Americans in the nation's heartland. M y parents, grandparents, and most o f their friends had voted for both Franklin R o o s e v e l t and H a r r y Truman, but all I ever heard about Stevenson w h e n I was g r o w i n g up in a small town in Michigan was that he was too m u c h o f an egghead to have any understanding o f ordinary people and their problems. Steven­ son's cultivated speech, such a strong point in his favor among his fel­ l o w intellectuals, was seen as a liability by most o f the adults w h o inhabited m y childhood w o r l d . M y grandmother, w h o before her death at age ninety-nine boasted that she had never voted for a Republican, was able to overcome her distaste for Stevenson's syntax and elevated vocabulary only by recalling the Depression and her beloved F D R . "Adlai talked d o w n to people," she recalled, "and he didn't have the c o m m o n touch. Ike had the c o m m o n touch and I loved him, but in the end, remembering w h i c h party gave us Social Security and w h i c h party couldn't care less about starving old people, I just couldn't bring myself to vote R e p u b l i c a n . " Kennedy, by contrast, managed the tricky feat o f displaying his intelligence and education—his manner o f speaking was every bit as polished and erudite as Stevenson's—without being seen by the p u b ­ lic as a snooty intellectual. T h e public was right: K e n n e d y was no intellectual, i f an intellectual is, to b o r r o w Hofstadter's definition, someone w h o "in some sense lives for ideas—which means he has a sense o f dedication to the life o f the mind w h i c h is v e r y much like a religious commitment." F e w politicians o f any era, in any country, could qualify as intellectuals by that strict standard. O n e o f the most remarkable characteristics o f America's revolutionary

generation

was the presence and influence o f so many genuine intellectuals (although the term had not been coined in the eighteenth century). M e n o f extraordinary learning and intellect w e r e disproportionately represented among the politicians w h o w r o t e the Declaration o f

xiv

Introduction

Independence and the Constitution and led the republic during its formative decades. True to Enlightenment values, they saw no contra­ diction between their roles as thinkers and actors on the public stage: the founders w o u l d have been astonished by the subsequent develop­ ment o f w h a t Lionel Trilling w o u l d describe in 1942 as "the chronic American belief that there exists an opposition between reality and mind and that one must enlist oneself in the party o f reality."* K e n n e d y spoke and w r o t e frequently—and had done so long before he became president—of the need for American society to abandon its parochial twentieth-century image o f an inevitable divi­ sion between thought and action and return to an eighteenth-century model in w h i c h learning and a philosophical bent were thought to enhance political leadership. His government appointments reflected that philosophy; w h e n it came time to fill important j o b s in his administration, K e n n e d y hired prominent academics in numbers that provided clear evidence o f his comfort in the presence o f men (though not w o m e n ) o f ideas. T h e k n o w l e d g e that the n e w presi­ dent had sought out such undeniable eggheads as J o h n Kenneth G a l braith, R i c h a r d Neustadt, R i c h a r d G o o d w i n , Arthur Schlesinger, J r . , and Walter Heller did m u c h to elevate public respect for the intel­ lectual community, and intellectuals themselves were sometimes o v e r w h e l m e d by simultaneous sensations o f gratification and guilt at the n e w l y apparent possibilities o f p o w e r and its attendant material rewards. In his 1978 m e m o i r New York Jew, the literary critic Alfred Kazin, w i t h his characteristic m i x t u r e o f malice and g o o d humor, captured the m o o d in a description o f summers spent in increasingly fashion­ able and prosperous intellectual havens on C a p e C o d , where everyone basked in the g l o r y o f the K e n n e d y connection. " T h e w o o d s . . . were suddenly full o f W h i t e H o u s e detail in incongruous business s u i t s . . . A r t h u r Schlesinger and R i c h a r d G o o d w i n , released from academic constraints and j u s t in from the K e n n e d y compound at Hyannis, gam­ boled and gossiped. . . . Y o u n g men in rustic beards sat cross-legged on the floor h u m m i n g and strumming folk rock to their o w n guitars. T h e r e was a cocktail-party sense o f everybody's ability to move flu-

* T h i s lecture, originally delivered at C o l u m b i a U n i v e r s i t y , w a s reprinted in Trilling's influential collection o f essays, The Liberal Imagination, in 1 9 5 0 .

Introduction

xv

ently anywhere. P o w e r from Washington seemed to be stored up in the cells o f Kennedy's executive assistants and advisers even on a weekend romp in Wellfleet among their old colleagues from Harvard, M . I . T , and the Institute for Advanced S t u d y . " At

this

moment

of

cultural

equipoise,

Hofstadter's

Anti-

intellectualism was published. In one important sense, the b o o k is v e r y much a product o f the M c C a r t h y era: Hofstadter was determined to examine the fierce postwar melding o f anti-intellectualism and prose­ cutorial anti-Communism within the broader long-term context o f American cultural propensities that declared themselves soon after the first Puritan settlers landed at P l y m o u t h R o c k . " O u r

anti-

intellectualism is, in fact, older than our national identity and has a long historical background," Hofstadter argued. " A n examination o f this background suggests that regard for intellectuals in the U n i t e d States has not moved steadily d o w n w a r d and has not gone into a sud­ den, recent decline, but is subject to cyclical fluctuations; it suggests, too, that the resentment from w h i c h the intellectual has suffered in our time is a manifestation not o f a decline in his position but o f his increasing prominence." In this v i e w , American anti-intellectualism represented the flip side o f America's democratic impulses in religion and education. Fundamentalist religion, grounded in the belief in a personal relationship between man and G o d and resistance to orthodox ecclesiastical hierarchies, was also resistant to the m o d e r n i z ­ ing and secularizing trends long associated w i t h intellectualism— including the religious intellectualism o f many o f the early Puritan clerics. T h e democratization o f education, w h i c h greatly expanded the number o f high school students beginning in the late nineteenth century and did the same for college enrollment in the twentieth cen­ tury, inevitably relaxed the more rigorous standards prevailing in societies in w h i c h only a minuscule fraction o f students was destined for instruction beyond basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. Finally, America's idealization o f the self-made m a n — o n e w h o succeeds b y his o w n w i t and industriousness w i t h o u t advantages conferred b y either a privileged family background or formal education—did not easily accommodate respect for those w h o devoted their lives to teaching and learning. Ironically, the denigration o f professional educators did not really take hold until the middle o f the twentieth century, w h e n a college

Introduction

xvi

degree first became a necessary passport to success not only in profes­ sions like law and medicine but in the w o r l d o f business, once seen as the domain o f the self-made. " T h o s e w h o can, d o ; those w h o can't, teach" is an adage that w o u l d have seemed ridiculous to Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, w h e n the hiring o f a school­ teacher was one o f the t w o fundamental markers o f civilization in frontier communities (the other being the presence o f a minister). O f course, the ubiquitous and indispensable community schoolteacher, often deficient in formal educational credentials, was a v e r y different cultural and social animal from the credentialed "experts" w h o , espe­ cially after the Second World War, increasingly dominated business, government, and education, and were frequently v i e w e d as enemies o f the c o m m o n sense that is supposedly the special virtue o f ordinary people. Rereading Hofstadter at the end o f the nineties, I was struck by the old-fashioned fairness o f his scholarship)—not the bogus "objec­ t i v i t y " or bland centrism that always locates truth equidistant from t w o points, but a serious attempt to engage the arguments o f o p p o ­ nents and to acknowledge evidence that runs counter to one's o w n biases. I could not have possessed a full appreciation o f this quality w h e n I read the b o o k for the first time, because fairness was, to a con­ siderable degree, taken for granted as an ideal for aspiring y o u n g scholars and writers during the first half o f the sixties. I f intellectuals are n o w beginning to l o o k back on the w o r k o f mid-twentiethcentury "consensus historians"—of w h o m Hofstadter was an emi­ nent e x a m p l e — w i t h a renewed esteem, their respect may be the scholarly equivalent o f the general public's weariness w i t h ideological polarization that has sanctioned not only the demonization o f o p p o ­ nents but the trivialization o f all opposing opinions. T h e denigration o f fairness has infected both political and intellec­ tual life and has n o w produced a culture in w h i c h disproportionate influence is exercised by the loud and relentless voices o f singleminded men and w o m e n o f one persuasion or another. Political polarization is often depicted by the press as the expression o f irrec­ oncilable moral values and styles o f living—blue states versus red states, moral relativism (the latter a demonized word) versus moral absolutism, secularism (another dirty word) versus traditional reli­ gion. After the 2004 election, the hucksters o f conventional w i s d o m

Introduction

xvii

declared that "values issues," narrowly defined in the contemporary cultural conservative manner, trumped everything else. B u t the con­ ventional w i s d o m did an instant about-face, as it so often does, after Democrats—many combining an image o f cultural traditionalism w i t h opposition to the w a r in Iraq—regained control o f both houses of Congress in 2006. Hurrah! T h e "vital center" was back! T h e con­ gressional p o w e r shift in the midterm elections was, however, deter­ mined by a few thousand votes in a few states—as was President G e o r g e W. Bush's election in both 2000 and 2004. Even though, for the moment, the real w a r in Iraq has eclipsed the culture wars in polit­ ical importance, there is no reason to believe that the American center has suddenly become immune to polarizing appeals to fear and selfrighteousness, accompanied by disdain for reason and evidence. It remains to be seen, as the current presidential campaign unfolds, whether Americans are willing to consider w h a t the flight from rea­ son has cost us as a people and whether any candidate has the w i l l or the courage to talk about ignorance as a political issue affecting e v e r y ­ thing from scientific research to decisions about w a r and peace. T o cite just one example, Americans are alone in the developed w o r l d in their v i e w o f evolution by means o f natural selection as "controversial" rather than as settled mainstream science. T h e contin­ uing strength o f religious fundamentalism in A m e r i c a (again, unique in the developed world) is generally cited as the sole reason for the bizarre persistence o f anti-evolutionism. B u t that simple answer does not address the larger question o f w h y so many

nonfundamentalist

Americans are willing to dismiss scientific consensus. T h e real and more complex explanation may lie not in America's brand o f faith but in the public's ignorance about science in general as well as evolution in particular. M o r e than t w o thirds o f Americans, according to sur­ veys conducted for the National Science Foundation over the past t w o decades, are unable to identify D N A as the key to heredity. N i n e out o f ten Americans do not understand radiation and what it can do to the body. O n e in five adults is convinced that the sun revolves around the earth. Such responses point to a stunning failure o f A m e r ­ ican public schooling at the elementary and secondary levels, and it is easy to understand w h y a public w i t h such a shaky grasp o f the most rudimentary scientific facts w o u l d be unable or unwilling to compre­ hend the theory o f evolution. O n e should not have to be an intellec-

xviii

Introduction

tuai or, for that matter, a college graduate to understand that the sun does not revolve around the earth or that D N A contains the biologi­ cal instructions that make each o f us a unique member o f the human species. This level o f scientific illiteracy provides fertile soil for politi­ cal appeals based on sheer ignorance. T h e current American relationship to reading and writing, by con­ trast, is best described not as illiterate but as a-literate. In 2002, the National E n d o w m e n t for the Arts released a survey indicating that fewer than half o f adult Americans had read any w o r k o f fiction or poetry in the preceding y e a r — n o t even detective novels, bodiceripper romances, or the "rapture" novels based on the B o o k o f Revela­ tion. O n l y 57 percent had read a nonaction book. In this increasingly a-literate America, not only the enjoyment o f reading but critical thinking itself is at risk. That Americans inhabit a less contemplative and judicious society than they did just four decades ago is arguable only to the ever-expanding group o f infotainment marketers w h o stand to profit from the videoization o f everything. T h e greater accessibility o f information through computers and the Internet serves to foster the illusion that the ability to retrieve words and n u m ­ bers w i t h the click o f a mouse also confers the capacity to j u d g e whether those words and numbers represent truth, lies, or something in between. This illusion is not o f course confined to America, but its effects are especially deleterious in a culture (unlike, say, that o f France or Japan) w i t h an endemic predilection for technological answers to nontechnological questions and an endemic suspicion o f anything that smacks o f intellectual elitism. O n e important element o f the resurgent anti-intellectualism in American life is the popular equation o f intellectualism w i t h a liberal­ ism supposedly at odds w i t h traditional American values. T h e entire concept is summed up by the right-wing rubric "the elites." P r o m i ­ nent right-wing intellectuals, w h o themselves constitute a prosperous and politically powerful elite, have succeeded brilliantly at masking their o w n privileged class status and pinning the label "elites" only on liberals. T h e neoconservative patriarch Irving Kristol, in Reflections of a Neoconservative (1983), observed that although "intellectuals" were alienated from "the American w a y o f life," the American people were not. "It is the self-imposed assignment o f neoconservatism to explain to the American people w h y they are right," Kristol explained, "and

Introduction

xix

to the intellectuals w h y they are w r o n g . " O n e w o u l d never guess from this passage that Kristol himself was a N e w Y o r k J e w i s h intellec­ tual through and through and that w h a t separated h i m from those wrongheaded other intellectuals, so at odds w i t h the American W a y o f Life, was his embrace o f the Republican Party. A n "intellectual," by this selective definition, is any intellectual w h o disagrees w i t h con­ servatives; people like Kristol can no longer openly call themselves intellectuals because they have been so effective at turning the once honorable w o r d into a political pejorative. T h e right w i n g has been able to get away w i t h this disingenuous l o g i c — a n d w i t h putting it in the mouths o f genuinely anti-intellectual right-wing politicians— because nonreading Americans k n o w less and less about their nation's political and intellectual history. T h e most ominous and obvious manifestation o f this ignorance, serving as both cause and effect, is an absence o f curiosity about other points o f v i e w . After the publication in 2004 o f m y b o o k Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, I began to receive invitations to lec­ ture in many parts o f the country, and I w e l c o m e d w h a t I thought w o u l d be an opportunity to educate a broader and more diverse audi­ ence about America's secular traditions. Instead, I have found myself preaching almost entirely to the converted. W i t h the exception o f certain university appearances w h e r e student attendance was required for course credit, m y audiences were composed almost entirely o f people w h o already agreed w i t h me. Serious conservatives report exactly the same experience on the lecture circuit. T h e unwillingness to give a hearing to contradictory viewpoints, or to imagine that one might learn anything from an ideological or cultural opponent, represents a departure from the best side o f A m e r ­ ican popular and elite intellectual traditions. T h r o u g h o u t the last quarter o f the nineteenth century, millions o f A m e r i c a n s — m a n y o f them devoutly religious—packed lecture halls around the country to hear R o b e r t Green Ingersoll, k n o w n as "the Great A g n o s t i c , " excori­ ate conventional religion and any involvement between church and state. W h e n T h o m a s H e n r y H u x l e y , the British naturalist and preem­ inent popularizer o f Darwin's theory o f evolution, made his first trip to the United States in 1876, he spoke to standing-room-only crowds even though many members o f his audiences w e r e genuinely shocked by his views on the descent o f man. Americans in the 1800s, regardless

xx

Introduction

o f their level o f formal education, wanted to make up their o w n minds about w h a t men like Ingersoll and H u x l e y had to say. That kind o f curiosity, w h i c h demands firsthand evidence o f whether the devil really has horns, is essential to the intellectual and political health o f any society. In today's America, intellectuals and nonintellectuals alike, whether on the left or right, tend to tune out any voice that is not an echo. T h i s obduracy is both a manifestation o f mental laziness and the essence o f anti-intellectualism. If, as I w i l l argue in this book, A m e r i c a is n o w ill w i t h a powerful mutant strain o f intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism, and antiintellectualism—as opposed to the recognizable cyclical strains o f the past—the virulence o f the current outbreak is inseparable from an unmindfulness that is, paradoxically, both aggressive and passive. This condition is aggressively promoted b y everyone, from politicians to media executives, w h o s e livelihood depends on a public that derives its opinions from sound bites and blogs, and it is passively accepted by a public in thrall to the serpent promising effortless enjoyment from the fruit o f the tree o f infotainment. Is there still time and will for cultural conservationists to ameliorate the degenerative effects o f the poisoned apple? Insofar as the weight o f one's w i l l is thrown onto the scales o f history, one lives in the stubborn hope that it might be so.

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

CHAPTER ONE

T H E W A Y W E LIVE N O W : JUST US FOLKS

THE WORD IS E V E R Y W H E R E , a plague spread by the President o f the United States, television anchors, radio talk s h o w hosts, preachers in megachurches, self-help gurus, and anyone else attempting to d e m o n ­ strate his or her identification w i t h ordinary, presumably w h o l e s o m e American values. O n l y a few decades ago, Americans w e r e addressed as people or, in the more distant past, ladies and gentlemen. N o w w e are all folks. Television commentators, apparently confusing them­ selves w i t h the clergy, routinely declare that "our prayers g o out to those folks"—whether the folks are victims o f drought, hurricane, flood, child molestation, corporate layoffs, identity theft, or the w a r in Iraq (as long as the victims are American and not Iraqi). Irony is reserved for fiction. Philip R o t h , in The Plot Against America—a dark historical reimagining o f a nation in w h i c h Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin D . Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election—confers the title "Just F o l k s " on a Lindbergh program designed to de-Judaize young urban J e w s by sending them o f f to spend their summers in wholesome rural and Christian settings. While the w o r d "folks" was once a colloquialism w i t h no political meaning, there is no escaping the political meaning o f the term w h e n it is reverently invoked by public officials in twenty-first-century America. After the terrorist bombings in L o n d o n on J u l y 7, 2005, President Bush assured Americans, " I ' v e been in contact w i t h our homeland security folks and I instructed them to be in touch w i t h local and state officials about the facts o f w h a t took place here and in London and to be extra vigilant as our folks start heading to w o r k . " Bush went on to observe that "the contrast couldn't be clearer,

3

4

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

between the intentions o f those o f us w h o care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those w h o ' v e got such evil in their heart that they w i l l take the lives o f innocent folks." Those evil ter­ rorists. O u r innocent folks. Even homeland security officials, w h o — one lives in hope—are supposed to be highly trained experts, cannot escape the folkish designation. A l l o f the 2008 presidential contenders pepper their speeches w i t h appeals to folks, but only J o h n Edwards, w h o g r e w up p o o r in N o r t h Carolina, sounds as i f he was raised around people w h o actually used the w o r d in everyday conversation. E v e r y time Hillary R o d h a m Clinton, brought up in a conservative Republican household in an upper-middle-class suburb o f Chicago, utters the w o r d "folks," she sounds like a hovering parent trying to ingratiate herself w i t h her children's friends by using teenage slang. T h e specific political use o f folks as an exclusionary and inclusionary signal, designed to make the speaker sound like one o f the boys or girls, is symptomatic o f a debasement o f public speech inseparable from a more general erosion o f American cultural standards. Casual, colloquial language also conveys an implicit denial o f the seriousness o f whatever issue is being debated: talking about folks going off to w a r is the equivalent o f describing rape victims as girls (unless the v i c ­ tims are, in fact, little girls and not g r o w n w o m e n ) . L o o k up any important presidential speech in the history o f the United States before 1980, and y o u w i l l not find one patronizing appeal to folks. Imagine : We here highly resolve that thesefolks shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of thefolks, by thefolks, for thefolks, shall not perishfrom the earth. In the 1950s, even though there w e r e no orators o f Lincoln's eloquence on the political scene, voters still expected their leaders to employ dignified, i f not necessarily erudite, speech. Adlai Stevenson may have sounded too m u c h like an intellectual to suit the taste o f average Americans, but proper grammar and respectful forms o f address w e r e mandatory for anyone seeking high office. T h e gold standard o f presidential oratory for adult Americans in the fifties was the m e m o r y o f Roosevelt, w h o s e patrician accent in no w a y detracted from his extraordinary ability to make a direct connec­ tion w i t h ordinary people. It is impossible to read the transcripts o f F D R ' s famous fireside chats and not m o u r n the passing o f a civic cul­ ture that appealed to Americans to expand their k n o w l e d g e and understanding instead o f pandering to the lowest c o m m o n denomi-

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

5

nator. Calling for sacrifice and altruism in perilous times, R o o s e v e l t w o u l d no more have addressed his fellow citizens as folks than he w o u l d have uttered an obscenity over the radio. A t the end o f 1940, attempting to prepare his countrymen for the coming o f war, the president spoke in characteristic terms to the public. Tonight, in the presence o f a world crisis, my mind goes back eight years to a night in the midst of a domestic crisis . . . I well remember that while I sat in my study in the White House, preparing to talk to the people of the United States, I had before my eyes the picture of all those Americans with w h o m I was talk­ ing. I saw the workmen in the mills, the mines, the factories; the girl behind the counter; the small shopkeeper; the farmer doing his spring plowing; the widows and the old men wondering about their life's savings. I tried to convey to the great mass of the A m e r ­ ican people what the banking crisis meant to them in their daily lives. Tonight I want to do the same thing, with the same people, in this new crisis which faces A m e r i c a . . . . We must be the great arsenal o f democracy. F o r us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to the task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as w e would show were w e at war.... As president of the United States I call for that national effort. I call for it in the name of this nation which w e love and honor and which we are privileged and proud to serve. I call upon our people with absolute confidence that our common cause will greatly succeed.

1

Substitute folks for people, farmer, old men, and w i d o w s , and the relationship between the abandonment o f dignified public speech and the degradation o f the political process becomes clear. T o call for resolution and a spirit o f patriotism and sacrifice is to call upon people to rise above their everyday selves and to behave as true citizens. T o keep telling Americans that they are j u s t folks is to expect nothing special—a ratification and exaltation o f the quotidian that is one o f the distinguishing marks o f anti-intellectualism in any era.

6

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

T h e debasement o f the nation's speech is evident in virtually every­ thing broadcast and podcast on radio, television, and the Internet. In this true, all-encompassing public square, homogenized language and homogenized thought reinforce each other in circular fashion. As G e o r g e O r w e l l noted in 1946, " A man may take to drink because he feels himself a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes u g l y and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness o f our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

2

In this continuous blurring o f clarity and

intellectual discrimination, political speech is always ahead o f the curve—especially because today's media possess the p o w e r to amplify and spread error w i t h an efficiency that might have astonished even O r w e l l . Consider the near-universal substitution, by the media and politicians, o f " t r o o p " and "troops" for "soldier" and "soldiers." As every dictionary makes plain, the w o r d "troop" is always a collective noun; the " s " is added w h e n referring to a particularly large military force. Y e t each night on the television news, correspondents report that " X troops w e r e killed in Iraq today." This is more than a gram­ matical error; turning a soldier—an individual w i t h w h o m one may identify—into an anonymous-sounding troop encourages the public to think about w a r and its casualties in a more abstract w a y . W h o lays a wreath at the T o m b o f the U n k n o w n Troop? It is difficult to deter­ mine exactly h o w , w h y , or w h e n this locution began to enter the c o m m o n language. Soldiers w e r e almost never described as troops during the Second World War, except w h e n a large military operation (like the Allied landing on D - D a y ) was being discussed, and the term remained extremely u n c o m m o n throughout the Vietnam era. M y guess is that some dimwits in the military and the media (perhaps the military media) decided, at some point in the 1980s, that the w o r d "soldier" implied the masculine gender and that all soldiers, out o f respect for the g r o w i n g presence o f w o m e n in the military, must henceforth be called troops. Like unremitting appeals to folks, the v i c t o r y o f troops over soldiers offers an impressive illustration o f the relationship between fuzzy thinking and the debasement o f everyday speech. B y debased speech, I do not mean bad grammar, although there is

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

7

plenty o f that on every street corner and talk show, or the prevalence o f obscene language, so widespread as to be deprived o f force and meaning at those rare times w h e n only an epithet w i l l do. N o r am I talking about Spanglish and so-called Black English, those favorite targets o f cultural conservatives—although I share the conservatives' belief that public schools ought to concentrate on teaching standard English. B u t the standard o f standard American English, and the ways in w h i c h private speech n o w mirrors the public speech emanating from electronic and digital media, is precisely the problem. Debased speech in the public square functions as a kind o f low-level toxin, imperceptibly coarsening our concept o f what is and is not acceptable until someone says something so r e v o l t i n g — D o n Imus's notorious description o f female African-American college basketball players as "nappy-headed hos" is the perfect example—that it produces a rare, and always brief, moment o f public consciousness about the meaning and p o w e r o f words. Predictably, the Imus affair proved to be a missed opportunity for a larger cultural conversation about the level o f all American public discourse and language. People only wanted to talk about b i g o t r y — a w o r t h y and vital conversation, to be sure, but one that quickly degenerated into a comparative lexicon o f racial and ethnic victimology. Would Imus have been fired for calling someone a faggot or a dyke? What i f he had only called the w o m e n hos, w i t h ­ out the additional racial insult o f nappy-headed? A n d h o w about Muslims? Didn't A n n C o u l t e r denigrate them as "ragheads" (a slur o f w h i c h I was blissfully unaware until an indignant

multiculturalist 3

reported it on the op-ed page o f The New York Times). T h e awful reality is that all o f these epithets, often accompanied by the F - w o r d , are the c o m m o n currency o f public and private speech in today's America. T h e y are used not only because many Americans are infected by various degrees o f bigotry but because nearly all A m e r i ­ cans are afflicted by a poverty o f language that cheapens h u m o r and serious discourse alike. T h e hapless Imus unintentionally made this point w h e n he defended his remarks on grounds that they had been made within a humorous context. " T h i s is a c o m e d y s h o w , " he said, "not a racial rant." Wrong on both counts. N o t h i n g reveals a lack o f comic inventiveness more reliably than the presence o f reflexive epi­ thets, eliciting snickers not because they exist within any intentional

8

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

" c o n t e x t " but simply because they are crass words that someone is saying out loud. Part o f Imus's audience was undoubtedly composed o f hard-core racists and misogynists, but many more w h o found his rants amusing w e r e responding in the spirit o f eight-year-olds laughing at farts. Imus's "serious" political commentary was equally pedestrian. H e fre­ quently enjoined officials w h o had incurred his displeasure to "just shut u p , " displaying approximately the same level o f sophistication as Vice President D i c k C h e n e y w h e n he told Senator Patrick J . Leahy on the Senate floor, " G o fuck yourself." A s the genuinely humorous Russell Baker observes, previous generations o f politicians (even if they had felt free to issue the physically impossible A n g l o - S a x o n injunction in a public forum) w o u l d have been shamed by their lack o f verbal inventiveness. In the 1890s, Speaker o f the House Thomas R e e d took care o f one opponent b y observing that " w i t h a few more brains he could be a halfwit." O f another politician, R e e d remarked, " H e never opens his m o u t h w i t h o u t subtracting from the sum o f 4

human intelligence." Americans once heard (or rather, read) such genuinely w i t t y remarks and tried to emulate that w i t . Today w e par­ rot the witless and halfwitted language used by politicians and radio shock j o c k s alike. T h e mirroring process extends far beyond political language, w h i c h has always existed at a certain remove from colloquial speech. T h e toxin o f commercially standardized speech n o w stocks the pri­ vate vault o f words and images w e draw on to think about and to describe everything from the ridiculous to the sublime. O n e o f the most frequently butchered sentences on television programs, for instance, is the incomparable Liberace's cynically funny, " I cried all the w a y to the b a n k " — a line he trotted out whenever serious critics lambasted his candelabra-lit performances as kitsch.* T h e w i t t y observation has been transformed into the senseless catchphrase, " I

* Liberace first used this line in 1957, when he won a libel judgment against the British tabloid Daily Mirror, which published a column calling the entertainer a "deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated,

luminous, giggling, fruit-

flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love." The British court concluded that the article had libelously implied that Liberace was a homosexual (which of course he was, but there was no proof).

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

9

laughed all the w a y to the bank"—often used as a non sequitur after news stories about lottery winners. In their dual role as creators o f public language and as microphones amplifying and disseminating the language many American already use in their daily lives, the media constitute a perpetuum mobile, the perfect example o f a machine in w h i c h cause and effect can never be separated. A sports broadcaster, speaking o f an athlete w h o just signed a multi-year, multi-milliondollar contract, says, " H e laughed all the w a y to the bank." A child idly listening-—perhaps playing a v i d e o game on a computer at the same time—absorbs the meaningless statement w i t h o u t thinking and repeats it, spreading it to others w h o might one day be inter­ viewed on television and say, " I laughed all the w a y to the bank," thereby transmitting the virus to n e w listeners. It is all reminiscent o f the exchange among Alice, the M a r c h Hare, and the M a d Hatter in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. " T h e n y o u should say w h a t y o u mean," the M a r c h Hare tells Alice. " ' I d o , ' Alice hastily replied; 'at least—at least I mean what I say—that's the same thing, y o u k n o w . ' " T h e Hatter chimes in, " N o t the same thing a bit! W h y , y o u might j u s t as well say that ' I see what I eat' is the same thing as ' I eat w h a t I see'!" In an ignorant and anti-intellectual culture, people eat mainly w h a t they see.

I T is IMPOSSIBLE to define anti-intellectualism as a historical force, or a continuing American reality, in a manner as precise or useful as the kind o f definition that might be supplied for, say, abolitionism or feminism. In Hofstadter's v i e w , anti-intellectualism is not an inde­ pendent historical or social phenomenon but the consequence o f some other goal—such as the desire to extend educational opportuni­ ties to a broader population or to wrest control o f religious life from ecclesiastical hierarchies. " H a r d l y anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture," Hofstadter writes. " M e n do not rise in the morning, grin at themselves in their mirrors, and say: 'Ah, today I 5

shall torment an intellectual and strangle an idea!' " This seems to me an overly charitable portrait o f anti-intellectualism—then and n o w . It is surely true that few people like to consider themselves enemies o f thought and culture. Bush, after all, called himself the "education

10

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

president" w i t h a straight face w h i l e simultaneously declaring, w i t h ­ out a trace o f self-consciousness or self-criticism, that he rarely read newspapers because that w o u l d expose him to "opinions."* H o w e v e r , there are ways o f trying to strangle ideas that do not involve straightforward attempts at censorship or intimidation. T h e suggestion that there is something sinister, even un-American, about intense devotion to ideas, reason, logic, evidence, and precise lan­ guage is one o f them. J u s t before the 2004 presidential election, the journalist R o n Suskind reported a chilling conversation w i t h a senior B u s h aide, w h o told Suskind that members o f the press were part o f what the B u s h administration considers "the reality-based c o m m u n i t y " — t h o s e w h o "believe that solutions emerge from j u d i ­ cious study o f discernible reality." B u t , the aide emphasized, "That's not the w a y the w o r l d really w o r k s anymore. We're an empire now, and w h e n w e act, w e create our o w n reality. A n d while you're study­ ing that reality—judiciously, as y o u w i l l — w e ' l l act again, creating other n e w realities, w h i c h y o u can study too. . . . We're history's actors . . . and y o u , all o f y o u , will be left to just study what w e d o . "

6

T h e explicit distinction between those w h o are fit only to study and those w h o are history's actors not only expresses contempt for intel­ lectuals but also denigrates anyone w h o requires evidence, rather than p o w e r and emotion, as justification for public policy. Anti-intellectualism in any era can best be understood as a c o m ­ p l e x o f symptoms w i t h multiple causes, and the persistence o f s y m p ­ toms over time possesses the potential to turn a treatable, livable condition into a morbid disease affecting the entire b o d y politic. It is certainly easy to point to a w i d e variety o f causes—some old and some n e w — f o r the resurgent American anti-intellectualism o f the past t w e n t y years. First and foremost among the vectors o f antiintellectualism are the mass media. O n the surface, today's media seem to offer consumers an unprecedented variety o f choices— television programs on hundreds o f channels; movies; video games; music; and the Internet versions o f those products, available in so many portable electronic packages that it is entirely possible to go * On September 22, 2003, the Associated Press reported that President Bush scans head­ lines but rarely reads entire newspaper stories, which would expose him to nonobjective "opinions." He prefers that White House staffers provide him with a more "objective" digest of the daily news.

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

11

through an entire day without being deprived for a second o f c o m ­ mercial entertainment. A n d it should not be forgotten that all o f the video entertainment is accompanied b y a soundtrack, usually in the form o f ear-shattering music and special effects that w o u l d obviate concentration and reflection even in the absence o f visual images. Leaving aside the question o f whether it is a g o o d thing to be enter­ tained twenty-four hours a day, the variety o f the

entertainment,

given that all o f the media outlets and programming divisions are controlled by a few major corporations, is largely an illusion. B u t the absence o f genuine choice is a relatively minor factor in the relationship between the mass media and the decline o f intellectual life in America. It is not that television, or any o f its successors in the world o f video, was designed as an enemy o f active intellectual endeavor but that the media, w h i l e they may not actually be the mes­ sage, inevitably reshape content to fit a form that subordinates both the spoken and the written w o r d to visual images. In doing so, the media restrict their audience's intellectual parameters not o n l y b y providing information in a highly condensed form but by

filling

time—a huge amount o f time—that used to be occupied by engage­ ment w i t h the written w o r d . It is easy w i t h hindsight to v i e w the present saturation o f our culture by v i d e o images and all-encompassing noise as an inevitable progression from the early days o f television. B u t that is not h o w things looked in the early fifties, w h e n many intellectuals had great hopes for television as an educational m e d i u m and as a general force for good. Television coverage had, after all, spelled the beginning o f the end for Senator J o s e p h R . M c C a r t h y in the spring o f 1954, w h e n A B C devoted 188 hours o f broadcast time to live coverage o f the A r m y - M c C a r t h y Hearings. Seeing and hearing M c C a r t h y , w h o came across as a petty thug, turned the tide o f public opinion against abuses of p o w e r that had not seemed nearly as abusive w h e n reported by the print media. T h e hearings pitted the bushy-browed M c C a r t h y and his chief counsel, the vulpine R o y C o h n , against the U . S . A r m y and its special outside counsel, the well-mannered J o s e p h Welch. T h e most famous sound bite o f the hearings came after M c C a r t h y , reneging on an earlier agreement, accused a y o u n g lawyer at Welch's firm o f being a Communist sympathizer. Welch, turning in an instant from a kindly uncle into an avenging angel, thundered at M c C a r t h y , " U n t i l this

12

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

moment, senator, I think I never gauged y o u r cruelty or y o u r reck­ lessness. . . . Have y o u no sense o f decency, sir, at long last?" Although A B C televised the hearings live, the other networks provided a fore­ taste o f the commercial priorities that n o w completely control net­ work

television. C B S , fearful

o f losing revenue

through

the

preemption o f its popular daytime soap operas, declined to cover the hearings at all. N B C opted out early on, w h e n it became clear that there was no drama to be had in the initial sessions. In their fifteenminute evening news programs, both C B S and N B C presented snip­ pets o f the hearings, edited from A B C ' s live broadcasts. B u t by the time the climax o f the hearings came w i t h the confrontation between M c C a r t h y and Welch, millions o f Americans had gained context by watching at least some o f the live committee sessions; that context ensured that the W e l c h - M c C a r t h y exchange w o u l d not become a five-second wonder. O p t i m i s m about the civic educational value o f television—at least among those w h o had favored the election o f J o h n K e n n e d y — w a s bolstered again by the broadcast o f the first presidential debates in the fall o f i960. Y e t Kennedy's v i c t o r y in the initial debate was based more on his appearance than on his words or policies; the pasty-faced N i x o n , w i t h his five o'clock shadow, projected an image not unlike that o f J o e M c C a r t h y , w h i l e the tanned Kennedy, w i t h his thick shock o f hair, seemed the v e r y essence o f youth, energy, and virility. T h e potential civic danger o f determining a presidential election on the basis o f a telegenic appearance was largely ignored at the time. Later polls showed that those w h o had listened to the debate on radio thought N i x o n had w o n , w h i l e those w h o saw the debate on televi­ sion j u d g e d K e n n e d y the winner. This finding might have raised a red flag among more farsighted members o f the intellectual community, but it was largely ignored—possibly because no politician, until the rise o f B u s h fils, was more despised by American intellectuals than Nixon. In spite o f the g r o w i n g influence o f television on public affairs, the overall p o w e r and presence o f television were less pervasive through­ out the fifties and the first half o f the sixties than they w o u l d become by the beginning o f the seventies—let alone w i t h the rise o f cable in the eighties. This was true even though the number o f American households w i t h television j u m p e d from 9 percent in 1950 to nearly

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

13

90 percent in i960. A l t h o u g h television had ceased to be a novelty b y the mid-fifties, it still offered only a limited number o f programs and did not broadcast around the clock. M o r e o v e r , the relatively small number o f home television sets at the start o f the decade meant that for older baby boomers, born before 1950, television was a treat rather than the metronome o f everyday life—at least in their formative pre­ school years. Americans born in the late forties might well be v i e w e d as a different cultural generation from the y o u n g e r boomers, because a great many, if not most, members o f the elder cohort learned to read before television entered their homes. People n o w in their early six­ ties, unless they came from the tiny minority o f families affluent enough to afford a television set in the 1940s, spent the first five to seven years o f their lives in much the same fashion as their parents had—playing outdoors, listening to a favorite radio program, learn­ ing their A B C s from parents and books and not from Sesame Street. But adults n o w in their early fifties were being schooled in front o f the television set long before entering a real school. A n d boomers n o w in their forties, like their o w n children today, w e r e exposed to television from infancy—though few parents in the 1960s w e r e fool­ ish enough to put television sets in front o f their babies' cribs. It is sobering to reflect that during the next decade, as the oldest baby boomers enter retirement beginning in 2 0 1 1 , the political and cultural leadership o f the nation w i l l inevitably pass to the first gener­ ation raised on television from D a y 1 . T h e prospect is especially depressing to those o f us w h o doubt that any attempts at adding more "quality" programming to the v i d e o menu can ever offset the nega­ tive intellectual impact o f sheer quantity. This v i e w was first expressed by N e i l Postman in his prescient 1985 jeremiad, Amusing Ourselves to Death. " I raise no objection to television's j u n k , " Postman declared unequivocally. " T h e best things on television are its j u n k , and no one and nothing is seriously threatened by it. Besides, w e do not measure a culture b y its output o f undisguised trivialities but b y what it claims as significant. Therein is our problem, for television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous w h e n its aspira­ tions are high, w h e n it presents itself as a carrier o f important cultural conversations."

7

Postman was writing at the dawn o f the era o f personal computers and just before various taping devices, beginning w i t h the V C R ,

14

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

became a fixture in homes and made it possible for entertainment consumers to acquire a virtually limitless stock o f visual images for h o m e v i e w i n g at their leisure. Everything he had to say about the implications o f the shift from a print to a video culture is valid t o d a y — o n l y more so. Well-off professionals, including a fair number o f intellectuals, have proved especially vulnerable to the bromide that there is no harm, and may be great benefit, from video consumption as a w a y o f life—as long as the videos are "educational." B u t medical research does not support the comforting notion that a regular diet o f videos, educational or otherwise, is g o o d for the developing brains o f infants and toddlers. A g r o w i n g b o d y o f pediatric research does indi­ cate that frequent exposure to any form o f video in the early years o f life produces older children w i t h shortened attention spans. It does not matter whether the images are produced by a television network, a film studio, or a computer software company: what matters is the amount o f time children spend staring at a monitor. T h e American A c a d e m y o f Pediatrics has concluded that there is no safe level o f v i e w i n g for children under age t w o , but whatever the Academy may recommend, the battle against videos for infants is already lost. O n e o f the most c o m m o n statements made on blogs by anxious parents, fearful that too m u c h v i e w i n g is bad for their children but eager for the convenience supplied by an electronic babysitter, is: "We never let our child watch T V , only videos." A comical example o f this widespread rationalization is the enthusiasm o f ambitious, time-starved upper-middle-class parents for the Baby Einstein series, w h i c h force-feeds toddlers w i t h a series o f educational films designed to introduce them to everything from Monet's water lilies to the poetry o f Wordsworth. Infants are next in line. H o m e B o x Office's Classical Baby, w h i c h premiered in the spring o f 2005, is a perfect illus­ tration o f the genre. T h e half-hour film consists o f musical excerpts from Tchaikovsky, Bach, D u k e Ellington, and Irving Berlin, all accompanied by animated images o f clowns, fairies, and animals, and irritating, flashing glimpses o f famous paintings by the likes o f J a c k ­ son Pollock, Vincent van G o g h , and Claude M o n e t . W h e n groups opposed to marketing television programs to infants objected, D r . Eugene Beresin, a child psychiatrist on the staff o f the Harvard M e d ­ ical School and a consultant to H B O , declared that "to say that this kind o f T V is bad is tantamount to saying art is b a d . "

8

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

15

This statement should be considered prima facie evidence o f video's capacity to dull the wits o f highly educated professionals as well as innocent babies. H o w pathetic it is that such products n o w appeal to a huge market o f people w h o do not understand that the w a y to introduce children to music is by playing g o o d music, uninter­ rupted by video clowns, at h o m e ; the w a y to introduce poetry is by reciting or reading it at bedtime; and the w a y to instill an appreciation of beauty is not to bombard a toddler w i t h screen images o f Monet's Giverny but to introduce her to the real sights and scents o f a garden. It is a fine thing for tired parents to gain a quiet hour for themselves by mesmerizing small children w i t h v i d e o s — w h o w o u l d be stuffy enough to suggest that the occasional hour in front o f animals danc­ ing to Tchaikovsky can do a baby any real harm?—but let us not delude ourselves that education is what is going on. O r rather, educa­ tion is going on—but it is the kind o f education that wires y o u n g brains to focus attention on prepackaged visual stimuli, accompanied by a considerable amount o f noise. O n l y a Luddite w o u l d claim that the v i d e o culture, whether dis­ played on television screens or computer monitors, has nothing to contribute to individual intellectual development or the intellectual life of society. Certainly the promotion o f anti-intellectualism is not the intent o f Baby Einstein, which, after all, is designed to cater to both the competitive anxieties and the intellectual pretensions o f uppermiddle-class parents. Y e t there is little question that the intrusion o f video into the psyches o f Americans at ever earlier ages is not only making it unnecessary for y o u n g children to entertain themselves but is also discouraging them from thinking and fantasizing outside the box, in the most literal as well as a figurative sense. Predictably, the video culture has spawned an electronic cottage industry o f scholars and writers taking up the cudgels in defense o f a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate and pooh-poohing old-fashioned intellectuals (a.k.a. curmudgeons) for their reservations about sucking at the v i d e o tit from cradle to grave. O n l y in today's America could a b o o k titled Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter have received respectful reviews. T h e

author,

Steven Johnson, writes the " E m e r g i n g T e c h n o l o g y " column for Dis­ cover magazine and, by his o w n account, spends a fair amount o f time immersed in v i d e o games. "Parents can sometimes be appalled at the

l6

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

hypnotic effect that television has on toddlers," J o h n s o n writes. " T h e y see their otherwise vibrant and active children gazing silently, m o u t h agape at the screen, and they assume the worst: the television is turning their child into a zombie." N o t to w o r r y , J o h n s o n assures us. T h e glazed stares at the television—and later, at video games— "are not signs o f mental atrophy. T h e y ' r e signs offocus."

9

T h e real point is not w h a t children are focusing on but what they are screening out w i t h their intense focus, most likely directed at a v i d e o already v i e w e d scores o f times. J o h n s o n then goes on to declare that studies demonstrating the decline o f reading and writing skills are deeply flawed because they "ignore the huge explosion o f reading (not to mention writing) that has happened thanks to the rise o f the Internet." W h i l e conceding that e-mail exchanges or Web-based dis­ sections o f the television s h o w The Apprentice are "not the same as lit­ erary novels," J o h n s o n notes approvingly that both are "equally text-driven."

10

Such self-referential codswallop is only to be expected

from a self-referential digital and v i d e o culture; one might as well make the statement that kiddie porn and Titian nudes are "equally image-driven." T h e appeal o f such rationalizations in an acquisitive, technology-dependent society is obvious: parents can rest assured that their m o n e y is being well spent because electronic media toys all have educational value; that there is really nothing w r o n g w i t h not having made time to read a b o o k for the past six months; and that their children are actually getting smarter as they watch the action on their various monitors. W h a t kind o f reading has exploded on the Internet? Certainly not the reading o f serious books, whether fiction or nonfiction. T h e fail­ ure o f e-books to appeal to more than a niche market is one o f the worst kept secrets in publishing, in spite o f the reluctance o f publish­ ers to issue specific sales figures. Even a popular mass-market novelist like Stephen K i n g has flopped on the Web. In 2001, K i n g attempted to serialize one o f his supernatural thrillers online, w i t h the proviso that readers pay $ 1 for the first three installments and $ 2 for subsequent portions. T h o s e w h o downloaded the installments were to pay on an honor system, and K i n g pledged to continue the serialization as long as 75 percent o f readers paid for the downloads. B y the fourth install­ ment, the proportion o f paid-up readers dropped to 46 percent, and K i n g canceled the series at the end o f the year. King's idea o f serializa-

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

17

tion had o f course been tried before, and it was a huge success—in the nineteenth century. L o n d o n readers used to get up early and wait in line for the newest installment o f a novel by Charles Dickens; in N e w Y o r k , Dickens fans w o u l d meet the boats k n o w n to be carrying copies o f the tantalizing chapters. T h e Web, however, is all about the quick­ est possible gratification; it may well be that people most disposed to read online are least disposed to wait any length o f time for a n e w chapter o f a w o r k by their favorite writer. T h e tech stock analysts w h o predicted a limitless future

for

e-books have tried to explain their misjudgment in terms o f the cur­ rent state o f technology: all that is lacking for their bright forecasts to be fufilled is a better tool for downloading and reading. Something small, light, and easily perused w h i l e the reader is riding on a bus, eat­ ing a sandwich, or propped up against pillows. Something like . . . a paperback book? A much more likely explanation for the e-book fiz­ zle is that reading for pleasure—as distinct from necessary, often work-related reading for information—is in certain respects antithet­ ical to the w h o l e experience o f reading on computers and portable digital devices. T h e Internet is the perfect delivery m e d i u m for refer­ ence books and textbooks, w h i c h were never designed to be read from cover to cover. B u t a narrow, time-saving focus is inimical not only to reading for enjoyment but to reading that encourages the retention o f k n o w l e d g e . M e m o r y , w h i c h depends on the capacity to absorb ideas and information through exposition and to connect n e w information to an established edifice o f k n o w l e d g e , is one o f the first victims o f video culture. Without m e m o r y , j u d g m e n t s are made on the unsound basis o f the most recent bit o f half-digested information. All mass entertainment media, and the expanding b o d y o f educa­ tional media based on the entertainment model, emphasize "stand alone" programming that does not require a prior b o d y o f k n o w l ­ edge. T h e media provide the yeast, w h i c h , w h e n added to other American social forces and institutions, creates a fertile culture for the spread o f invincible ignorance throughout the public square.

T H E SECOND M A J O R spur to anti-intellectualism during the past forty years has been the resurgence o f fundamentalist religion. M o d e r n media, w i t h their overt and covert appeal to emotion rather than rea-

18

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

son, are ideally suited to assist in the propagation o f a form o f faith that stands opposed to most o f the great rationalist insights that have transformed Western civilization since the beginning o f the Enlight­ enment. Triumphalist Christian fundamentalism, mainly though not entirely Protestant, is based on the conviction that every w o r d in the Bible is literally true and was handed d o w n by G o d Himself. Public opinion polls conducted during the past four years have consistently found that more than one third o f Americans believe in a literal inter­ pretation o f the Bible, w h i l e nearly six in ten believe that the bloody predictions in the B o o k o f R e v e l a t i o n — w h i c h involve the massacre o f everyone w h o has not accepted Jesus as the M e s s i a h — w i l l come true.

11

Beginning w i t h the radio evangelist Billy Sunday in the twenties, American fundamentalists, w i t h their black-and-white v i e w o f every issue, have made effective use o f each n e w m e d i u m o f mass communi­ cation. Liberal religion, w i t h its many shades o f gray and determina­ tion to make r o o m for secular k n o w l e d g e in the house o f faith, does not lend itself as readily to media packaging and is at an even greater disadvantage in the visual media than it was on radio. F r o m the rantings o f Pat R o b e r t s o n on the yoo Club to M e l Gibson's m o v i e The Pas­ sion of the Christ, religion comes across most powerfully on video w h e n it is unmodified by secular thought and learning, makes no attempt to appeal to anything but emotion, and leaves no r o o m for doubt. Gibson's Passion, for instance, is rooted in a R o m a n Catholic brand o f fundamentalism, long rejected by the Vatican itself, that takes the Gospel o f M a t t h e w literally and blames J e w s for the cruci­ fixion o f Jesus. T h e core audience for the immensely popular movie in the U n i t e d States was drawn not from mainstream Catholics, w h o s e faith does not rest on biblical literalism, but from right-wing Protestants. Even w h e n the entertainment media are not promoting a particu­ lar version o f religion, they do promote and capitalize on widespread American credulity regarding the supernatural. In recent years, tele­ vision has commissioned an unceasing stream o f programs designed to appeal to a vast market o f viewers w h o believe in ghosts, angels, and demons. M o r e than half o f American adults believe in ghosts, one third believe in astrology, three quarters believe in angels, and four fifths believe in miracles.

12

T h e American marketing o f the A p o c a -

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks lypse is a multi-media production, capitalizing on

19 fundamental­

ism and paranoid superstition. Mainstream denominations have long downplayed the predictions in Revelation, w h i c h modern biblical scholars say was written at least sixty years after the death o f the his­ torical Jesus and has o n l y the most tenuous relationship to the Gospels. O n e o f the many rational developments rejected b y funda­ mentalism, however, is biblical scholarship since the mid-nineteenth century. W h o cares what some pointy-headed intellectual has to say about w h e n various parts o f the Bible w e r e actually written and what, if any, relationship the text has to real history? Americans' enthusiasm for apocalyptic fantasy probably owes more to movies like The Exor­ cist and The Omen than to the Bible itself. During the past fifteen years, and especially since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon gave substance to every sort o f paranoia, the driving force behind the "end t i m e s " — meaning the end o f the world—scenario has been a series o f books marketed through right-wing Christian bookstores and fundamental­ ist Web sites. Also k n o w n as the Left Behind series—meaning those left behind to be slaughtered for their unbelief after Jesus returns to earth for the Last J u d g m e n t — t h e religious horror stories for adults are accompanied by a series o f children's books (Left Behind: The Kids); audiotapes; and last but not least, Left Behind: The Movie. T h e books are written by J e r r y B . Jenkins, w h o s e previous w o r k s consisted mainly o f ghostwriting for sports celebrities, and are based on the scriptural interpretations o f T i m L a H a y e , a fundamentalist minister and founding member o f the M o r a l Majority. M o r e than 100 million copies have been sold in the U n i t e d States. T h e saga is also k n o w n to aficionados as the R a p t u r e w i t h a capital " R . " R a p t u r e is also a v e r b ; "to rapture" means to frolic in heaven after G o d has dispatched every skeptic on earth, thereby fulfilling the bibli­ cal prophecy that " E y e hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart o f man, the things w h i c h G o d hath prepared for them that love him" (1 Corinthians 2:9). A s for those w h o doubted H i m , the sadistic A r m a g e d d o n script spells out their unenviable fate: "And there came out o f the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions o f the earth have power. A n d it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass o f the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but o n l y those men

20

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

w h i c h have not the seal o f G o d in their foreheads. . . . A n d in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them." (Revelation 9 : 3 - 4 ; 6). Another p o p ­ ular fundamentalist Web site, run by an A i r Force mechanic in Bellev u e , Nebraska, publishes a daily " R a p t u r e I n d e x , " w h i c h its founder describes as a " D o w J o n e s Industrial Average o f E n d T i m e Activity." T h e index at raptureready.com hit a high on September 24, 2001, as A r m a g e d d o n enthusiasts concluded that the terrorist attacks signified the imminent end o f the w o r l d . What is most disturbing, apart from the fact that millions o f Americans already believe in the imminent end o f days, is that the mainstream media confer respectability on such bizarre fantasies by taking them seriously. In a 2002 Time cover story on the Bible and the Apocalypse, the magazine soberly declared that "since September 1 1 , people from the cooler corners o f Christianity have begun asking questions about what the Bible has to say about h o w the w o r l d ends, and preachers have answered their questions w i t h sermons they could 13

not have imagined giving a year a g o . " N o t a b l y absent from the Time story was any secular or rationalist analysis. T h e article quoted liberal Christians w h o said that their G o d w o u l d never behave as cruelly as a G o d w h o w o u l d obliterate millions o f innocents at the Last J u d g ­ ment, but it gave no space to those w h o dismiss the end-times scenario as a collective delusion based on pure superstition and w h o under­ stand the civic danger inherent in the normalization o f ideas that ought to be dismissed as the province o f a lunatic fringe. Discussing A r m a g e d d o n as i f it were as real as the earth itself, the Time story was, on one level, an effort to capitalize on public fear and sell magazines. O n a deeper level, though, the article exemplifies the journalistic con­ viction that anything "controversial" is w o r t h covering and that both sides o f an issue must always be given equal space—even if one side belongs in an abnormal p s y c h o l o g y textbook. I f enough money is involved, and enough people believe that t w o plus t w o equals five, the media w i l l report the story w i t h a straight face, always adding a qual­ ifying paragraph noting that "mathematicians, however, say that t w o plus t w o still equals four." With a perverted objectivity that gives credence to nonsense, mainstream news outlets have done more to undermine logic and reason than raptureready.com could ever do. Misguided

objectivity, particularly

with

regard

to

religion,

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

21

ignores the willed ignorance that is one o f the defining characteristics o f fundamentalism. O n e o f the most powerful taboos in American life concerns speaking ill o f anyone else's faith—an injunction rooted in confusion over the difference between freedom o f religion and granting religion immunity from the critical scrutiny applied to other social institutions. B o t h the Constitution and the pragmatic realities o f living in a pluralistic society enjoin us to respect our fellow citi­ zens' right to believe whatever they want—as long as their belief, in Thomas Jefferson's phrase, "neither picks m y pocket nor breaks m y leg." B u t many Americans have misinterpreted this sensible laissezfaire principle to mean that respect must be accorded the beliefs them­ selves. This mindless tolerance, w h i c h places observable scientific facts, subject to proof, on the same level as unprovable supernatural fantasy, has played a major role in the resurgence o f both antiintellectualism and anti-rationalism. Millions o f Americans are per­ fectly free, under the Constitution, to believe that the L o r d o f Hosts is coming one day to murder millions o f others w h o do not consider him the Messiah, but the rest o f the public ought to exercise its free­ dom to identify such beliefs as dangerous fallacies that really do pick pockets and break legs. M o d e r n American fundamentalism (the term was not w i d e l y used until the twenties) emerged as an identifiable religious and cultural movement after the First World War, and its defining issue was o p p o ­ sition to the teaching in public schools o f Darwin's theory o f e v o l u ­ tion by means o f natural selection. Intellectuals o f that era, including nonfundamentalist religious believers as w e l l as secularists, mistak­ enly concluded that the anti-evolutionists and fundamentalists had been dealt a decisive b l o w by the 1925 Scopes " m o n k e y trial" in D a y ­ ton, Tennessee. Clarence D a r r o w , the nation's leading trial lawyer and a crusading agnostic, took on the case o f J o h n T . Scopes, a high school teacher charged w i t h violating Tennessee's law banning the teaching o f evolution in public schools. His opponent was William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and hero o f fundamentalists, w h o famously declared that he was "more interested in the R o c k o f Ages than in the ages o f rocks." B r y a n made the mistake o f taking the stand as an expert witness on the Bible, and Darrow, w h o s e skills at cross-examination were legendary, forced his onetime friend to admit that many biblical stories, such as the sun

22

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

standing still for Joshua's armies, could not be taken literally in light o f contemporary scientific k n o w l e d g e . A l t h o u g h Scopes's conviction by a fundamentalist j u r y was a fore­ gone conclusion, northern journalists, scientists, and intellectuals believed that Bryan's humiliation on the stand had discredited funda­ mentalism once and for all. In 1931, the cultural historian Frederick Lewis Allen observed that "legislators might g o on passing antievolution laws and in the hinterlands the pious might still keep their religion locked in a science-proof compartment o f their minds; but civilized opinion e v e r y w h e r e had regarded the . . . trial w i t h amaze­ ment and amusement, and the slow drift away from Fundamentalist certainty continued."

14

Intellectuals like Allen, w h o came o f age in

the early decades o f the twentieth century, w o u l d surely have been incredulous if anyone had predicted that evolution w o u l d be just as controversial a subject in A m e r i c a at the dawn o f the twenty-first cen­ tury as it had been at the end o f the nineteenth.

T H E P E R F E C T STORM over evolution is a perfect example o f the new anti-intellectualism in action, because it owes its existence not only to a renewed religious fundamentalism but to the widespread failings o f American public education and the scientific illiteracy o f much o f the media. Usually portrayed solely as a conflict between faith and sci­ ence, the evolution battle is really a microcosm o f all o f the cultural forces responsible for the prevalence o f unreason in American society today. T h e persistence o f anti-evolutionism, and its revival as a m o v e ­ ment during the past t w e n t y years, sets the United States apart from every other developed country in the w o r l d . O n August 30, 2005, the P e w F o r u m on R e l i g i o n and Public Life released the results o f a pub­ lic opinion poll that received almost no attention in the press because Hurricane Katrina had slammed into the G u l f Coast the day before. B u t the P e w findings, for those w h o bothered to read them, revealed an intellectual disaster as grave as the human and natural disaster unfolding in N e w Orleans. N e a r l y t w o thirds o f Americans want both creationism, generally understood

as the hard-core

funda­

mentalist doctrine based on the story o f Genesis, to be taught along w i t h evolution in public schools. F e w e r than half o f A m e r i c a n s — 48 percent—accept any form o f evolution (even guided by G o d ) , and

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

23

just 26 percent accept Darwin's theory o f evolution by means o f natural selection. F u l l y 42 percent say that all living beings, including humans, have existed in their present form since the beginning o f time.

15

This level o f scientific ignorance cannot be blamed solely on reli­ gious fundamentalism, because the proportion o f Americans w h o reject evolution in any form is higher—by 15 percentage points— than the proportion w h o believe in a literal interpretation o f the Bible. Something else must be at w o r k , and that something else is the l o w level o f science education in American elementary and secondary schools, as well as in many c o m m u n i t y colleges. T h e p o o r quality o f public science education at anything b e l o w the university level is eas­ ily inferred from the educational disparities in responses to the P e w Poll on evolution. O n l y 27 percent o f college graduates believe that living beings have always existed in their present

form—although

that in itself is an astonishingly high figure—but 42 percent o f A m e r ­ icans w i t h only a partial college education and half o f high school graduates adhere to the creationist v i e w p o i n t that organic life has remained unchanged throughout the ages. A third o f Americans mis­ takenly believe that there is substantial disagreement about evolution among scientists—a conviction reinforcing and reflecting the rightw i n g religious mantra that evolution is "just a theory," w i t h no more scientific validity than any other cockamamie idea. Since evolution is just a theory, the anti-evolutionists contend, it must not and should not be v i e w e d as scientific truth. There are o f course many scientific disagreements about the par­ ticulars o f evolution, but the general theory o f evolution by means o f natural selection is a settled issue for the mainstream scientific c o m ­ munity. T h e popular "just a theory" argument rests not only on reli­ gious faith but on our national indifference to the specific meanings o f words in specific contexts. M a n y Americans simply do not under­ stand the distinction between the definitions o f theory in everyday life and in science. F o r scientists, a theory is a set o f principles designed to explain natural phenomena,

supported by observa­

tion, and subject to proofs and peer r e v i e w ; scientific theory is not static but is modified as n e w tools o f measurement and research find­ ings become available. In its everyday meaning, however, a theory is nothing more than a guess based on limited information

or

24

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

misinformation—and that is exactly h o w many Americans v i e w scientific theory. T o those w h o equate theory w i t h uninformed guessing, Einstein's theory o f relativity and Darwin's theory o f evolu­ tion have no more validity than the convictions o f a Left Behind enthu­ siast w h o declares, " M y theory is that the end o f the w o r l d will come after one more terrorist attack." Predictions about the end o f the w o r l d are perfect examples o f nonscientific theories : each time they fail to come true, the prognosticators simply set a n e w date for fulfill­ ment o f the prophecy. A specific set o f calculations may be w r o n g , but the prophecy retains its status as an eternal and unverifiable super­ natural truth. W h o , after all, can prove that the end o f the w o r l d is not just one m o r e disaster away? In science, n e w information either unmasks a falsehood, as Copernicus's and Galileo's observations undermined

the long-held belief that the sun revolves around

the earth, or supports an earlier theory based on less complete information. O n e o f the most important contributors to the evolution tempest is local control o f elementary and secondary schooling, an American tradition responsible for vast and persistent regional disparities in the quality o f education throughout the land. In Europe, national cur­ riculum standards prevail: Sicilians may have different cultural values from Piedmontese, but a high school graduate in either Italian region w i l l have been taught the same facts about science. In the United States, the geographical dimension o f the culture wars, w i t h the p o w ­ erful fundamentalist presence in the South and parts o f the Middle West, means that teachers in those areas, even i f they believe in evolution themselves, are w a r y o f incorporating the subject into their b i o l o g y classes. A turn-of-the-millennium report by the Thomas B . F o r d h a m Foundation, an education research institute, concluded that schools in more than a third o f American states, most in the South and the M i d w e s t , are failing to acquaint students not only w i t h the basic facts o f evolution but w i t h the importance o f Darwin's theory to all modern scientific thinking.

16

O n e o f the most c o m m o n strategies o f schools k o w t o w i n g to antievolutionists is avoidance o f the " E - w o r d " and the substitution o f bland, meaningless phrases like "change over time." Biological evolu­ tion is frequently ignored in favor o f the geological history o f the solar system, a phenomenon less disturbing to fundamentalists than

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

25

the descent o f man. R o n Bier, a b i o l o g y teacher in Oberlin, O h i o — one o f the states receiving a poor grade in the F o r d h a m R e p o r t — summed up his teaching strategy for The New York Times. H e believes in teaching evolution but tries to avoid challenges from fundamental­ ist parents by teaching the subject not as a "unit" but by putting out " m y little bits and pieces wherever I can." Bier added, " I don't force things. I don't argue w i t h students about i t . "

17

O n e might

ask what the point o f teaching is, if not to replace ignorance w i t h k n o w l e d g e — a process that generally does involve a fair amount o f argument. B u t passivity and teacher avoidance o f controversy are not the worst-case scenarios. M a n y teachers—products o f the same inad­ equate public schools—do not understand evolution themselves. A 1998 survey by researchers from the University o f Texas found that one out o f four public school b i o l o g y teachers believes that humans 18

and dinosaurs inhabited the earth simultaneously. These misconcep­ tions do not tell us anything about the teachers' religious beliefs, but they do reveal a great deal about h o w p o o r l y educated the teachers are. A n y teacher w h o does not k n o w that dinosaurs were extinct long before Homo sapiens put in an appearance is unfit to provide instruc­ tion in late nineteenth-century biology, much less modern b i o l o g y . T o add to the muddle, it seems that Americans are as ignorant and poorly educated about the particulars o f religion as they are about sci­ ence. A majority o f adults, in what is supposedly the most religious nation in the developed w o r l d , cannot name the four Gospels or iden­ tify Genesis as the first book o f the B i b l e .

19

H o w can citizens under­

stand what creationism means, or make an informed decision about whether it belongs in classrooms, i f they cannot even locate the source o f the creation story? A n d h o w can they be expected to under­ stand any definition o f evolution if they w e r e once among millions o f children attending classes in w h i c h the w o r d "evolution" was taboo and in which teachers suggested that dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth together? O n evolution, as in so many other vital areas o f k n o w l e d g e , p o p u ­ lar infotainment culture reinforces public ignorance about both sci­ ence and religion. T h e news media tend to cover evolution w i t h the same bogus objectivity that they apply to other "controversies" like the Armageddon scenario. Even in nature documentaries, it is diffi­ cult to find any mention o f evolution. T h e surprise hit m o v i e o f 2005,

26

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

March of the Penguins, chronicled the bizarre reproductive cycle o f the emperor penguin and managed, in a cinematic tour de force filmed in Antarctica, to avoid any mention o f evolution. A s it happens, the emperor penguin is literally a textbook example, cited in collegelevel b i o l o g y courses, o f evolution by means o f natural selection and random mutation. T h e penguins march seventy miles from their usual ocean feeding grounds in order to mate in a spot that offers some shelter from the fierce Antarctic winter. B y the time the birds pair off, the female is starving and must transfer her egg to be shel­ tered under the male's fur. T h e n she waddles back to water to stoke up on fish so that she may return, making another seventy-mile trek, in time to feed her n e w offspring and trade places w i t h the male, w h o by then is starving himself and must return to the sea. A scientist looks at emperor penguins and sees a classic example o f random mutation, natural selection, and adaptation to the harshest climate on earth. A believer in creationism or intelligent design, however, looks at the same facts and sees not the inefficiency but the "miracle" o f the survival o f the species. E x a c t l y w h y an "intelligent designer" w o u l d place the breeding grounds seventy miles from the feeding grounds or, for that matter, w o u l d install any species in such an inhospitable climate, are questions never addressed by those w h o see God's hand at the helm. T h e film has been endorsed by religious conservatives not only as a demonstration o f God's presence in nature but as an affirmation o f "traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice, and child-rearing."

20

These penguin family values, however, mandate

m o n o g a m y for only one reproductive cycle: mama and papa penguin, once their chick is old enough to survive on its o w n , flop back into the ocean and never see each other or their offspring again. In the next mating cycle, they choose n e w partners. B u t w h y quibble? Serial m o n o g a m y , i f ordained by a supreme being, is apparently good enough. T h e financial w i s d o m o f avoiding any mention o f evolution was borne out at the b o x office: a year after its release, the movie was the second highest grossing documentary o f all time, exceeded at the time only b y Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. There is no need to speculate about what w o u l d have happened to b o x office receipts in the United States i f the

filmmaker

(National Geographic) and the

distributor

(Warner Independent) had used the E - w o r d . In 2001, the Public

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

27

Broadcasting Service produced an eight-part documentary, accompa­ nied by materials designed for use in schools, boldly titled Evolution. T h e Christian right went beserk, labeling the series anti-religious, unscientific propaganda, and succeeded in keeping the supplementary educational materials out o f most American schools. Furthermore, the evolution series prompted the Bush administration to begin m o n ­ itoring all P B S productions for "liberal bias" and provided justifica­ tion for further budget cuts in a government program already on the religious right's hit list. In the evolution wars, the campaign on behalf o f intelligent design deserves special mention because it achieved success in many c o m ­ munities by brilliantly employing an intellectual and

scientific

vocabulary to attack "elitist" scientists w h o reject religious attacks on Darwin's theory. T h e intelligent design movement is spearheaded by the Discovery Institute, a think tank based in Seattle and bankrolled by far right conservatives. T h e slick, m e d i a - s a w y right-wingers w h o run the Discovery Institute prefer to downplay religion and highlight the anti-Darwinist views o f a handful o f scientific contrarians, many with ties to the religious right. That their v i e w s are almost universally rejected by respected mainstream scientists is seen by the intelligent design crowd as evidence o f a liberal establishment conspiracy to p r o ­ tect its Darwinist turf. Institute spokesmen constantly compare their contrarian faith-based researchers w i t h once scorned geniuses like Copernicus and G a l i l e o — a contention conveniently ignoring the fact that the Catholic Church, not other seekers o f scientific truth, was the source o f opposition to the heliocentric theory o f the solar system. Intelligent design does not insist on the seven days o f creation but it does rest on the nonscientific hypothesis that the c o m p l e x i t y o f life proves the existence o f a designer. " I f y o u want to call the designer G o d , that's entirely up to y o u " is the intelligent design pitch—along with "teach the controversy." T h e lethal inefficiencies o f penguins marching across a frozen wasteland in order to reproduce, or o f blood requiring the presence o f numerous proteins in order to clot and pre­ vent humans from bleeding to death, are v i e w e d not as accidents o f nature but as marvels o f intention. T h e obvious question o f w h y a guiding intelligence w o u l d want to make things so difficult for his or her creations is never asked because it cannot be answered. T h e proponents o f intelligent design were dealt a major b l o w at

28

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

the end o f 2005, w h e n Federal District C o u r t J u d g e J o h n E . Jones III handed d o w n a decision prohibiting the teaching o f intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in the public schools o f Dover, Pennsyl­ vania. J o n e s was forthright in his opinion, w h i c h states unequivocally that intelligent design is a religious, not a scientific, theory and that its teaching in schools therefore violates the establishment clause o f the First A m e n d m e n t . " T o be sure, Darwin's theory o f evolution is imperfect," J o n e s concluded. " H o w e v e r , the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent 21

well-established scientific propositions." Jones's opinion, grounded in science, w i l l not o f course be the last political w o r d on the subject. President B u s h — w h o must have failed to do his h o m e w o r k about his nominee's views o f both the Constitution and science when he appointed J o n e s to the federal bench—has followed the antievolution script b y v i g o r o u s l y advocating the teaching o f both evolu­ tion and intelligent design.

W H E N B U S H E N D O R S E D the teaching o f intelligent design, he was

predictably cheered by the religious right and denounced by the secu­ lar and religious left, but no one pointed out h o w truly extraordinary it was that any American president w o u l d place himself in direct opposition to contemporary scientific thinking. Even w h e n they have been unsympathetic to n e w currents in philosophical, historical, and political thought, American presidents have always wanted to be on the right side o f science, and those w h o understood nothing about science were smart enough to keep their mouths shut. One cannot imagine C a l v i n C o o l i d g e making pronouncements about the desir­ ability o f teaching alternatives to Einstein's theory o f relativity or about the theory o f evolution—even though C o o l i d g e was in the W h i t e H o u s e w h e n the Scopes trial became the subject o f major national publicity and controversy. U n l i k e its predecessor in the twenties, the current anti-rationalist movement has been politicized from the bottom up and the top d o w n , from school boards in small towns to the corridors o f p o w e r in Washington. Bill M o y e r s , w h o has long been under attack from the

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

29

religious and political right for the pro-science, pro-rationalist, and anti-fundamentalist

content o f his programs on public television,

described the process in a scathing speech about the end-times sce­ nario. " O n e o f the biggest changes in politics in m y lifetime," M o y e r s said, "is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seats o f p o w e r in the O v a l Office and in C o n ­ gress. F o r the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a m o n o p o l y o f p o w e r in Washington. T h e o l o g y asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a w o r l d v i e w despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. T h e offspring o f ideology and theology are not always bad but they are always blind. A n d that is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the f a c t s . "

22

In the land o f politicized anti-rationalism,

facts are whatever folks choose to believe. T h e question is w h y n o w . It is much easier to understand

the

resurgent religious fundamentalism o f the 1920s than it is to under­ stand the politicization o f anti-rationalism over the past twenty-five years. B o t h the fundamentalism o f the early twentieth century and the anti-rationalism o f the late twentieth century tapped into a broader fear o f modernism and hatred o f secularism that extend beyond the religious right and have always been an important c o m p o ­ nent o f American anti-intellectualism. B u t the reactionary

funda­

mentalism o f the twenties was deeply rooted in nostalgia—of w h i c h traditional religion was only one component—for a simpler time. Bryan, the leading populist and fundamentalist politician o f his era, was the product o f prelapsarian, late nineteenth-century

small-town

America, w h i c h had considered itself singularly blessed by G o d and in need o f no further enlightenment from outside experts. It is under­ standable that fundamentalism

and anti-rationalism

w o u l d have

appealed to many w h o longed for a return to the less exciting but also less pressured, less commercial, less confusing, and less dangerous w o r l d before the Great War. What Edenic past is calling out today to those w h o rail against experts, scientists, and intellectual "elites"? Most Americans w o u l d certainly like to return to the safety—or the perceived safety—of the w o r l d before September 1 1 , 2001, but the rise o f ideological anti-rationalism in American life antedates the ter­ rorist attacks by several decades. A r e w e still arguing about evolution because w e really long to return to the pre—digital revolution idyll o f

30

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

the seventies and early eighties? O r are w e looking back on a more distant paradise, the decade in w h i c h American schoolchildren were trained to c o w e r under their desks in order to protect themselves against atomic attack by the Soviet U n i o n ? A n equally puzzling question is w h y us. People throughout the w o r l d must cope w i t h social, economic, and technological changes that call traditional verities into question, and the empire o f mindnumbing infotainment k n o w s no national boundaries. Y e t the United States has proved much more susceptible than other economically advanced nations to the toxic combination o f forces that are the ene­ mies o f intellect, learning, and reason, from retrograde fundamental­ ist faith to d u m b e d - d o w n media. What accounts for the powerful American attraction to values that seem so at odds not only with intellectual modernism and science but also w i t h the old Enlighten­ ment rationalism that made such a vital contribution to the founding o f our nation? A n y attempt to answer these questions must begin w i t h the paradoxical cultural and political forces that shaped the idea o f American exceptionalism even before there was an American nation and became an integral part o f the American experiment dur­ ing the formative decades o f the y o u n g republic. M a n y o f these forces combine a deep reverence for learning w i t h a profound suspicion o f too m u c h learning, and they have persisted and mutated,

through

economic and population changes that the first generation o f A m e r i ­ cans could never have envisaged, into our current age o f unreason.

CHAPTER TWO

THE W A Y W E LIVED THEN: INTELLECT A N D IN A Y O U N G

IGNORANCE NATION

A T NOON on August 3 1 , 1837, a procession o f students, faculty, and n e w l y minted graduates o f Harvard C o l l e g e filed into a small hall to hear R a l p h Waldo Emerson, the iconoclastic former pastor o f the O l d N o r t h Church and a writer still largely u n k n o w n to his countrymen beyond Boston, deliver the college's annual Phi Beta K a p p a D a y address. Fifty years after the signing o f the Constitution, the A m e r i ­ can nation already possessed the nucleus o f an intellectual elite, and some o f its most impressive contemporary and future members were present on that day in Harvard Square. T h e academic c o m m u n i t y had assembled in Cambridge's First Parish Meetinghouse, w h i c h stood on the very site where A n n e Hutchinson had been tried in 1637 and sen­ tenced to exile from the Massachusetts B a y C o l o n y for "traducing the ministers." T h e traduced theocrats were Puritans w h o had left E n ­ gland for the N e w World in order to obtain religious liberty for themselves but w h o did not w i s h to extend the same privilege to others. T w o hundred years later, the thirty-five-year-old Emerson was about to offer, if not a traduction, a powerful shock to the estab­ lishment o f his day. His speech on the topic o f the American scholar was nothing less than a declaration o f intellectual

independence—

not from European culture itself, but from a sense o f inferiority to continental European and British culture. That Emerson himself was an admirer and friend o f such British luminaries as William Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, and Samuel T a y l o r Coleridge only added to the impact o f his oration. Lengthy graduation exercises had occupied most o f the preceding day: August, not J u n e , marked the transition from one academic year

3i

32

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

to another. A general somnolence must have prevailed at the outset o f the ceremony, because many o f the n e w graduates had been celebrat­ ing the night before, in a manner that w o u l d not necessarily have met w i t h the approval o f their Puritan forebears. B u t the

audience

included more than a f e w y o u n g men—the gathering o f Harvard stu­ dents and professors was o f course entirely m a l e — w h o were ready to receive Emerson's message and put it to use in their o w n intellectual endeavors. R i c h a r d H e n r y Dana, the possessor o f a n e w l y minted diploma, had entered Harvard as a freshman in 1831, dropped out in 1833, and then spent t w o years as an ordinary seaman, sailing from the East Coast to California via C a p e H o r n . After returning to Harvard in 1835, D a n a began chronicling his j o u r n e y in an exposé o f the virtual serfdom that was the lot o f American sailors at the time: Two Years Before the Mast w o u l d be published in 1840 and w o u l d remain a classic o f American literary muckraking. Another representative o f the Class o f 1837 was H e n r y D a v i d Thoreau, w h o already considered Emerson a mentor and was among the small group o f readers acquainted w i t h his early writing. (Emerson's first essay, "Nature," had been published anonymously in 1836 and had not sold well.) Also in attendance were James Russell L o w e l l (Class o f '38) and Oliver Wendell Holmes (Class o f '29). Y e t another member o f the audience, the already distin­ guished educational reformer Horace Mann, had not been particu­ larly impressed by Emerson in the past but changed his mind as the speaker issued a call for nothing less than a revolution in America's attitude toward learning—a sentiment v e r y much in line with the improvements M a n n hoped to effect as secretary o f the n e w l y estab­ lished Massachusetts B o a r d o f Education.

1

W i t h the bold assertion that " w e have listened too long to the courtly muses o f E u r o p e , " Emerson threw d o w n an intellectual gauntlet to the first generation o f Americans—born after the conclu­ sion o f the War o f 1812—raised in an atmosphere in which the politi­ cal independence o f the U n i t e d States was taken for granted. B u t the future sage o f C o n c o r d , as he launched into a scathing description o f the l o w aspirations o f contemporary American culture, was address­ ing himself not only to the privileged scholars w h o stood before him but also to a broader public. " T h e mind o f this country," he declared, "taught to aim at l o w objects, eats upon itself.

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation There is no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of the fairest promise, w h o begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth below not in unison with these, but are hin­ dered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed i n s p i r e . . . . What is the remedy? T h e y did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably upon his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to h i m . . . . Is it not the chief dis­ grace in the world, not to be a unit;—not to be reckoned one character;—not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which w e belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and friends—please G o d , ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own feet; w e will w o r k with our own hands; w e will speak our own minds. The study o f letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. T h e dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defense and a wreath of j o y around all. A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

2

At first glance, Emerson seems to be contradicting his o w n asser­ tion that it is time for Americans to stand on their o w n culturally. I f the mind o f a country has been "taught to aim at l o w objects," h o w can the national culture exist without the tutelage o f its betters? B u t Emerson provides an answer that has given the speech its resonance for subsequent generations: change yourself, ground yourself in y o u r o w n instincts, and the "huge w o r l d w i l l come round." T h e n , and only then, will the life o f the mind no longer be attacked in America as an impractical l u x u r y composed o f religious unorthodoxy, lazi­ ness, and effete European manners—"a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence." T h e y o u n g men in the audience w o u l d remember their excitement at Emerson's words until the end o f their days. " N o man y o u n g

33

34

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

enough to have felt it can forget, or cease to be grateful for, the men­ tal and moral nudge w h i c h he received . . . from his high-minded and brave-spirited countryman," recalled L o w e l l in 1868. "What crowded and breathless aisles, w h a t w i n d o w s clustering w i t h eager heads, what enthusiasm o f approval, w h a t g r i m silence o f foregone dissent! . . . It 3

was our Yankee version o f a lecture b y A b é l a r d . . . . " Emerson's audi­ ence was well aware that the v e r y phrase "American culture" was considered an o x y m o r o n by many educated Europeans. Alexis de Tocqueville, one o f the most sympathetic European observers o f the y o u n g nation, concluded after his celebrated visit in 1 8 3 1 - 3 2 that "in few o f the civilized nations o f our time have the higher sciences made less progress than in the U n i t e d States; and in few have great artists, distinguished poets, or celebrated writers been more rare."

4

But

Tocqueville dissented from the opinion, held by many o f his aristo­ cratic European contemporaries, that democracy itself was responsi­ ble for America's cultural deficiencies. Instead, he argued that the nation's close connection w i t h England had enabled Americans to concentrate on developing the continent while drawing on the mother country's "distinguished men o f science, able artists, writers o f eminence." This unique circumstance had enabled the former colonists to "enjoy the treasures o f the intellect without laboring to amass them" and to neglect intellectual pursuits "without relapsing 5

into barbarism." This was precisely the quasi-colonial dependency that Emerson was assailing in a speech that marked the end o f the beginning o f the American intellectual j o u r n e y .

F O R THE M E N w h o made the R e v o l u t i o n , cultural and intellectual issues w e r e inseparable from the political union they had succeeded in forging against considerable odds. H e n r y Adams, looking back from the last decade o f the nineteenth century on America in its infancy, began his account w i t h the first peaceful transfer o f political p o w e r from one party to another—the replacement o f his great-grandfather, J o h n A d a m s , b y T h o m a s Jefferson in 1800. Jefferson had been elected president o f "a nation as yet in swaddling-clothes, w h i c h had neither literature, arts, sciences, nor history; nor even enough nationality to be sure that it was a nation." Adams succinctly summed up the formi-

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation dable intellectual, cultural, and educational questions that lay before the n e w republic: Could it transmute its social power into the higher forms of thought? Could it provide for the moral and intellectual needs o f mankind? . . . Could it give new life to religion and art? Could it create and maintain in the mass of mankind those habits of mind which had hitherto belonged to men of science alone? Could it produce, or was it compatible with, the differentiation of a higher variety of the human race? Nothing less than this was necessary for its complete success.

6

Adams was describing the sweeping Enlightenment vision that had given birth to the American R e v o l u t i o n and the Constitution—a vision tinged w i t h a grandeur and grandiosity that, although it inspired deep reverence, was as p o o r l y understood b y most Americans in the 1890s as it is today. B y "men o f science," Enlightenment thinkers meant the tiny minority w h o had been exposed to learning; to create the habits o f mind that had previously belonged o n l y to an elite minority, it w o u l d obviously be necessary to extend learning to ordinary citizens on a scale undreamed o f in societies based on the principle o f aristocracy o f birth rather than aristocracy o f intellect. This vision was anything but anti-intellectual; in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the best educated Americans—those steeped in Enlightenment concepts—were most likely to favor the support o f schools by general taxation as well as the creation o f a national, publicly supported university for outstanding scholars from every state. Yet there was immense disagreement about w h a t the role of government ought to be in promoting the education o f both c o m ­ mon and u n c o m m o n men; and the v i c t o r y o f those in the revolution­ ary generation w h o wished the federal government to do nothing w o u l d cast a long shadow over American intellectual life, and con­ tribute to the regional disparities in education that still exert a f o r m i ­ dable anti-intellectual influence on American culture. T h e founders o f the American nation were, o f course, anything but common men. M o r e than half o f the fifty-five members o f the Constitutional Convention had been educated at colleges in A m e r i c a

3

36

or

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

Europe, mainly E n g l a n d .

7

Others,

UNREASON

most

notably

Benjamin

Franklin, were self-educated scholars o f international renown. James Madison, wishing to enlighten his fellow delegates about previous experiments in federal unions, presented extensive material from his o w n studies o f confederations in cities and states in both ancient and more recent times. T h e research drew on many books recently sent by T h o m a s Jefferson, at Madison's request, from France. As Madison explained, he was impelled to take detailed notes at every meeting o f the convention precisely because there were only the sketchiest records o f "the process, the principles, the reasons, and the anticipa­ tions" that had motivated politicians in ancient times. T h e absence o f such historical documents, Madison said, "determined me to preserve as far as I could an exact account o f what might pass in the C o n v e n ­ tion whilst executing its trust, the magnitude o f w h i c h I was duly impressed, as I was w i t h the gratification promised to future curiosity by an authentic exhibition o f the objects, the opinions, and the rea­ sonings from w h i c h the n e w System o f Government was to receive its peculiar structure and organization."

8

O n l y an intellectual w o u l d have described the need for accurate note-taking at what was, after all, a political assembly w i t h a specific political purpose, in quite this w a y . T h e most influential and admired men o f the era—Madison, Franklin, Jefferson, J o h n Adams, A l e x a n ­ der Hamilton, and Benjamin R u s h , to name only a f e w — w e r e also polymaths at a time w h e n it was still considered possible and neces­ sary to comprehend every area o f human k n o w l e d g e and experience. Washington, w h o s e education was sketchier than that o f many o f the other framers o f the Constitution, held higher learning in such esteem that he left a bequest o f several thousand dollars' w o r t h o f securities in his w i l l in an effort to persuade Congress to appropriate m o n e y for a national university. His legacy went unclaimed in a polit­ ical dispute that set the tone for many future controversies over the federal government's involvement in education. Congress, fearful that the use o f Washington's bequest to found a national university w o u l d be seen as an assault on colleges founded by religious institutions, wanted nothing to do w i t h the project.

9

H o w e v e r they have been j u d g e d by history, the thoughtful public men o f the American Enlightenment embodied the ideal Emerson

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation w o u l d describe in his most famous speech as "Man

Thinking"—as

opposed to what he considered the degraded idea o f a scholar as a "mere thinker"—a truncated

specialist in no w a y superior to a

"mere" mechanic, farmer, businessman, lawyer, or doctor. It is hard to overstate the prescience o f Emerson's warning about the impact o f specialization on human dignity in general and intellectual life in par­ ticular. In a society where the Enlightenment ideal o f unity between thought and action was already fading, no one, in Emerson's v i e w , could be fully human or fully thoughtful. The planter, w h o is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute-book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor a rope of the ship. In this distribution of functions the scholar is the delegated intellect. In right state he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, where the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

10

Emerson, as men thinking w i t h great passion are apt to do, e x a g ­ gerated the prevalence o f the phenomenon he was describing. H e had, however, identified one o f the important intellectual and social ten­ dencies already laying the g r o u n d w o r k for a permanent schizophre­ nia in the nation's attitudes toward learning and intellect. T h e tendency toward specialization—to be sure, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand in the early nineteenth c e n t u r y — w a s closely related to the American insistence that education be tailored to provide direct practical benefits. T h e health o f democracy, as so many o f the founders had proclaimed, depended on an educated citizenry, but many Americans also believed that too m u c h learning might set one citizen above another and violate the v e r y democratic ideals that edu­ cation was supposed to foster. T h e sort o f education most valued by ordinary Americans was meant to train a man for whatever practical

37

38

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

tasks lay at hand, not to turn him into Man Thinking. " I like a man that kin jist read," was the tart and telling comment o f an Indiana farmer on the w o r k o f Bayard R u s h Hall, a Princeton-educated min­ ister w h o , in 1823, had traveled to the n e w territory to help found a public college that w o u l d eventually become Indiana University. W h e n local residents rode by Hall's house in B l o o m i n g t o n , he was treated to remarks like, " 'Well, thar's w h a r the grammur man lives that larns 'em Latin and grand-like things—allow we'll oust him yet.' "

n

Such attitudes already separated much o f the American

public, especially on the frontier, from the well-schooled men w h o gathered to hear Emerson in Harvard Square.

O F A L L T H E anti-intellectual forces manifesting themselves in the early 1800s, the most important was the rise o f fundamentalist reli­ gion during the period k n o w n as the Second Great Awakening.* T h e struggle had already been j o i n e d between a liberal religion that accommodated itself to n e w secular k n o w l e d g e and a rigid faith that looked backward to biblically grounded certainties. Whatever the denomination or religion, fundamentalism has always been defined by its refusal to adapt to any secular k n o w l e d g e that conflicts with its version o f revealed religious truth; that refusal, in science and the humanities, has been the most enduring and powerful strand in American anti-intellectualism. Sidney M e a d , one o f the most distin­ guished historians o f American Protestantism, argued in 1963 that an "ever-widening chasm between 'religion' and 'intelligence' " has been apparent since the rise o f evangelical fundamentalism at the end o f the revolutionary era. In Mead's v i e w , the course o f U . S . religious history since 1800 has confronted Americans w i t h a "hard choice between being intelligent according to the standards prevailing in their intellectual centers, and being religious according to the stan­ dards prevailing in their denominations."

12

That argument cries out

for qualification; the "hard choice" was experienced not by all but by many Americans affiliated w i t h certain religious denominations. A * Although the word "fundamentalism" did not enter the American language until the twentieth century, I have taken the liberty throughout this book of using the term to describe American religions and denominations whose faith is based on literal interpretations of a sacred text.

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation Unitarian in the early decades o f the nineteenth century, for instance, w o u l d not have been unduly disturbed by n e w geological discoveries challenging the biblical notion o f a four-thousand-year-old earth. B u t followers o f countless semiliterate fundamentalist evangelists, c o m ­ peting for souls throughout the y o u n g nation, w o u l d indeed have been shaken b y the news that rocks and fossils predated the biblical timeline.* M e a d is surely right in his contention that the more liberal, accommodationist forms o f American Protestantism lost a great deal o f ground to militant fundamentalism in the early republican era. That lost ground w o u l d never be regained. T h e Second Great Awakening, one o f many cycles o f religious revivalism marked by a resurgence o f anti-rational fundamentalist faith, was a response not only to the secular Enlightenment values represented by many o f the founders but also to the unsettled, and unsettling, social conditions associated w i t h the R e v o l u t i o n a r y War. T h e American religious landscape at the conclusion o f the R e v o l u ­ tion was pluralistic and somewhat chaotic: it bore little resemblance to the portrait o f a devout, churchgoing America that the religious right loves to paint today. Like all wars, the w a r for independence had disrupted established customs and institutions, including religious institutions. A n official nineteenth-century

history o f W i n d h a m ,

Connecticut, offers a precise depiction o f w h a t was seen as postrevolutionary moral chaos by the forces o f religious o r t h o d o x y : Her [the town's] secular affairs were most flourishing, but religion had sadly declined. It was a transition period—a day of upheaval, overturning, uprootal. Infidelity and Universalism had come in with the Revolution and drawn multitudes from the religious faith of their fathers. Free-thinking and free-drinking were alike

* In 1795, the Scottish geologist and naturalist James Hutton published The Theory of the Earth, which asserted that sedimentary rocks along the Scottish coast had been created not in a single flood but formed over time by a series of floods. The conclusion posed an implicit challenge to the notion that all of earth's geological formations were produced by the flood described in Genesis. Hutton's theory—that the earth was still being shaped by geological forces that had existed in ancient times—was known as uniformitarianism. In the early 1830s, the British geologist Sir Charles Lyell, in his Principles of Geology, expanded on and popular­ ized Hutton's theory. These geological theories did not cause as much controversy as Charles Darwin would in 1859, but they would strongly influence Darwin's research and thinking.

39

40

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

in vogue. Great looseness of manners and morals had replaced the ancient Puritanic strictness. . . . N o w , sons of those honored fathers . . . were sceptics and scoffers, and men were placed in office w h o never entered the House of G o d except for town meet­ ings and secular occasions.

13

B y most estimates, o n l y 10 percent o f Americans in 1790 were members o f recognized denominations.

14

T h e highest church m e m ­

bership was in N e w England towns, the lowest in rural areas o f the South and on the frontier. B u t , as the W i n d h a m history suggests, even church members w e r e not necessarily regular churchgoers. In 1780, Samuel Mather, a member o f the family that, in earlier genera­ tions, had produced the famous Puritan ministers Increase and C o t ­ ton Mather, lamented that o n l y one in six o f his fellow Bostonians could be counted on to attend church services regularly. These c o m ­ plaints about American irreligiousness were undoubtedly e x a g g e r ­ ated; G o d was no more dead in post-revolutionary America than he w o u l d be t w o centuries later, w h e n the "death o f G o d " w o u l d become a fashionable prediction. F o r m a l church membership in the eighteenth century involved a great many more practical obligations than church membership, except in strict fundamentalist denomina­ tions, does today; it w o u l d be anachronistic to equate an unwilling­ ness to pay for a family p e w w i t h an absence o f faith. Nevertheless, the influence o f freethought and deism—called "Infidelity" by reli­ gious conservatives—was certainly one factor in the defection o f a fair number o f Enlightenment-era Americans from the faith o f their fathers. American freethought,

though

never a majority

movement,

enjoyed substantial public influence in the last quarters o f both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the first surge o f freethought directly influenced the writing o f the Constitution. Often incorrectly defined as a total absence o f belief in G o d , freethought can better be understood as an outlook broad enough to encompass the truly antireligious as well as those w h o adhered to a personal, unconventional faith revering some form o f G o d or Providence—the term preferred by eighteenth-century freethinkers—but at odds w i t h orthodox reli­ gious authority. D e i s m , a belief in a "watchmaker G o d " w h o set the universe in motion but then took no active role in the affairs o f

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation humans, was a form o f freethought particularly prevalent among the founders. Outright atheists were probably nonexistent, although reli­ gious conservatives never stopped applying the atheist label to free­ thinkers like T h o m a s Jefferson and T h o m a s Paine. Translated into politics, freethought

demanded a government

based on the rights o f man and human reason rather than divine authority—in other words, a secular government. T h e Constitution, w i t h its pointed and conscious omission o f any mention o f G o d , as well as its prohibition o f all religious tests for public office, formalized and legalized the freethought ideal o f a government free o f religious interference. T h e subsequent First A m e n d m e n t , w i t h its familiar dec­ laration that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment o f religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," embodied the equally important freethought principle that religion must be p r o ­ tected from government interference. T h e Constitution's secular p r o ­ visions came into being w i t h support from a coalition o f freethinkers and devout evangelicals, w h o believed that any state involvement with religion was an insult to G o d as well as a threat to religious lib­ erty.

15

(It must be pointed out here that the w o r d "evangelical" has

often been misused, particularly b y the press in recent years, as a syn­ o n y m for fundamentalist. American evangelicals have always been proselytizers, and believers in an unmediated relationship between G o d and man, but they have not necessarily been adherents o f a fundamentalist literal interpretation o f the Bible. A l l Christian fun­ damentalists today are evangelicals, but not all evangelicals are fundamentalists.) T h e religious controversies o f the early republican period estab­ lished a permanent American fault line over faith. T h e fissure, often masked by a civic ideology o f religious tolerance, nevertheless opens up periodically—as it has most recently in the culture wars dating from the m i d - 1 9 7 0 s — t o reveal raw and irreconcilable religious passions. Eighteenth-century American freethought appealed most strongly to the best educated members o f society, including not o n l y the minuscule number o f college graduates but much larger numbers of the self-educated, w h i l e emotional evangelical revivalism had a much stronger appeal to the uneducated and the poor. T h e strongest impact o f secularizing forces in late eighteenth-century A m e r i c a was felt at institutions o f higher education originally founded for the pur-

4

42

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

pose o f producing an educated clergy. In 1650, the fourteenth year o f Harvard's existence, fully 70 percent o f Harvard graduates entered the ministry; a century later, only 45 percent o f n e w graduates did so. B y the 1790s, t w o thirds o f Harvard graduates followed secular voca­ tions such as law, medicine, teaching, or business.

16

L y m a n Beecher, destined to become one o f the most influential and conservative American clergymen in pre—Civil War America, entered Yale in 1793, found the college in what he called "a most u n g o d l y state," and blamed his fellow students' personal vices on the influence o f freethought.

"That was the day o f the infidelity o f

the T o m Paine school," he w o u l d recall. " B o y s that dressed flax in the barn, as I used to, read T o m Paine and believed him . . . most o f the class before me w e r e infidels, and called each other Voltaire, Rousseau, D ' A l e m b e r t , etc., e t c . "

17

T h e association between free-

thought and alien, un-American philosophies, then emanating from revolutionary France, also became a part o f the permanent template that shapes American thinking about religion. C a u g h t in the middle, between secularizing

eighteenth-century

freethought and emotional fundamentalist revivalism, were the oldline Protestant denominations, including the Congregationalist heirs o f the Puritans and the Episcopal aristocracy that had considered itself part o f the C h u r c h o f England before the R e v o l u t i o n . Between 1790 and 1830, roughly half o f the Puritan-descended

Congregationalist

churches in Massachusetts w e r e transformed into much more liberal Unitarian congregations, characterized by a looser hierarchy and a flexible interpretation o f the B i b l e .

18

O n e o f these was Boston's his­

toric O l d N o r t h Church, w h e r e Emerson served as pastor from 1829 to 1832. H o w e v e r , even Unitarianism proved too confining for E m e r ­ son, w h o resigned his pastorate after a number o f theological disputes w i t h his parishioners, the most significant o f them apparently arising from Emerson's contention that Jesus never intended the Eucharist, shared w i t h his apostles at the Last Supper, to become a permanent sacrament. A year after his American scholar oration, Emerson severed his last ties to organized religion w h e n he addressed the faculty o f the H a r ­ vard D i v i n i t y School and told the assembled clerics that a man could find salvation only through his individual soul's search for truth and not through the teachings o f any church. After that speech, v i e w e d as

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation a repudiation o f Christianity, Emerson was finished at H a r v a r d : he w o u l d not be invited to speak there again until 1866. A l t h o u g h cul­ tural historians have generally and understandably emphasized the differences between Enlightenment rationalism and Emerson's tran­ scendentalism, his attitude toward religion was virtually indistin­ guishable from that o f T h o m a s Paine, w h o famously declared, " M y o w n mind is m y o w n church." Paine, the preeminent and once beloved revolutionary propagan­ dist, was already being reviled by the mid-1790s for his attack on orthodox religion in The Age of Reason (1794), w h i c h ridiculed biblical literalism and set forth the astounding premise that all religions were creations o f man rather than G o d . M o s t twentieth-century historians have underestimated the influence o f The Age of Reason, claiming that it was denounced more frequently by angry ministers than it was read by ordinary people. H o w e v e r , Paine's m a g n u m opus was reprinted eighteen times in five American cities between 1794 and 1796, for a total o f 25,000 copies—and the number o f readers must surely have been many times greater than the number o f copies printed and sold. Considering that the population o f the U n i t e d States in 1790 was under 4 million and that the nation's largest city, N e w Y o r k , had j u s t over 33,000 residents, Paine's controversial b o o k was a huge best seller—the equivalent o f a hardback b o o k selling 1.5 million copies in a two-year period today. B o t h the evangelicals and the traditionalist Protestants

hated

everything Paine stood for. T h e f e w ministers w h o regarded Paine with any approval were intellectuals and Unitarians. W h e n Paine died in 1809, the R e v e r e n d William Bentley, a brilliant Unitarian pastor from Salem, Massachusetts, praised the reviled freethinker for having been "the first to see in what part every System was most vulnerable. Even in his attacks on Christianity he felt w i t h o u t k n o w i n g it, the greatest difficulties w h i c h rational Christians have felt. Without their prejudices he found what was simple, powerful & direct, & w h a t might be renounced without injury to morality, to the reverence o f G o d & the peace o f m i n d . "

19

But the "rational Christians" shaped by the

Enlightenment—

whether they abandoned organized religion altogether or found a home in the more liberal Protestant denominations—did not prevail in the American religious marketplace. A s American Protestants split

4

44

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

into an unprecedented number o f denominations in the early nine­ teenth century, the proliferation o f paths to G o d produced a fork in the y o u n g nation's intellectual road. T h e rational Christian path, in whatever portions it chose to m i x rationalism w i t h Christianity, encompassed and embraced intellect and higher learning. T h e funda­ mentalist path turned away from any form o f learning that contra­ dicted the Bible and therefore might serve as an obstacle to personal salvation. T h a t so many Americans set out on the emotional and antirational fundamentalist path at such an early stage in the nation's his­ tory

ensured

that a signficant portion

o f believing American

Christians w o u l d harbor a deep suspicion o f any learning, and institu­ tions o f learning, not subject to church supervision. B y describing the fundamentalist path as anti-rational as well as anti-intellectual, I do not mean to suggest that intellectualism and rationality are s y n o n y m o u s : the demonstrably irrational and antirational ideas o f many intellectuals o f different generations, and o f w i d e l y v a r y i n g political and social convictions, w o u l d render any such suggestion ludicrous. It is also true that intellectuals may use the tools o f logic and rationality to provide proofs o f anti-rational con­ victions: both T h o m a s Aquinas and Freud come to mind. B u t while not all intellectuals are rationalists, nearly all anti-intellectuals are anti-rationalists. Supernaturalist fundamentalism is by definition antirational, because it cannot be challenged b y any countervailing evi­ dence in the natural w o r l d . T o those w h o rejected attempts to inject rationality into religion, the v e r y irrationality o f their faith is seen as p r o o f o f emotional and spiritual superiority: Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet believed. M o r e v e r , rational Christianity was seen not only as emotionally unsatisfying but also as a threat to traditional morality. Because the American separation o f church and state left every denomination free to compete for the souls o f American citizens, there was a church and a preacher to fulfill every emotional and social need; if some needs remained unmet, entirely n e w religions sprang up to satisfy consumers. M o r m o n i s m , founded in 1830 on the conviction that its adherents were "latter-day saints," is one early example, and h o w e v e r m u c h it differed doctrinally from earlier American creeds, it fell squarely on the proselytizing fundamentalist side o f the fork

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation staked out during the Second Great A w a k e n i n g . * Historians have argued endlessly about the reasons w h y emotional evangelical reli­ gion appealed more strongly to Americans than either the m o r e conservative Protestant denominations such as the Episcopalians or Congregationalists or the secularized Protestantism o f the Unitarians. Tocqueville, declaring that "nothing is m o r e repugnant to the human mind in an age o f equality than the idea o f subjection to forms," sug­ gested that many Americans might prefer religions emphasizing a direct emotional relationship w i t h G o d because elaborate religious rituals were particularly unsuited to American d e m o c r a c y .

20

"Men

living at such times are impatient o f figures" ; he observed, "to their eyes, symbols that appear to be puerile artifices used to conceal or to set off truths that should more naturally be bared to the light o f day; they are unmoved by ceremonial observances and are disposed to attach only a secondary importance to the details o f public worship."

21

That may be so, but it does not explain w h y Americans preferred the Baptists and Methodists to Quakers and Unitarians, given that the latter religions were characterized b y even simpler forms o f w o r s h i p . It seems more likely that p o o r l y educated settlers on the frontier w e r e drawn to religious creeds and preachers w h o provided emotional comfort without making the intellectual demands o f older, m o r e intellectually rigorous Protestant denominations—whether liberal Quakerism and Unitarianism or conservative Episcopalianism and Congregationalism. T h e more harsh the circumstances o f daily life, the more potent are the simple and universal emotional themes o f struggle, sin, repentance, forgiveness, and redemption that form the core o f evangelical fundamentalist religion. T h e need for emotional solace does much to explain the appeal o f fundamentalism not o n l y to

* That Mormonism belongs to the evangelical fundamentalist tradition is no less true because early Mormons were hated and considered non-Christians by many of their fellow evangelicals. Mormons are no less fundamentalist than other fundamentalists because they have two sacred books—the nineteenth-century Book of Mormon, supposedly conveyed on golden tablets to Joseph Smith in upstate N e w York, as well as the Bible. Indeed, the Mor­ mons' practice of polygamy, definitely sanctioned by the Old Testament, might be said to have made them more fundamentalist than other Christian fundamentalists. The church had to abandon its official upholding of polygamy in return for Utah's admission to the Union in 1896.

45

46

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

settlers on the frontier but to enslaved blacks in the South. W h e n the storm is raging on the prairie, w h a t comfort can be found in a debate over the nature o f the Eucharist or the H o l y Trinity? W h e n the mas­ ter is about to sell y o u r children downriver, w h y w o u l d y o u want to listen to a preacher w h o told y o u that Jesus might be nothing more than a g o o d and prophetic man instead o f the all-merciful Savior w h o w i l l w i p e away every tear from y o u r eyes? In any event, the reasons w h y fundamentalism triumphed over "rational" religion in the American spiritual bazaar are less important than the fact that fundamentalism did succeed in capturing the hearts o f large numbers o f Americans during the v e r y period w h e n intellec­ tuals like Emerson w e r e finding even Unitarianism too rigid. I f a combination o f freethought and Enlightenment-influenced liberal Protestantism had been able to meet the emotional needs o f the turbulent y o u n g nation, the course o f American intellectual and reli­ gious history w o u l d have been radically altered. It is the greatest irony, and a stellar illustration o f the law o f unin­ tended consequences, that the American experiment in complete religious liberty led large numbers o f Americans to embrace antirational, anti-intellectual forms o f faith. In Europe, the prevailing unions between church and state made some form o f rationalism— not another religion—the most c o m m o n response o f those w h o had lost faith in either their religion or their government. Early nineteenth-century Europeans w h o opposed church p o w e r over the state did not seek solace in revival meetings on the banks o f the Tiber, the A r n o , and the Seine. Instead, they sought their intellectual under­ pinnings in a continuation o f the secular spirit o f the Enlightenment and the struggle for democratization and political reform throughout m u c h o f the Continent. In America, the absence o f a coercive stateestablished church meant that American citizens had no need to uproot existing religious institutions in order to change political institutions, and vice versa. Americans dissatisfied w i t h their church simply founded another one and m o v e d on, sometimes running for their lives as the M o r m o n s did, i f their neighbors objected to their beliefs. In the N o r t h and on the frontier, the restless American tendency to found n e w churches w i t h the manifestation o f any n e w vision in the w o o d s created both liberal and conservative sects. Religious rest-

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation lessness also produced cultlike, unclassifiable denominations like early M o r m o n i s m and, decades later, Christian Science and the Jehovah's Witnesses. In the South, however, religious feeling was channeled almost exclusively into fundamentalism. D u r i n g the early nineteenth century, as the church became a pillar o f slavery and vice versa, d e v o ­ tion to freedom o f conscience, exemplified by Madison and Jefferson, was replaced by adherence to ultra-conservative religion dedicated to upholding the social order. A s W. J . Cash notes in The Mind of the South (1941), the South traded places w i t h N e w England in its stance on religious freedom. T h e combination o f fundamentalism w i t h slav­ ery "involved the establishment o f the Puritan ideal," thereby leading the "official moral philosophy o f the South . . . steadily toward the [former] position o f the Massachusetts B a y C o l o n y . "

2 2

In both the N o r t h and the South, the violence that followed the early phase o f the French R e v o l u t i o n o n l y reinforced the general American respect for religion—as long as that religion was not dic­ tated by government. American Protestants, many o f w h o m w e r e strongly anti-Catholic, were not bothered at first by the French r e v o ­ lutionary government's confiscation o f church lands: the French were, after all, attacking the " p o p e r y " despised by so many in the New

World. B u t the Jacobin Terror and the execution o f Louis X V I

changed many American minds and did a g o o d deal to bolster the position o f conservative clerics in the late 1790s and early 1800s. This was

especially true in the South, w h e r e fear o f slave uprisings was

omnipresent. (Revolutionary France's loss o f nearby Haiti as a colony, with slaves and former slaves playing a major role in violent rebellion, reinforced the southern conservatives' v i e w o f irreligion as a threat to the slavery supposedly ordained by G o d . ) A s despised as "papists" were by many Americans, any religion was seen as better than no reli­ gion at all.

L I K E THE SIMULTANEOUS and often paradoxical expansion o f both religious and secular influences in the y o u n g republic, the develop­ ment o f American education was characterized by

contradictory

impulses. A deep belief in the importance o f an educated citizenry was entwined w i t h the equally potent conviction that education was too important a matter to be left in the hands o f the educated. T h e

47

48

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

Constitution, written by highly educated men, says nothing about education. T h e minority o f intellectuals w h o favored a national school system—a group that included Benjamin R u s h , N o a h Web­ ster, and J a m e s M a d i s o n — w e r e influenced by the idealistic proposals for public schooling put forth during the early phase o f the French R e v o l u t i o n b y liberal intellectuals such as the mathematician M a r i e J e a n - A n t o i n e - N i c h o l a s Caritat, marquis de Condorcet. In a report to the French Legislative Assembly in late 1 7 9 1 — a document w i d e l y circulated among American political leaders w i t h similar v i e w s — Condorcet offered a ringing affirmation o f the connection between public education and political equality. To afford all members of the human race the means of providing for their needs, of securing their welfare, of recognising and ful­ filling their duties; to assure for everyone opportunities of per­ fecting their skill and rendering themselves capable of the social duties to which they have a right to be called; to develop to the utmost the talents with which nature has endowed them and, in so doing, to establish among all citizens a true equality and thus make real the political equality realised by law—this should be the primary aim of a national system of education, and from this point of view its establishment is for the public authority an obli­ gation of justice.

23

T h o s e ideals, and the practical proposals to implement them, were subsumed in the J a c o b i n bloodbath; Condorcet himself was con­ demned for his opposition to the violence and died in prison. F o r many Americans, the J a c o b i n period blurred the distinction between liberal intellectuals like Condorcet and agents o f revolutionary v i o ­ lence like R o b e s p i e r r e : early revolutionary ideals, among them the notion that government has a moral obligation to educate its citi­ zenry, were conflated w i t h Terror itself. T h e distaste for ideas and intellectual proposals that seemed alien and unsuited to American social conditions was only one element in the triumph o f local school control in the United States. Given the vastness o f the continent, the Constitution's deference to states' rights, and the jealous maintenance o f local prerogatives within states, it is almost impossible to imagine the emergence o f any real political

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation support for the views o f the Enlightenment intellectuals w h o favored a national system o f public education. M o s t politicians in the found­ ing generation were opposed to all general taxation for education, including at the state and local levels. N o t until the 1830s did the prin­ ciple o f taxation for government-supported schools truly take r o o t — and then largely north o f the M a s o n - D i x o n line. In the 1790s, Madison and Jefferson had stood nearly alone in their advocacy o f general taxation for schools, then thought to be the responsibility o f parents w h o wanted education for their children and were willing and able to pay for it. In a 1786 letter from Paris to his friend and tutor G e o r g e W y t h e , Jefferson expressed his conviction that the most important bill under consideration by the Virginia Assembly was his proposal "for the dif­ fusion o f k n o w l e d g e among the p e o p l e " — a n d that ignorance was the greatest enemy o f the c o m m o n g o o d . Jefferson's interest in the diffu­ sion o f learning at public expense did not o f course extend to slaves or w o m e n . H e did, however, believe in a w h i t e male aristocracy o f intel­ lect that did not depend on aristocracy o f birth. O n e o f the distinctive features o f his proposed law, w h i c h combined limited democratic and elitist ideals, was its provision that the most promising sons o f p o o r parents be selected to continue their education through college at public expense. A s the educational historian A d o l p h e M e y e r notes, " i f Jefferson inclined toward an elite o f brains, something w h i c h in cur­ rent America is sometimes suspect, then at least he did not assume, as did nearly all others o f his era, that the c o m m o n people had no busi­ 24

ness within that cultivated c i r c l e . " Jefferson's proposed law was never enacted; Virginia planters w e r e uninterested in paying taxes for the education o f anyone else's children. R e l i g i o n was also an important player in the battle over funding for education. In the early federal period, any movement toward gen­ eral taxation for c o m m o n schools—what are called public schools today—was hindered by the plethora o f state laws that permitted public funding for the teaching o f religion. A t the time the Constitu­ tion was written, Virginia was the o n l y state to prohibit public fund­ ing for the support o f religious teaching in schools. In 1786, after an intense political debate in w h i c h Madison led the opposition to taxa­ tion for religious education, the Virginia A c t for Establishing R e l i ­ gious Freedom was passed b y the state's General Assembly. T o the

49

50

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

dismay o f religious conservatives, the Virginia law w o u l d serve as the template for the secular provisions o f the 1787 Constitution and its subsequent Bill o f R i g h t s . B u t since the Constitution asserted no fed­ eral p o w e r over education, the states were perfectly free to spend their o w n tax revenues on sectarian textbooks for public schools, and that is exactly w h a t many o f them did during the early 1800s. At the same time, however, the tide o f northern public opinion was turning against sectarian teaching in community schools that already existed, even though many o f them had originally been estab­ lished under church auspices. Ironically, the heightening o f religious fervor and the proliferation o f religious sects during the Second Great Awakening w o u l d strike the decisive b l o w against subsidies for reli­ gious teaching. W i t h Baptists and Congregationalists and Unitarians sending their children to the same schools, it began to seem impru­ dently divisive to favor any one religion. Massachusetts stopped using tax m o n e y to b u y sectarian texts for grammar schools in 1827. Ten years later, over the fierce opposition o f many, though by no means all, churches, Massachusetts established a state board o f education, w i t h the reform-minded Horace M a n n as its first superintendent. T h o s e w h o favor tax vouchers for religious schools today frequently suggest that religion in public schools was taken for granted in the early decades o f the republic, w h e n the population was o v e r w h e l m ­ ingly Protestant. In fact, the secularization o f c o m m o n schools was initially a response to g r o w i n g religious pluralism among Protestants and predated the arrival o f the first large group o f non-Protestant immigrants—Irish Catholics fleeing famine in the 1840s. M a n n was v i e w e d as the Antichrist by many orthodox church leaders, but he was in no w a y opposed to moral education in public schools, including general Bible readings. B u t he did oppose and eventually prohibited any commentary on the Bible by public school teachers, and it was certainly true that under his stewardship, the sec­ ular content o f the school curriculum in once Puritan Massachusetts expanded and the religious content shrank. A l l o f this came to a head in 1 8 3 8 — m o r e than a decade after Massachusetts had banned the use o f state funds for sectarian t e x t b o o k s — w h e n the R e v e r e n d Frederick A . Packard, recording secretary o f the American Sunday School U n i o n , attempted to persuade M a n n to authorize the purchase o f a b o o k titled Child at Home. (The Sunday School U n i o n , founded in

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation 1824 in Philadelphia, was a major publisher o f books for children, marketing its publications to the g r o w i n g number o f c o m m o n schools as well as libraries and individuals. T h r o u g h o u t the nine­ teenth century, the U n i o n successfully w o r k e d to create a b o d y o f American children's literature w i t h a moralistic and moralizing tone.) Alas for the R e v e r e n d Packard's ambitions in Massachusetts, Child at Home came close to preaching the Calvinist doctrine o f predestina­ tion by asserting that children might be damned forever i f they c o m ­ mitted such small offenses as talking back to a parent or failing to carry out an assigned chore. M a n n p r o m p t l y informed Packard that such a book " w o u l d not be tolerated in Massachusetts" because U n i ­ tarians and Universalists w o u l d not send their children to schools that indoctrinated them w i t h Calvinist t h e o l o g y .

25

Packard did not give up easily; he turned up in Mann's office, per­ sonally confronted him, and vehemently defended his belief that the schools had an obligation to teach about a G o d w h o punishes every evil deed, whether great or small. M a n n shot back in another letter, "Is it possible, m y dear Sir, y o u can mean to say that no person w h o does not adopt such views can be pious. Is no Universalistp/ow5?"*

26

It

should be noted that neither M a n n nor the m o r e orthodox Packard questioned the advisability o f mentioning G o d at all in school; h o w ­ ever, there is no question that the dilution o f a deity in order not to offend any religious denomination led inevitably, if not immediately, to a secular public school curriculum. T h e orthodox Calvinists, fol­ lowed by American Catholic bishops, w e r e right to see tax-supported education as an essentially secular enterprise, even though h o m o g e ­ nized religious content survived in many schools throughout

the

nineteenth century and in some instances—especially in the South and rural areas—well into the twentieth century.

* This debate between religious conservatives and religious liberals over the relative grav­ ity of sins was no abstract matter; it was being played out at exactly the same time between orthodox ministers and radical abolitionists over the evil of slavery. In 1836, the Reverend Lyman Beecher made a major speech in which he described the Sabbath as the "sun of the moral world" and lax Sabbath observance as the major moral issue in American society. The abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison, in the July 1836 and August 1836 editions of The Liberator, mocked Beecher for dwelling on Sabbath observance while at the same time "giving his protecting influence to a system of slavery, which, at a single blow, annihilates not only the fourth commandment but The Whole DECALOGUE! and which effectively excludes from the benefits of the Sabbath, two millions and a half of his fellow-countrymen! ! "

51

52

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

A l t h o u g h the battle for general taxation for c o m m o n schools was w o n , at least in principle, in the more educated, prosperous sections o f the country b y the late 1830s, any proposal for either national taxation or national academic standards was even more unthinkable than it had been in the immediate post-revolutionary era. In spite o f the fact that some American states and towns did much to expand grammar school education, local autonomy and the reliance on local property taxes for the support o f schools ensured the continuation o f the grave inequities in public education that have never ceased to adversely affect learning in A m e r i c a . B y the 1830s, it was already clear that urban areas w o u l d have better schools than rural areas, that wealthy communities and states w o u l d have better schools than p o o r ones, and that the most literate, best educated citizens w o u l d finance better schools for their children than their less literate and educated fellow citizens. A b o v e all, it was clear that the N o r t h w o u l d have better schools than the South. Within the N o r t h , N e w England—especially Massachusetts—led the w a y . O n e o f the most telling sets o f statistics in the 1840 census is the comparative percentage o f children in school in different regions o f the country: in N e w England, the proportion o f children enrolled in school in 1840 was twice that o f the midAtlantic states and six times greater than that in the South. Although the mid-Atlantic States, the M i d d l e West, and Pacific regions caught up w i t h N e w England b y the end o f the nineteenth century, the severe disparity between the South and the rest o f the nation persisted until after the Second World W a r — a n d the gap has not been fully closed even t o d a y .

27

It is impossible to overestimate the importance o f such regional and local disparities in the formation o f American attitudes toward intellect and learning. T h e educational backwardness o f the South, rooted first in slavery and then in segregation, deserves special men­ tion in v i e w o f the current cultural division between so-called red and blue states. Even Virginia, w h i c h had led the w a y in providing a nonsectarian model that eventually did so much to foster the diffusion o f learning in northern states, sank into the same intellectual torpor, dic­ tated b y a slavery-based class system and indifferent to the education o f all but the rich, as the rest o f the South. Part o f the South's postReconstruction m y t h o l o g y maintains that everything w r o n g with southern education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation can be blamed on the destruction w r o u g h t by the C i v i l War and the vengeful postwar treatment o f w h i t e southerners by the N o r t h . In fact, on the eve o f the war, only N o r t h Carolina had established a public school system comparable to those in Massachusetts and other N e w England states—or even the more laggard mid-Atlantic states. (North Carolina's exceptionalism was largely due to the efforts o f one man, C a l v i n Henderson Wiley, w h o was k n o w n as the Horace M a n n . )

southern

28

It is beyond the scope o f this b o o k to explore the full history o f the discrepancy between public education in the South and the rest o f the country; suffice to say that in a society based for so long on the supremacy o f a planter aristocracy and belief in the innate inferiority of blacks, there was little reason to provide decent public education for poor whites, much less blacks. W h y bother, w h e n just being white—even an illiterate w h i t e — m a d e an inhabitant o f the South superior to any black? A s for blacks, the public school systems o f the South rarely provided any education beyond eighth grade until well into the twentieth century. T h e only thing that might have saved the South from falling further and further behind the rest o f the nation in education in the late nineteenth century was massive federal a i d — w h i c h the South w o u l d surely have suspected as a plot against its w a y of life even if the federal government had been willing to break w i t h precedent and provide aid for the schooling o f destitute former slaves and white sharecroppers. In the 1870s and 1880s, various legislators from N e w England introduced bills to provide federal aid to education for the poorest states and to hold them to some m i n i m u m , nationally determined standards. T h e proposals got no further in Congress than G e o r g e Washington's effort to establish a national university had in the 1790s. Local control o f schools meant not o n l y that children in the p o o r est areas o f the country w o u l d have the worst school facilities and teachers w i t h the worst training but also that the content o f education in the most backward areas o f the country w o u l d be determined by backward people. In Europe, the subject matter o f science and history lessons taught to children in all publicly supported schools has always been determined by highly educated employees o f central education ministries. In America, the image o f an educated elite laying d o w n national guidelines for schools was and is a bête noire for those w h o

53

54

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

consider local control o f education a right almost as sacred as any o f the rights enumerated in the Constitution. F o r generations, the sci­ ence and history taught in small towns in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana was vetted by adults w h o believed in the innate inferiority o f blacks and w h o also subscribed to fundamentalist creeds at odds w i t h the g r o w i n g b o d y o f secular scientific k n o w l e d g e . T h e best edu­ cated regions o f the country became better educated, and the most intellectually backward regions became more backward. Localism and sectarian fundamentalism also had a major adverse impact on higher education, especially in the South, in the decade before Emerson's oration on the American scholar. Like Jefferson's University o f Virginia, other state universities in the South had been founded by Enlightenment rationalists, even though their enlighten­ ment did not encompass opposition to slavery. In the 1820s, South Carolina C o l l e g e at C o l u m b i a (now the University o f South C a r ­ olina) was, along w i t h Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Virginia, among the top ten institutions o f higher education in terms o f student enrollment, the size and quality o f its faculty, and the number o f library volumes. Its president was the Oxford-educated, English-born T h o m a s C o o p e r , one o f the most distinguished men o f letters in the y o u n g nation. C o o p e r had emigrated from England in 1794 because, like Paine, he was repelled by both the violence o f the French R e v o l u t i o n and the right-wing British reaction, w h i c h had, among its other manifestations, resulted in Paine's trial and convic­ tion in absentia for his anti-monarchist v i e w s expressed in The Rights of Man. C o o p e r was a strongly anti-clerical deist, an outspoken

anti-

Calvinist, and a firm opponent, as a result o f recent geological discov­ eries, o f any literal interpretation o f Genesis—all o f w h i c h made him a controversial figure in South Carolina. Responding to one attack by the state legislature, C o o p e r asserted that he had come to the United States because the n e w American Constitution was the first attempt in history

to

attempt

to

dismantle

a church-state

coalition

that

inevitably stifled free inquiry in other nations. T h e state college, C o o p e r reminded the legislature, had not been founded as a seminary for the training o f ministers o f the Gospel. "Students are sent here to inquire useful k n o w l e d g e , not sectarian theology," he said bluntly.

29

In 1832, C o o p e r was forced to resign along w i t h the rest o f the faculty

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation members he had hired and was expelled from the faculty for religious heresy. D u r i n g the same period in the N o r t h , especially in N e w England, secularizing educational forces were extending n e w opportunities for learning to adults as well as school-age children. O n e cultural devel­ opment in harmony not only w i t h Emerson's call for a n e w respect for learning on native grounds but also w i t h the expanding democracy o f the late 1820s and 1830s—the Jacksonian era—was the American lyceum movement. T h e first community-based lyceum, established in 1826 in Millbury, Massachusetts, was intended as a vehicle for expand­ ing the knowledge, especially scientific k n o w l e d g e , o f y o u n g men already employed in mills and the other n e w industrial enterprises springing up throughout N e w England. T h r o u g h a series o f lectures to be held in the evenings, after the end o f the w o r k day, employed adults might improve on the cursory education o f their y o u t h : it was never too late to learn. T h e M i l l b u r y l y c e u m was modeled on a British lyceum established in 1824, but the American l y c e u m m o v e ­ ment quickly took on a character o f its o w n and began to reach out to all segments o f the community, including w o m e n . B y 1 8 3 1 , there 30

were between eight hundred and a thousand t o w n l y c e u m s . R e g a r d ­ less o f h o w few lectures were delivered in the smaller towns, that is an impressive figure for a country w i t h a population o f under 13 million at the start o f the decade. T h e father o f the American l y c e u m was Josiah H o l b r o o k , born in 1788 on a prosperous Connecticut farm and educated at Yale College. Holbrook entered Yale in 1806 and spent his last t w o years in N e w Haven as a laboratory assistant to Benjamin Silliman, Yale's distin­ guished professor o f chemistry and m i n e r o l o g y and the most i m p o r ­ tant popularizer o f science in A m e r i c a since Franklin. A l t h o u g h Holbrook envisioned the c o m m u n i t y

l y c e u m as an institution

focused on expanding the scientific and technical k n o w l e d g e o f young w o r k m e n , typical lecture programs from the 1830s d e m o n ­ strate the rapidity w i t h w h i c h lyceums broadened their concerns to reach a cross section o f what w o u l d , a century later, be called the m i d ­ dlebrow public. A program from the 1838—39 lecture series in Salem, Massachusetts—by then a cosmopolitan t o w n that no longer bore any resemblance to the seventeenth-century c o m m u n i t y notorious for its witchcraft trial—reveals the catholicity o f subjects covered by l y c e u m

55

56

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

lecturers. T h e Salem series opened w i t h a talk titled " T h e Character, Customes, Costumes, etc., o f the N o r t h American Indians," deliv­ ered by G e o r g e Catlin, a portraitist and pioneering anthropologist. T h e subsequent l y c e u m agenda featured lectures on topics that included the causes o f the American R e v o l u t i o n ; the sun; the honey­ bee; g e o l o g y ; the legal rights o f w o m e n ; the life o f M u h a m m a d ; Oliver C r o m w e l l ; the discovery o f A m e r i c a by the Vikings; and the education o f children (delivered by the ubiquitous Horace M a n n ) .

31

In N e w England, there was scarcely a distinguished scholar or public official w h o did not take the platform in a lyceum lecture: among the most popular speakers were Daniel Webster, Emerson, Thoreau, the Swiss-born naturalist and Harvard faculty member Louis Agassiz, the pioneering women's educator E m m a Willard, and Nathaniel H a w t h o r n e , w h o eventually served as corresponding secre­ tary o f Salem's lyceum. T h e absence o f female lecturers attested to the social taboo against w o m e n speaking in public. Women did not begin to appear on public platforms until the abolitionist movement gained strength in the late 1830s, and the powerful abolitionist crusaders Lucretia M o t t , Sarah G r i m k é , and Angelina G r i m k é were frequently castigated for conduct unbecoming the modesty o f their s e x .

32

Yet in

every c o m m u n i t y w h e r e lyceums flourished, they garnered broad support from both men and w o m e n and from many segments o f the community. Professors and writers donated their services as lecturers, and the cost for a series o f w e e k l y lectures that ran from early autumn through spring was l o w enough to be affordable for many workers. In Boston, the price was $ 2 for adults and $ 1 for minors; so many people signed up for the first series, in 1828—29,

t

n

a

t

t

n

e

speakers agreed to

repeat their lectures on t w o successive nights each w e e k in order to satisfy public demand. T h e l y c e u m movement, like the g r o w i n g movement in favor o f publicly supported education, was largely a northern phenomenon, appealing primarily to the middle class—both the upper middle class and the lower-middle-class workers w h o saw continuing education as a w a y to m o v e up the economic ladder. T h e South simply did not have a large enough middle class to support regular lectures; N e w Orleans, R i c h m o n d , and Charleston were exceptions that proved the rule. A n d w h i l e wealthy N e w Englanders provided both financial and moral support for c o m m u n i t y lyceums, most southern planters had

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation no interest in such activities. M a n y actively opposed the establish­ ment o f lyceums, w h i c h they associated, in v i e w o f the movement's N e w England origins, w i t h the detested abolitionists. T h e i r concern was largely unfounded, because most l y c e u m programs avoided con­ troversial political and religious issues. H o w e v e r , it is easy to see w h y lectures on g e o l o g y or the legal rights o f w o m e n might threaten southern views on both religion and caste. Finally, the Enlightenment culture that had produced Jefferson, Madison, and Washington no longer existed in the South: men o f learning and science like T h o m a s C o o p e r were being exiled instead o f recruited to build regional educational institutions. A l l o f this con­ verged in a culture in w h i c h the richest and most influential members, the planters, were noted for and proud o f their lack o f interest in intellectual pursuits. " T h e men w h o might in Boston have read books at the Athenaeum," observes C a r l B o d e , "in the South rode and hunted. Still interested, to all appearances, in physical activities rather than thoughts, they felt for the l y c e u m an indifference amounting almost to c o n t e m p t . "

33

Thus, a half century into the political experiment intended to form a more perfect union, the intellectual life o f the n e w nation was profoundly fragmented. In the older urban centers o f the Northeast, there were visible signs not only o f a diffusion o f k n o w l e d g e but o f the unmistakable emergence o f an intellectual aristocracy. In the South, what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in an effort to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order. O n the frontier, as settlers m o v e d westward, the intellec­ tual picture was m i x e d : in such raw social conditions, learning could not be a top priority, yet there w e r e those w h o s e hunger for civiliza­ tion was such that their passion for books and learning might have shamed the heirs to privilege in Emerson's audience.

O N E OF THOSE passionate b o o k lovers on the frontier was A b r a h a m Lincoln, w h o s e formal schooling, as he w o u l d later write, "did not amount to one y e a r . "

34

Lincoln w o u l d become the last self-educated

American to be elected president, and his self-education was, as he made clear, a matter o f necessity rather than choice. Even as Emerson, born in 1803, just six years before Lincoln, was embarking on his

57

58

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

career as an essayist and philosopher in a w o r l d o f books, Lincoln was struggling to master the principles o f English grammar while earning his living as a clerk in a general store in N e w Salem, Illinois, a town o f just twenty-five families in 1831. C a r r y i n g his o w n w e l l - w o r n copy o f Shakespeare's plays e v e r y w h e r e , studying a copy o f Blackstone's Commentaries b o r r o w e d from the one educated man in town, Lincoln prepared himself to become a lawyer even as he became a figure o f amusement to his neighbors because o f his bookishness. A recurrent theme in Lincoln's accounts o f his early life is his struggle to obtain books, usually by b o r r o w i n g . What schoolchild has not heard tales o f y o u n g Lincoln, after a day o f honest toil, reading those books by the flickering light o f a fire in a log cabin, o f B e n Franklin exploring the secrets o f electricity by flying his kite in a thunderstorm in the great American outdoors? Reverential images o f self-education have been deeply embedded in the American psyche from the colonial period and persist today, in an era characterized b y a mania for specialized educational credentials that Emerson could not have imagined. Y e t these images have cut t w o ways in shaping American attitudes toward intellect and education: they combine respect for learning itself w i t h the message that there is something especially virtuous about learning acquired in the absence o f a formal structure provided by society. After all, B e n Franklin invented the lightning rod and bifocals without government support for his research, and A b e Lincoln g r e w up to become president w i t h ­ out ever attending a university. That Franklin was a genius and that Lincoln bitterly regretted his lack o f systematic formal schooling is left out o f the self-congratulatory story o f American self-education. T i n g e d w i t h a moralistic romanticism, the American exaltation o f the self-educated man is linked to the iconic notion o f rugged individual­ ism and has often been used to refute any idea that education is, for government, an obligation o f justice. In this version o f American his­ tory, Lincoln was a better man, a better American, for having strug­ gled to learn against the grain o f his immediate environment. T h e triumph o f the extraordinary self-educated man is transformed into a moral and social lesson: I f y o u want to learn badly enough, no one can stop y o u , and the c o m m u n i t y has no special obligation to create conditions that provide support for the intellectual development o f its members. Intellectuals themselves were conflicted about the

The Way We Lived Then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation relationship between formal, systematic learning and self-education. Emerson, w h o w o u l d become (after Franklin) America's second intel­ lectual celebrity, gave voice in his American scholar oration to w h a t w o u l d become a permanent American argument over the most desir­ able w a y o f learning and the value placed on k n o w l e d g e by society. H e warned against the meekness o f y o u n g men w h o grow up in libraries, believing it is their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, w e have the bookworm. Hence the book-learned class, w h o values books, as such; not related as to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.... Undoubtedly there is a right w a y of reading, so it be sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instru­ ments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals o f darkness come, as come they must,—when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining,—we repair to the lamps which were kin­ dled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is. We hear, that w e may speak. T h e Arabian proverb says, "A fig tree, looking on a fig tree, becometh fruitful."

35

Emerson, a supremely bookish man, has often been quoted out o f context, in both the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by antirationalists w h o wish to claim him as one o f their o w n . B u t Emerson was as much a product o f the Enlightenment rationalism o f his par­ ents' generation as o f early nineteenth-century Romanticism, and his transcendentalist philosophy partook o f both. T h e American scholar speech was not only a declaration o f American intellectual indepen­ dence but also a response to many o f the native anti-intellectual forces in American life—that portion o f the American mind "taught to aim at l o w objects." Emerson's message to Americans was not that they

59

60

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

had nothing to learn from the past but that they must be prepared to make their o w n contributions to the sum o f cultural knowledge. T h o s e contributions w o u l d be fed by the particular social and political circumstances o f American life and w o u l d be rooted in a broader con­ cept o f democratic individuality under w h i c h each person had the right and the responsibility to develop his capabilities to the fullest. Americans did not have long to wait for the first manifestations o f a distinctive national literature and philosophy. Emerson's first collec­ tion o f essays was published in 1841 ; Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (part o f his Walden journals) and his famous essay " C i v i l Disobedience" in 1849; Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter in 1850, Melville's Moby-Dick

in 1 8 5 1 ; and the first edition o f Whitman's

Leaves of Grass in 1855. T h a t the public did not greet all o f these works w i t h enthusiasm in no w a y changes what they w e r e — t h e foundation o f a truly American literature that stood as a powerful rebuttal to the many European intellectuals w h o had blamed the l o w state o f A m e r i ­ can culture in the early republic on democracy itself. B u t the emergence o f a richer cultural life, accessible to many more citizens, w o u l d not subsume the anti-intellectual forces rooted in religious and educational fissures as old as the nation itself. As Emerson spoke on the eve o f the first flowering o f a truly national lit­ erature, A m e r i c a stood w i t h its intellectual house already divided.

CHAPTER

SOCIAL IN

THREE

PSEUDOSCIENCE

T H E M O R N I N G OF

AMERICAS CULTURE THE

WARS

I N T E L L E C T U A L FISSURES that opened during the first half o f the

nineteenth century acquired an important n e w dimension in the decades after the C i v i l War, w h e n many Americans embraced a form of

ideologically driven pseudoscience intended to rationalize the

Gilded Age's excesses o f wealth and poverty. T h e n e w pseudoscience of social Darwinism, like the ancient pseudosciences o f astrology and alchemy, used scientific language to mask an essentially unscientific essence.* While the old pseudosciences defied the laws o f nature, the new social pseudosciences—of w h i c h social D a r w i n i s m turned out to be only the first example—appropriated laws o f nature to justify or attack institutions in civilization. In America, social D a r w i n i s m was purveyed not by ignorant bumpkins but by some o f the nation's lead­ ing business tycoons and intellectuals, including A n d r e w Carnegie, J o h n D . Rockefeller, and William Graham Sumner, a Yale University political scientist and prototypical public intellectual. Social D a r w i n ­ ism

constituted the first mass-marketed w a v e o f pseudoscience, or

what w o u l d today be called j u n k science, in American history. T h e ideological fixations o f otherwise intelligent men in America's Gilded Age offer a recognizable precursor o f the imperviousness to evidence that permeates many ideologies in our current age o f unreason.

* I use the term "social Darwinism" even though no one employed it in nineteenthcentury America or England. The phrase was known in rarefied intellectual circles in nineteenth-century France and Germany, but it was not in common usage in America, even among academics, until the publication in 1944 of Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought. Hofstadter's book, originally written as his doctoral thesis at Columbia, went on to sell more than 200,000 copies in subsequent editions.

61

62

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

Sumner's writings are virtually u n k n o w n outside academia today, but he was considered the most influential social Darwinist in A m e r ­ ica at the turn o f the nineteenth century. H e was an intellectual men­ tor to thousands o f the nation's future leaders at Yale between 1872 and 1910 and also possessed the knack o f translating his ideas into 1

readable articles for mass-circulation magazines. T h e transformative scientific insight o f the age, Darwin's theory o f evolution by means o f natural selection, was twisted by Sumner and his followers into a social philosophy—always described as "scientific"—that enshrined competition and validated the worthiness o f w h o e v e r and whatever came out on top. Millionaires were explicitly compared to the supe­ rior biological species that had emerged from eons o f evolution in nature: J . P. M o r g a n and H e n r y C l a y Frick were, presumably, descen­ dants o f the first hominids to stand on t w o legs, while the poor were more closely related to creatures w h o lacked opposable thumbs and continued to grope on all fours. Sumner declared emphatically that the business titans o f the Gilded A g e were "a product o f natural selec­ tion . . . just like the great statesmen, or scientific men, or military m e n . " Because millionaires emerged from fair competition, governed by the supposedly scientific laws o f the market, "all w h o are compe­ tent for this function w i l l be employed in i t . . . "

2

Academics like Sumner w o u l d have done enough damage had their theories been confined to classrooms in w h i c h elite young men were indoctrinated in the worship o f untrammeled capitalism, but they were able to extend their influence on a previously unimaginable scale by w r i t i n g for national magazines like Collier's, aimed at a vast middle-class audience. T h e n as now, the public was overwhelmed by information and misinformation filtered through n e w technologies. M a n y Americans possessed just enough education to be fascinated by late nineteenth-century advances in both science and technology, but they had too little education to distinguish between real scientists and those w h o peddled social theories in the guise o f science. The

cultural

battle

over evolution

in post-Darwinian,

late

nineteenth-century America, like its descendant today, is generally v i e w e d solely as a struggle between science and religion. B u t there w e r e really t w o culture wars over evolution—the first centering on the challenge to traditional religion posed by Darwin's real science and the second rooted in a pseudoscientific social theory that

Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars attempted to transpose Darwin's observations about man in a state o f nature into a prescription for the w a y human beings ought to treat one another in a state o f civilization. In the first culture war, nearly all intellectuals were on the side o f science; in the second, many (though not all) succumbed to the pseudoscience articulated by Sumner. T h e attraction o f upper-class intellectuals to a theory maintaining that "tooth and claw" laws o f survival in nature w e r e appropriate and inevitable in society did much to exacerbate a religiously based antiintellectualism already aroused by evolution's challenge to biblical literalism. William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate, economic populist, and hero o f fundamentalists from the 1890s until his death in 1925, conflated the t w o culture wars. B r y a n was fighting both the scientific theory o f evolution and the pseudoscience o f social D a r w i n i s m ; the former threatened his religion, w h i l e the latter ran counter to his vision o f social justice on earth. O n e o f the great ironies o f this phase o f American intellectual history is that the intel­ lectual social Darwinists and their fundamentalist opponents shared an inability to distinguish between science and social pseudoscience, and they passed on their confusion to a public that worshipped the fruits o f science but was fundamentally ignorant o f the scientific method.

IN

THE HALF CENTURY between

the end o f the C i v i l War and the

beginning o f the First World War, American society was transformed by powerful economic and demographic forces that could never have been envisaged by the privileged men w h o had gathered in C a m ­ bridge in 1837 to hear R a l p h Waldo Emerson's declaration o f A m e r i ­ can intellectual independence. B e t w e e n i860 and 1910, in spite o f the deaths o f more than six hundred thousand men in the C i v i l War, the American population nearly tripled—from some 31 million to more than 92 million—as a result o f immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. It is a familiar yet still awe-inspiring demographic statistic, a raw number that w o u l d seem to rule out any possibility o f successful assimilation or absorption—if w e did not k n o w that the task was indeed accomplished. D u r i n g the 1880s and 1890s, a n e t w o r k o f public elementary and secondary schools, colleges, and libraries

63

64

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

emerged to meet the challenge o f absorbing millions o f non-Englishspeaking immigrants and raising the educational level o f the entire American population. Cities, h o m e to the vast majority o f the n e w immigrants, were responsible for the most significant expansion o f public education at both the elementary and secondary school levels. Public schools were v i e w e d as vital instruments o f assimilation, by the W A S P establish­ ment that still controlled most American cities and by the immigrants themselves—especially the East European J e w s , whose pent-up desire for education finally found an outlet in a society w i t h no legal antiSemitic restrictions. In 1878, there were fewer than eight hundred public high schools in the U n i t e d States; by the eve o f the First World War, the number had increased to more than eleven

thousand.

B e t w e e n the 1880 and the 1900 censuses, the official illiteracy rate declined from 17 percent to 1 1 percent—a remarkable accomplish­ ment, even allowing for those missed by the census takers, in an era w h e n almost none o f the n e w immigrants had any knowledge o f 3

English before they set foot on American soil. T h e passage o f c o m ­ pulsory school attendance laws in many states raised the duration o f the average American's schooling from four to six years between 1880 and 1 9 1 4 — a g a i n , a notable accomplishment in v i e w o f the influx o f immigrants w i t h no schooling at all.

4

T h e expansion o f secondary education was paralleled by the g r o w t h o f adult education programs and the creation o f a public library system, spurred across the nation by the m o n e y and leadership o f the self-made Carnegie (who believed in private philanthropy as strongly as he detested the idea o f government handouts), which offered broad access to ordinary citizens. In large cities, not only neighborhood libraries but central research libraries—the nucleus o f what w o u l d become some o f the greatest research collections in the w o r l d — w e r e open to anyone w i t h a library card. W h e n the grand Forty-second Street headquarters o f the N e w Y o r k Public Library opened its doors to the public for the first time on M a y 24, 1 9 1 1 , some fifty

thousand

N e w Yorkers passed through

entrance—guarded

the Fifth Avenue

by the stone lions that w o u l d soon become 5

famous civic landmarks—to v i e w the marvels w i t h i n . T h e first book delivered to a reader was a Russian-language v o l u m e o f philosophy, attesting to the evolution o f a civic culture in w h i c h ordinary citizens

Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of Americas Culture Wars were gaining access to cultural and intellectual resources previously locked away from all but the wealthiest, most privileged members o f society.* T h e Gilded A g e was also the golden age o f the lecture as a source o f both entertainment and instruction. T h e old community-based lyceums were replaced b y national lecture bureaus that offered high fees to w e l l - k n o w n speakers but were able to keep ticket prices l o w because o f huge popular demand. W h e n a lecture bureau presented such famous personages as Emerson; H e n r y Ward Beecher, the lead­ ing clerical orator o f the era; T h o m a s H u x l e y , the British naturalist and defender o f evolutionism; Elizabeth C a d y Stanton, the founding mother o f the women's rights movement; and R o b e r t Ingersoll, a tireless antagonist o f orthodox religion, the size o f the audience was limited only by the size o f the hall. A s an editorial in Horace Greeley's New York Tribune noted in 1869, " W h e n the historian o f a later day comes to search out the intellectual antecedents o f modern society, he will devote an interesting chapter to the rise and progress o f ideas as illustrated in the institution o f the public lecture. H e w i l l record that at one time Emerson, [Bronson] Alcott, [Wendell] Phillips, Beecher, [William Lloyd] Garrison, and a great many other awakeners o f American intelligence were lecturers; that philosophers and scientists were persuaded out o f their studies and laboratories to take a stand on the platform; in short, that Plato's Academe and Archimedes' w o r k ­ 6

shop were turned into the lecture r o o m . " T h e failure o f the Tribune to mention any female speakers reflects the contemporary male opin­ ion about w h o did, and did not, count in intellectual matters. In fact, controversial feminists like Stanton, Susan B . A n t h o n y , and L u c y Stone drew huge audiences, as did female evangelists, leaders in the temperance movement, and H e n r y Ward Beecher's even more famous sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author o f Uncle Tom's Cabin. T h e rising literacy rate, and the proliferation o f adult education programs, libraries, museums, and lecture series, intensified the p u b ­ lic's appetite for intellectual amusements and information o f every kind. B o o k publishers churned out cheap editions o f everything from adventure stories and housekeeping manuals to the classics o f

* The book was N . Y . Grot's Nravstvenniye Ideali Nashevo Vremeni (Moral Ideas of Our Time: Friedrich Nietzsche and Leo Tolstoy), and it was delivered in just six minutes.

65

66

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

nineteenth-century literature from all nations. Publishers shamelessly pirated some o f the greatest w o r k s o f literature from Europe and E n ­ gland for "reprint libraries," because the United States had refused to sign the B e r n e International Convention o f 1886, w h i c h provided the first copyright protection for authors published in more than one country. Even w o r k s originally published in English were not pro­ tected by copyright in the U n i t e d States unless the books had actually been assembled and printed here. B e t w e e n 1880 and 1900, American publishers tripled the number o f b o o k titles issued each year. Periodi­ cals, w h i c h ran the gamut from mass-circulation magazines specializ­ ing in pulp fiction to highbrow literary publications and specialized scientific journals, offered something

for every literate

person.

B e t w e e n 1885 and 1905, approximately eleven thousand periodicals w e r e published, although many had life spans as brief as those o f 7

unsuccessful Internet blogs today. O n e literary historian has esti­ mated that the circulation o f m o n t h l y magazines in relation to the total American population increased by 700 percent between 1865 and 1905.

8

T h e proliferation o f information sources affected American cul­ tural life in many ways, and the g r o w t h o f the publishing industry and the lecture circuit—then, as n o w , kissing cousins in the book business—played a vital role in publicizing Darwin's theory o f evolu­ tion. B o t h religion and science were hot topics, and evolution c o m ­ bined the t w o . E d w a r d Livingston Youmans, w h o founded

the

pro-evolution Popular Science Monthly in 1872, was one o f the most popular and indefatigable American lecturers. H e was, alas, a c o m ­ mitted social Darwinist as well as a popularizer o f Darwin's theory o f evolution. Y o u m a n s was responsible for the then famous Interna­ tional Scientific Series, published by the distinguished N e w Y o r k firm D . Appleton & C o m p a n y , that brought the w o r k s o f the world's most eminent

scientists (including D a r w i n himself) to the American

public. W h e n T h o m a s H u x l e y made his first visit to the United States to deliver a series o f lectures in 1876, he received the kind o f coverage that the American press w o u l d eventually accord only t w o o f his compatriots—Winston Churchill and Princess Diana. The New York Times published front-page stories about H u x l e y ' s sold-out lectures in Manhattan's Chickering Hall, w h i l e the Tribune reprinted the lectures

Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars in full. T h e news coverage was g l o w i n g , prompting the more conser­ vative Times editorial page to pronounce that "for M r . H u x l e y to speak o f the evidence for evolution as being on a par w i t h C o p e r n i can theory, only shows h o w far [astray] theory w i l l lead a clear brain."

9

Whether the publicity was favorable or unfavorable, it

ensured that a broad swath o f the late nineteenth-century public had at least heard about evolution—a general awareness that far exceeded the k n o w l e d g e o f the early nineteenth-century public regarding g e o ­ logical discoveries that also challenged the biblical creation story. Indeed, the size o f the reading and lecture-going public ensured that the culture wars over evolution w o u l d not be confined to an elite, highly educated segment o f society.

THE DEBATE over biological evolution and its relationship to religion was, for the most part, an extended family quarrel among different kinds o f American Protestants. T h e R o m a n Catholic C h u r c h , like fundamentalist Protestant denominations, opposed evolution as a part of its general hostility toward all forms o f secularism; the Catholic hierarchy's desire to shield immigrant children from secular science and history was largely responsible for the establishment o f the nation's first organized parochial school system. A t the time, there was no American Catholic equivalent o f the sizable faction o f theologi­ cally liberal Protestants determined to make r o o m in their faith for the new secular k n o w l e d g e . W i t h insular church leaders and a laity composed largely o f uneducated immigrants, American Catholicism stood apart from the most sophisticated intellectual discourse o f the nineteenth century. T h e real debate was also largely confined to the N o r t h — a n o t h e r result o f the intellectual isolation originally encouraged by the battle to preserve slavery and maintained after the C i v i l War by the South's aggrieved mythologizing o f the antebellum status quo. T h e negative impact o f adamant southern fundamentalism on higher education, especially scientific education, had been apparent

since T h o m a s

Cooper's heretical views on the ages o f rocks led to his dismissal from the presidency o f the University o f South Carolina in 1832. After D a r w i n , the gap between contemporary scientific k n o w l e d g e and southern religion g r e w much wider. In 1873, the shipping and railroad

68

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt donated one million dollars to turn what was then Central University in Nashville, Tennessee—an insti­ tution founded for the training o f Methodist ministers—into a real university. T h e hitch: the Methodist C h u r c h w o u l d retain control o f the board o f trustees, thanks to a close personal relationship between Vanderbilt and a Methodist bishop, w h o was named president for life o f the trustees at the time o f Vanderbilt's gift. Nevertheless, even the most religious trustees were eager to use Vanderbilt's m o n e y to raise the institution's prestige, and they took the step o f hiring A l e x a n d e r Winchell, an evolutionist, as president. Winchell should have been the perfect choice for a southern univer­ sity aspiring to greatness, given his belief that Darwin's theory o f nat­ ural selection actually proved the inferiority o f the N e g r o race. W h y ? Because, as Winchell argued in an 1878 screed titled Adamites and Preadamites, N e g r o e s w e r e too biologically inferior to have been descended from A d a m — w h o , as everyone knew, was white. T h e r e ­ fore, the human race must be older than the biblical A d a m , and blacks represented an earlier evolutionary stage. Even though Winchell was using evolution to bolster w h i t e supremacy—a theme that w o u l d resurface at many other points in white America's rationalization o f racial segregation and discrimination—the southern Methodists were still upset by his position that any human life, in however inferior a form, existed before A d a m . S o they fired the president they had hired to bring their institution into the late nineteenth century. Winchell headed north to a distinguished career—unhampered at the time by his crackpot theory melding evolution, eugenics, and the Bible—as professor o f paleontology and g e o l o g y at the University o f Michigan. His departure was replicated throughout the South, as scientists w h o did not h e w to a literal interpretation o f the Bible were forced to seek employment elsewhere. Winchell's academic success as a eugenicist evolutionist, and the respect in w h i c h he was held by most o f the scientific community, illustrates the utility o f social D a r w i n i s m in blurring the distinction between real science and pseudoscience. T h e combination o f eugenics w i t h social D a r w i n i s m enabled proponents to validate the worthiness not only o f individuals but o f groups—beginning w i t h Americanborn Caucasians o f A n g l o - S a x o n h e r i t a g e — w h o came out on top in society. Interest in eugenics was certainly not limited to America; but

Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars biological justifications for racial discrimination had a particular appeal, covert and overt, in a nation that had long enslaved a large population o f a different race and had done little since the end o f slav­ ery to ameliorate the damage inflicted on that minority. Eugenics also tapped into the fears o f a society that, unlike any nation in Europe, was being flooded by immigrants—including J e w s , Slavs, and Italians—with cultural backgrounds that differed markedly from that o f the existing population. T h e leading American social Darwinists o f the late nineteenth century were, almost without exception, upper-class, w h i t e A n g l o Saxon Protestants (some o f w h o m had crossed the divide between lib­ eral Protestantism and agnosticism). T h e class-based bias o f leading social Darwinists against any evidence that contradicted their p h i l o ­ sophical views is startling, because they were all men w h o , on an intellectual level, revered rationality. A n d yet, many described their intellectual awakening in the language o f religious conversion. " I remember that the light came as in a flood and all was clear," Carnegie w o u l d later explain in his autobiography. " N o t only had I got rid o f theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth o f evolution. 'All is well since all grows better,' became m y m o t t o . " Incredibly, considering that the posthumously published autobiography was written amid the pointless carnage o f the First World War, Carnegie went on to assert that man "is an organism, inherently rejecting all that is deleterious, that is, w r o n g , and absorbing after trial what is beneficial, that is, r i g h t . "

10

T h e phrase "social D a r w i n i s m , " even if it had been k n o w n in America, w o u l d have been unpopular nineteenth-century

precisely because late

academics like Sumner belonged to the

first

generation o f American intellectuals and educators to insist that their social theories were a branch o f objective science. J o i n i n g the captains o f industry w h o proclaimed that biological evolution and social progress were one (a v i e w that D a r w i n never entertained), the social Darwinists in academia claimed that anyone w h o opposed their views was actually opposing science itself. T h e n e w idea that social science was as firmly grounded in principles o f objective observation and experimentation as the natural sciences did much to e n d o w eugenics and social D a r w i n i s m w i t h intellectual respectability. Intellectuals w h o fully accepted Darwin's theory o f evolution by means o f natural

6

70

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

selection but rejected its extension into the social realm were in a dis­ tinct minority, and they were frequently ridiculed and accused o f ret­ rograde anti-scientific attitudes. This small but elite group included R a l p h Waldo Emerson and William James, and it is significant that both men belonged not to the n e w w o r l d o f social science but to the older American tradition o f broad education in the humanities and natural sciences.

THE INFLUENCE o f social D a r w i n i s m on America, and on American intellectuals in particular, is largely attributable to the writings o f Herbert Spencer, a British-born philosopher little read today but o f enormous stature in the nineteenth century. " T h e survival o f the fittest" was a phrase coined not by D a r w i n but by Spencer. Pithily described b y Hofstadter as "the metaphysician o f the homemade intellectual and the prophet o f the cracker-barrel agnostic," Spen­ cer also appealed to nonfundamentalist religious believers because he asserted that whatever science might reveal about the natural world, scientists could never comprehend "the U n k n o w a b l e " — i n words, G o d .

11

other

This was the perfect escape hatch for millions o f theo­

logically liberal believers, w h o wanted to have their G o d and D a r w i n too, but it did not suffice for fundamentalists, w h o could never be persuaded to accept the Bible as a mere metaphor. T h e publication o f Spencer's multi-volume, 6,000-page System of Synthetic Philosophy was made possible by the support o f Americans; Carnegie, Rockefeller, and T h o m a s Edison provided direct financial backing, and dozens o f prominent N e w England intellectuals subscribed in advance to each n e w v o l u m e o f Spencer's tome, a marketing practice equivalent to today's publishing blurbs. T h e best k n o w n early subscribers included the historian G e o r g e Bancroft, the botanist Asa Gray, the former H a r ­ vard University president J a r e d Sparks, and the poet James Russell L o w e l l — a s elite a group o f intellectual backers as any publisher could hope to find. Spencer preached the gospel o f laissez-faire economics as the only w a y to ensure that the fittest w o u l d triumph in society through a process o f "social selection" equivalent to Darwin's natural selection, and the Spencerian gospel found a far more receptive audience in America than in England. Spencer's first pedestrian musings about the

Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars universal laws o f social selection were published in 1858, a year before Darwin's On the Origin of Species—a timeline Spencer never tired o f emphasizing. Nevertheless, the metaphysician o f the

homemade

intellectual immediately seized on Darwin's scientific research to sup­ port his philosophical rationalization for unrestrained industrial capi­ talism. T h e British philosopher was unequivocally and fanatically opposed to all government programs that he v i e w e d as obstacles to social selection—including public education, health regulations, tar­ iffs, and even postal service. In this he was more consistent than the American tycoons w h o revered him, given that the great industrialists were only too happy to benefit from tariffs that protected their p r o d ­ ucts from foreign competition. M e n like Carnegie, w h o s e grants for libraries created a model partnership between government and private philanthropy, clearly did not take Spencer any more literally than they did the Bible. Academic social scientists, however, tended to be fundamentalist Spencerians. William Sumner, an ordained Episcopal minister, had evolved into an agnostic under the influence o f both Spencer's theories and the new biblical criticism, w h i c h emphasized the human authorship o f the Scriptures. A s Charles and M a r y Beard note, Sumner trained thousands o f Yale undergraduates in "individualism as i f it was an exact science, trying to convince even y o u n g Republicans that a p r o ­ tective tariff was no permissible departure from its [social Darwinist individualism's] extractions."

12

Because Sumner was able to invest his

pseudoscientific theories w i t h scientific authority and an aura o f rationality, in popular publications as well as scholarly journals, he must be ranked not only as one o f the most influential academics o f his day but as the philosophical forefather o f the right-wing public intellectuals w h o have exercised similar influence in American society since the early 1980s. Sumner's ideas w o u l d fit perfectly today in the position papers o f the Heritage Foundation and the American Enter­ prise Institute. In his repeated arguments against taxing the r i c h — "no man can acquire a million w i t h o u t helping a million men to increase their little f o r t u n e " — S u m n e r advocated what w o u l d n o w be called trickle-down economics. Socialism, as well as Progressive Era reform proposals, were not matters for political debate but nothing more than attempts to undo the natural order o f existence as revealed by science.

7

72

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON Sumner elaborated on this philosophy, throwing brickbats over his

shoulder at the Enlightenment, in his " R e p l y to a Socialist," pub­ lished in 1904 in Collier's in response to a call by the muckraking nov­ elist U p t o n Sinclair for laws to regulate labor practices in garment factories. T h e notion that everybody ought to be happy, and equally happy with all the rest, is the fine flower of the philosophy which has been winning popularity for two hundred years. All the petty demands o f natural rights, liberty, equality, etc., are only stepping-stones toward this philosophy, which is really what is wanted. All through human history some have had good fortune and some ill fortune. For some the ills of life have taken all the j o y and strength out of existence, while the fortunate have always been there to show how glorious life might be and to furnish dreams of bliss to tantalize those w h o have failed and suffered. So men have constructed in philosophy theories of universal felicity. T h e y tell us that everyone has a natural right to be happy, to be comfortable, to have health, to succeed, to have knowledge, fam­ ily, political power, and all the best of the things which anybody can have. . . . Then they say that w e all ought to be equal. That proposition abolishes luck. . . . The unlucky will pull down the lucky. That is all that equality ever can mean.

13

(Take that, y o u misguided authors o f the Declaration o f Indepen­ dence!) Because Spencer allowed for belief in "the U n k n o w a b l e , " he was embraced as enthusiastically by theologically liberal but economically conservative Protestant intellectuals as by agnostics. Beecher, pastor o f the influential P l y m o u t h Congregational C h u r c h in B r o o k l y n and the most famous minister in the nation, argued that the gross eco­ nomic inequalities o f the Gilded A g e were mandated not only by nat­ ural selection but by the B i b l e — a n odd twist for a theologian w h o also argued that the Bible must be v i e w e d metaphorically w h e n it came to the creation story itself. T h e poor were poor because G o d had ordained their state in life, and Darwin's findings about the c o m ­ petition for survival within nature offered scientific "proof" o f God's intent that men compete for survival in society. It is simply stunning

Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars to read Beecher's sermons on the fecklessness o f the p o o r and the unAmericanness o f trade unions, socialism, and communism, conflated as European-bred evils. In 1877, in a sermon quoted in The New York Times, Beecher intoned that " G o d has intended the great to be great and the little to be little. . . . I do not say that a dollar a day is enough to support a w o r k i n g man. B u t it is enough to support a man!" E u r o ­ pean notions "that the Government should be paternal and take care o f the welfare o f its subjects and provide them w i t h labor, are unAmerican." In a final peroration, Beecher declared that men " w h o have been cast d o w n from affluence to poverty should not grunt and grumble, but bear matters unflinchingly. T h e y should never forget that they are men, even though they die o f hunger. A n Indian, unciv­ ilized though he was, never flinched w h e n fire was applied to his body. T h e manly w a y to meet misfortune is to g o d o w n boldly to poverty."

14

Poverty was a misfortune that Beecher was never required to address, boldly or otherwise. In 1875, his former friend and parish­ ioner, Theodore Tilton, had sued the pastor for alleged adultery w i t h Tilton's wife. After the adultery trial ended in a hung j u r y , Beecher retained his B r o o k l y n pulpit, and the scandal and its attendant fame enabled him to command even higher fees on the lecture circuit. O v e r the next decade, Beecher did more than any other clergyman to con­ vince theologically liberal Protestants that belief in G o d as First Cause could be reconciled w i t h the particulars o f evolution, and he argued forcefully that just as the survival o f certain species in nature proved their fitness, the accumulation o f wealth proved the greater "fitness" o f the rich in society—and the greater fitness o f rich societies in the w o r l d order. D a r w i n never said any such thing. H e stated explicitly in The Descent of Man that environmental factors and moral concerns take precedence over natural selection as soon as man moves from a state o f nature into a state o f civilization. " T h e aid w h i c h w e feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result o f the instinct o f sympathy," he observed, " w h i c h was originally acquired as part o f the social instincts, but subsequently rendered . . . more tender and w i d e l y diffused. N o r could w e check our sympathy, even at the u r g ­ ing o f hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part o f our nature. . . . [I]f w e were intentionally to neglect the w e a k and the

7

74

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, w i t h an over­ w h e l m i n g present e v i l . "

15

T h e r e was also a close relationship between the rise o f social Darwinist pseudoscience and the replacement o f Emerson's ideal of

democratic

individuality

with

an

exaltation

of

"rugged

individualism"—another mantra that has endured into the twentyfirst century. F o r Emerson, as for America's founding

generation,

there was no conflict between political equality and individuality: men w e r e equal as human beings and as citizens "because each had his unique place as a representative man, and his natural right was the right to opportunity for the full development o f his particular poten­ tialities . . . the equality o f all men meant not that all are alike or have the same interests and capacities but that all are equally important in 16

the U n i v e r s e . " T h e Gilded A g e concept o f American individualism, so often accompanied by the adjective "rugged," meant something entirely different: it suggested not just that individuals have different natural capacities but that those different capacities proved some human beings to be m u c h worthier than others in the social universe. F o r the most part, the equation o f natural selection w i t h social selection was not effectively challenged by prominent

intellectuals

until the Progressive Era began around the turn o f the century. T h e most notable exception was William James, w h o , unlike most o f his scholarly contemporaries, saw through the j u n k science at the heart o f Spencerian social D a r w i n i s m . A trained physician and naturalist as well as a philosopher, J a m e s addressed the confusion between natural selection and social selection from both a scientific and a metaphysical perspective. B o r n in 1842, he was a member o f the first generation to come o f age after the publication o f On the Origin of Species, and was at the height o f his intellectual influence w h e n the American enthusiasm for Spencer was also at its zenith. It was James w h o made the case that w h i l e social D a r w i n i s m was perfectly suited to the contemporary worship o f rugged individualism, the philosophy had little regard for individuals. Even more important, James defined social D a r w i n i s m not as bad science but as a nonscience. In an 1880 lecture before the Harvard Natural History Society, James argued that Spencer, by appropriating

Darwin's brilliant

insights about change in nature as an overarching explanation for all change in society, was in fact as illogical as a soothsayer. " I f w e pro-

Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars ceeded on this method," J a m e s contended,

" w e might say w i t h

perfect legitimacy that a friend o f ours, w h o had slipped on the ice upon his door-step and cracked his skull, some months after dining with thirteen at the table, died because o f that ominous feast." Indeed, James continued, he k n e w o f such a fatal accident and might, "with perfect logical propriety," contend that the slip on the ice was predetermined. "There are no accidents," I might say, "for science. T h e whole his­ tory of the world converged to produce that slip. If anything had been left out, the slip would not have occurred there and then. T o say it would is to deny the relations of cause and effect throughout the universe. The real cause of the death was not the slip, but the conditions which engendered the slip,—and among them his having sat at a table, six months previous, one among thirteen. That is truly the reason he died within the year." N o one, before or since, has presented a more cogent case against the misappropriation o f genuine evidence-based science in the service of unveriflable, monistic, metaphysical, and social theories. In a bril­ liant conclusion to his lecture, J a m e s d r e w a clear distinction between social theory and scientific theory: The plain truth is that the "philosophy of evolution" (as distin­ guished from our special information about particular cases of change) is a metaphysical creed and nothing else. It is a mood of contemplation, an emotional attitude, rather than a system o f thought—a mood which is as old as the world, and which no refu­ tation of any one incarnation of it (such as the Spencerian philos­ ophy) will ever dispel; the mood o f fatalistic pantheism, with its intuition of the One and All, which was and is, and ever shall be, and from whose w o m b each single thing proceeds. Far be it from us to speak slightingly here of so hoary and mighty a style of looking at the world as this. What w e at present call scientific dis­ coveries had nothing to do with bringing it to birth, nor can one easily conceive that they should ever give it its quietus. . . . A critic, however, w h o cannot disprove the truth o f the metaphysic creed, can at least raise his voice in protest against its disguising itself in

J

76

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON "scientific" plumes. . . the Spencerian "philosophy" of social and intellectual progress is an obsolete anachronism, reverting to a pre-Darwinian type of thought just as the Spencerian philosophy of "Force," effacing all previous distinctions between actual and potential energy, momentum, work, force, mass, etc., which physicists have with so much agony achieved, carries us back to a pre-Galilean age.

17

Perhaps only someone trained as both a natural scientist and a philosopher could have spotted, at such an early stage in the culture wars over evolution, the bloviating arrogance o f metaphysical theo­ ries that ignore inconvenient facts, as distinct from scientific theories subject to modification by the discovery o f n e w facts. Because James's brief against social D a r w i n i s m was based on its illogic rather than on its implications for contemporary

social policy (though

the

latter were bad enough), his argument has a timeless quality. It w o u l d have been equally relevant to early twentieth-century

illusions

about "scientific C o m m u n i s m " or to the quasi-religious belief, at its height in A m e r i c a in the 1950s, in the scientific basis o f Freudian psychoanalysis.* It could be applied today to intelligent design or to

the

repackaged

social D a r w i n i s m that exalts modern

post-

industrial capitalism—as the old social Darwinists exalted industrial capitalism—as an edifice governed by immutable laws o f nature. Just as J a m e s had laid bare the unscientific psychological and e m o ­ tional underpinnings

o f Spencerian thought, Thorstein Veblen—

w h o had studied under Sumner at Yale but had reached v e r y different conclusions from those preached by his teacher—eviscerated the eco­ nomic basis o f the claim that social D a r w i n i s m was a science. The The­ ory of the Leisure Class (1899) bequeathed to future generations not only the trenchant phrase "conspicuous consumption" but a devastating critique o f the notion that vast disparities in wealth and income are the result o f forces similar to those in nature. T o Veblen, the most advantaged members o f society—those affluent enough to constitute * James, who was extremely interested in Freud's work at a time when it was virtually unknown in America, was on hand in 1909 at Clark University to welcome Freud and Carl Jung to the United States. However, James commented at the time on the ideological rigidity of both men, which he described as a tendency to be "obsessed with a fixed idea."

Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars a leisure class w h o s e conspicuous consumption functions as a contin­ uous advertisement o f their success—are in fact the enemies o f natu­ ral selection, acting "to retard that adjustment to the environment w h i c h is called social advance or social development." T h e leisure class assumed, as Carnegie proclaimed, that "whatever is, is right," but Veblen argued that the law o f natural selection proved precisely the opposite—"Whatever is, is w r o n g . " In Veblen's v i e w , governing institutions always lag behind the social exigencies o f any era; and in periods o f rapid change, like the late nineteenth century, the gap widens between society's needs and the institutional capacity to meet those needs. They [social institutions] are the result of a more or less inade­ quate adjustment of the methods of living to a situation which prevailed at some point in the past . . . and they are therefore wrong by something more than the interval which separated the present situation from the past. . . . The institution of a leisure class, by force of class interest and instinct, and by precept and pre­ scriptive example, makes for the perpetuation of the existing mal­ adjustment of institutions, and even favours a reversion to a somewhat more archaic scheme of life; a scheme which would be still farther out of adjustment with the exigencies of life under the existing situation even than the accredited, obsolescent scheme that has come down from the immediate past.

18

Unlike Sumner, Veblen was not invited to w r i t e for Collier's. In the years between the turn o f the century and America's entry into the First World War, some intellectuals also turned to real social science—based

on

direct

observation

and

large-scale statistical

studies—to challenge social pseudoscience. O n e o f these was William English Walling, an unjustly forgotten figure and an innovative socialist thinker w h o , after his education at the University o f C h i c a g o and Harvard, w o r k e d at J a n e Addams's H u l l House in C h i c a g o and as a factory inspector for the state o f Illinois. In The Larger Aspects of Socialism (1913), Walling placed special emphasis on n e w anthropolog­ ical evidence challenging the premises o f eugenics. Citing a contem­ porary study by the pioneering C o l u m b i a University anthropologist

7

78

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

Franz Boas, Walling noted that all recent immigrants to the United States—whether East European J e w s , Sicilians, Bohemians, Hungari­ ans, or Scots—had g r o w n taller and heavier, as a result o f a better diet, within a single generation. "This epoch-making report o f Boas," Walling noted, "shows that even children born within a few years after the arrival o f their parents in this country differ essentially from their progenitors." T h e n Walling homed in on a point that, had anyone but other leftw i n g intellectuals paid attention, might have persuaded at least some anti-intellectual fundamentalists to moderate their v i e w o f evolution. " T h e duty o f man is not to study h o w evolution creates," Walling argued, "but to create evolution." Natural selection, far from being the efficient mechanism exalted by Spencer, was portrayed by Walling (as it is by evolutionary scientists today) as highly inefficient. "Accord­ ing to D a r w i n himself," Walling reminded his readers, "nature does all possible experiments as long as possible, that is, until that species is extinct. . . . Instead o f being governed by the laws o f chance, like Darwin's fortuitous variations, scientific experiments reduce the ele­ ment o f chance to the m i n i m u m . M e n may make in a single year ten thousand times as many crucial tests as Nature blunders upon in ten thousand y e a r s . "

19

T h e r e is no evidence that such intellectual critiques o f social D a r ­ w i n i s m ever reached middle-class Americans around the turn o f the century. F o r Americans on the anti-evolution side o f the early culture wars, Darwin's theory o f evolution was indistinguishable from its dis­ tortion by conservative social scientists, and religion—a combination o f fundamentalism and the Social G o s p e l — w a s their weapon in the w a r against godless science and godless pseudoscience. Bryan, the champion o f both anti-evolutionism and economic populism, seems not to have read Spencer or any o f Spencer's intellectual critics. For that matter, there is no evidence that he ever read D a r w i n . At the Scopes trial in 1925, B r y a n quoted not from D a r w i n but from a crude 1914 high school b i o l o g y textbook (A Civic Biology, by G e o r g e Hunter) that presented an "evolutionary tree" attempting to estimate the number o f creatures in each species. A n d although the text was filled w i t h social Darwinist eugenics, Bryan did not mention that at all—even though the author had described the mentally ill as "true

Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars parasites," adding that " i f such people were l o w e r animals, w e w o u l d probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading." That idea really should have been banned from classrooms, but the " m o n k e y trial," as its popular nickname suggests, revolved solely around the clash between biblical literalism and the idea that man was descended from lower forms o f life. Perhaps, as the historian Michael K a z i n suggests, B r y a n simply had not read the provocative pages offering suggestions for what society might do to prevent the unfit from reproducing. A n o t h e r likely explanation is that B r y a n had so conflated social D a r w i n i s m and D a r ­ win's o w n theory o f evolution that he made no distinction between the t w o and took for granted that the j u r y , and his courtroom audi­ ence, w o u l d share his assumptions.

20

Conservative intellectuals like

Sumner had distorted Darwin's ideas into an argument against all social reforms: if a brutal struggle for survival must characterize human existence in a state o f civilization as w e l l as in a state o f nature, any attempt at reform instigated by the same human protagonists in that brutal struggle must be doomed. T o that argument, a Christian populist like B r y a n could only respond w i t h an unequivocal no. H e described survival o f the fittest—a phrase he probably never realized had nothing to do w i t h Darwin's v i e w s about what ought to be the behavior o f civilized humans—as "the merciless law by w h i c h the strong crowd out and kill off the w e a k . "

21

It is not surprising that someone w i t h as parochial an education as Bryan w o u l d confuse Darwin's theory o f natural selection w i t h Spencer's ideas about

social selection, because the influence o f

Spencerian pseudoscience was such that even highly educated A m e r i ­ cans (including some w h o rejected social Darwinism) made the same mistake. Theodore Roosevelt, w h o was completely familiar w i t h the writings o f D a r w i n , H u x l e y , and Spencer, spoke w i t h regret in a 1912 speech to the American Historical Association about the conflation in the public mind between the "doctrine o f evolution" and the " d o c ­ trine o f natural selection."

22

What R o o s e v e l t really meant was that

the public had confused Darwin's theory w i t h Spencerian social selec­ tion. As a strong advocate o f government action and Progressive reforms, Roosevelt accepted evolution in nature w h i l e rejecting the application o f "survival o f the fittest" to society. That a celebrated

7

80

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

naturalist and historian could speak so imprecisely before a group o f professional historians attests to the pervasiveness o f Spencerian con­ cepts even among opponents o f social D a r w i n i s m .

THE IMPORTANCE o f social D a r w i n i s m in the history o f American pseudoscience, anti-rationalism,

and anti-intellectualism has been

underestimated for a number o f reasons, not least the fact that the pervasive upper-class intellectual ideology o f social Darwinism was never called by that name at the height o f its popularity in the United States. Unlike, say, communism, w h i c h had both a name and, after the Bolshevik R e v o l u t i o n , a h o m e address in M o s c o w , social D a r w i n ­ ism was, as William James suggested (though he too never used the term), a metaphysical creed disguised in scientific plumes. Nameless philosophies surrounded b y an amorphous scientific aura lend them­ selves more easily than well-defined ideologies to repackaging for n e w audiences in different eras. Forgotten in their original form but not gone, the worst pseudoscientific ideas emanating from the late nineteenth century are con­ stantly being marketed under n e w brand names in the United States. Social D a r w i n i s m has never died: it manifested itself as a bulwark o f eugenics until the Second World War; in the tedious

midcentury

"objectivist" philosophy o f A y n R a n d ; and, most recently, in the form o f market economy worship that presents itself not as political opinion but as a summa o f objective facts. A l l o f the theories included in the general category o f social D a r w i n i s m may be summed up in the immortal line uttered by the hero o f R a n d ' s The Fountainhead (1943): " T h e o n l y g o o d w h i c h men can do to one another and the only state­ ment o f their proper relationship is—'Hands off!' " R a n d was an atheist, but Americans have managed to translate her social D a r w i n ­ ism into the language o f faith: according to a recent poll, a majority mistakenly believe that " G o d helps those w h o help themselves" is a line from the B i b l e .

23

It is useful to recall that intellectualism was not always synony­ mous w i t h liberalism, especially economic liberalism, in the American mind. T h e irreconcilable conflict between evolutionism and biblical literalism w o u l d probably have been sufficient to engender a perma­ nent fundamentalist antagonism toward all intellectuals and scientists

Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America 's Culture Wars w h o disputed any part o f the creation story in Genesis. B u t the fact that so many prominent intellectuals once used D a r w i n i a n evolution as an argument against all social reform provided yet another reason for populist fundamentalists to dismiss not o n l y the theory o f e v o l u ­ tion but the rich intellectuals w h o seemed to be its most ardent p r o ­ ponents. Bryan w o u l d no doubt have been astonished had anyone told him in 1896, w h e n he made his "Cross o f G o l d " speech, that b y the end o f the twentieth century, many Americans w h o shared his reli­ gious beliefs w o u l d ally themselves w i t h the political party favoring the interests o f the rich—and that the Social Gospel, enjoining C h r i s ­ tians to help their fellow man, w o u l d be replaced by the conviction that the Lord helps those w h o help themselves (and that the Bible tells us so). Regardless o f political reversals o f position, t w o critical ingredi­ ents o f American anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism

have

remained largely unchanged since the 1890s. T h e first is the belief o f a significant minority o f Americans that intellectualism and secular higher learning are implacable enemies o f their faith. T h e second is the toxin o f pseudoscience, w h i c h Americans on both the left and the right continue to imbibe as a means o f rendering their social theories impervious to evidence-based challenges.

CHAPTER FOUR

REDS, PINKOS, FELLOW TRAVELERS

JUST AS THE PSEUDOSCIENCE

o f social D a r w i n i s m captivated many

nineteenth-century American intellectuals, the social pseudoscience o f c o m m u n i s m exerted a powerful pull on twentieth-century A m e r i ­ can intellectuals between the w o r l d wars.* U n l i k e social Darwinism, c o m m u n i s m came to be seen as an anti-American philosophy by a majority o f ordinary citizens, in large measure because the world's first ostensibly C o m m u n i s t state, the Soviet U n i o n , became a super­ p o w e r and America's chief international rival. B u t the suspicion o f intellectuals originally engendered by the O l d Left's attraction to M a r x i s t ideology has outlasted c o m m u n i s m itself. It is bizarre that even today, the idea o f C o m m u n i s m w i t h a capital " C " — s e v e n t e e n years after the legal dissolution o f its Soviet homeland and more than a half century since M a r x i s m possessed any proselytizing appeal in the West—continues to be used in the U n i t e d States as a bludgeon

* Like Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx appropriated Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection in service to a social and economic ideology. For Marx, the struggle for survival in nature paralleled the struggle between classes for survival in society. It took Soviet power, with its endless litany of failed economic and agricultural experiments, to reveal the social pseudoscience at the heart of the most dogmatic interpretation of Marxism (which, by then, had little to do with what Marx actually thought). Under Stalin's anointed biologist, Trofim D . Lysenko, Soviet Party hacks maintained that the genetic makeup of species could be altered by changes in the political system—a theory, if you will, of political eugenics. With the ringing declaration that "the zygote is no fool," Lysenko launched a series of disas­ trous agricultural programs based on this premise, which also ignored Mendelian genetics. Soviet scientists who spoke out against Lysenkoist pseudoscience were dismissed from their jobs, and many died in the Gulag. The Lysenkoists, of course, always maintained that their own theories were pure, objective science—even when proved wrong by experiment after experiment, not in the laboratory but on real farms, with real animals and crops.

82

Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers

83

against various kinds o f liberalism and liberal ïntellectualïsm. A w e e k before the 1994 midterm elections, N e w t Gingrich, architect o f the historic Republican takeover o f both houses o f Congress, advised Republican lobbyists that the w a y to w i n was to portray Democrats as proponents o f "Stalinist" policies and as opponents o f " n o r m a l " 1

American values. Stalin had been dead for more than forty years and the Soviet U n i o n itself had ceased to exist three years before G i n grich's comments. Yet the concept o f a "Party line" w i t h o u t a Party—an

idea

that

resurfaces

repeatedly

in

the

right-wing

universe—still serves as a handy phantasm for impugning the patriotism o f liberals and obscuring the distinctions among the many left-ofcenter American political movements since the Progressive Era.

MUCH OF THE GROUNDWORK

for the American public's suspicion o f

the patriotism o f intellectuals was laid during the xenophobic R e d Scare after the First World War, w h e n some o f the nation's best k n o w n political radicals were o f foreign birth. O n N o v e m b e r 1 1 , 1 9 1 8 , the armistice ending combat was signed in a railway car in the French forest o f C o m p i è g n e . A w e e k later, the mayor o f N e w Y o r k prohibited public displays o f red flags, the symbol o f the year-old B o l s h e v i k government in Russia. T h e same month, a peaceful Madison Square Garden rally o f American Socialists, w h o detested the Bolsheviks, turned into a rout w h e n hundreds o f demobilized soldiers and sailors—indifferent to and ignorant o f political distinctions on the left—stormed the doors o f the Garden and had to be subdued b y mounted police. T h e hunt for R e d s was under w a y . It is a long psychological reach from the isolationism that followed the First World W a r — w h e n much o f the public still yearned for a return to a more innocent era in w h i c h the nation was responsible neither for nor to the rest o f the w o r l d — t o the triumphalist acceptance o f empire that followed v i c t o r y over the A x i s in the Second World War and saw Americans turn against those citizens thought to be overly sympathetic to our recent ally and chief international rival, Stalin's Soviet U n i o n . Nevertheless, the first R e d Scare, uniting isolationist and nativist tendencies w i t h fear o f the foreign ideology o f Bolshevism, prepared the w a y for a more lasting public mind-set in which the politics o f liberal intellectuals were regarded most charita-

84

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

bly as expressions o f naïveté about enemies o f the American w a y o f life—one more manifestation o f the general gullibility o f eggheads— and most harshly as a form o f treason. T h e proportion o f Americans w h o subscribe to this suspicion o f liberal intellectuals (a.k.a. "the elites") and the depth o f the suspicion v a r y considerably according to the political climate; but the negative image o f the intellectual as pinko is always available for political exploitation during periods o f social stress. D u r i n g the First World War, the government had prosecuted more than t w o thousand cases under a sedition law prohibiting "any disloyal, . . . scurrilous, or abusive language about the form o f the g o v ernment o f the U n i t e d States." In 1919, using lists compiled by a diligent and ambitious y o u n g employee named J . Edgar Hoover, the Department o f Justice began targeting foreign-born radical intellectuals and political activists. O n December 20, 249 immigrants involved in various forms o f leftist politics—many had lived in the U n i t e d States for decades and professed anti-Marxist anarchism rather than c o m m u n i s m — w e r e deported to the Soviet U n i o n on a ship dubbed the " R e d A r k " by the mass-circulation press. Most o f the deportees w e r e J e w s born in territories o f the former Tsarist empire. T h e best k n o w n passenger on the R e d A r k was the fiery anarchist and feminist E m m a G o l d m a n — d u b b e d " R e d E m m a " by the press—who was sixteen w h e n she immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1885 and was schooled not only on European social theorists but on T h o m a s Paine, Walt Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau. She read the American writers for the first time in a N e w Y o r k C i t y prison library in 1893, after being jailed for making a speech urging workers to take bread i f they could not find j o b s . Like Paine in Paris during the Jacobin Terror, G o l d m a n k n e w betrayal o f revolutionary ideals w h e n she saw it. H e r deportation to the Soviet U n i o n w o u l d produce My Disillusionment in Russia (1923), one o f the earliest, most powerful leftw i n g indictments o f the budding Soviet totalitarian state under Lenin. A l t h o u g h G o l d m a n , an international celebrity in leftist circles, was greeted w a r m l y by Soviet officials in 1919, she soon discovered that the rest o f her fellow deportees had been placed under military guard, "driven out o f A m e r i c a for their political opinions, n o w in R e v o l u t i o n a r y Russia again prisoners."

2

Back in America, more than six thousand Communists and C o m -

Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers

85

munist sympathizers had been rounded up and arrested in their homes and workplaces by the end o f 1920. In a festive touch, Attorney G e n ­ eral A . Mitchell Palmer, w h o called himself "the fighting Quaker," launched a series o f coordinated raids on Party offices on N e w Year's Day, w h e n the faithful comrades traditionally gathered to celebrate the holiday. Clarence D a r r o w , the nation's best k n o w n

defense

lawyer, w o u l d later describe the period as "an era o f tyranny, brutal­ ity, and despotism, that, for the time at least, undermined the founda­ tions upon w h i c h our republic was l a i d . "

3

T h e American C i v i l

Liberties U n i o n , officially established on J a n u a r y 20, 1920, came into being as a direct result o f the Palmer raids. T h e first R e d Scare lost steam fairly rapidly, as the nation m o v e d into a decade o f unprecedented prosperity and the public lost interest in the hunt for radicals—foreign or American-born. T h e crusade against R e d s really ended in 1924, w i t h the passage o f a n e w immigra­ tion quota system designed to shut the G o l d e n D o o r on immigrants from Southern and Eastern E u r o p e — t h e fulfillment o f a nativist dream dating from the 1880s. I f radical labor agitation and alien intel­ lectual philosophies were the w o r k o f foreigners, keeping foreigners out w o u l d surely remedy the problem. Ethnic prejudice and antiBolshevism w o r k e d in tandem to provide support for the limitations on immigration, aimed primarily at East European and Russian J e w s and Italians, that w o u l d have such tragic consequences in the thirties for J e w s trying to flee the Nazis. Restrictive immigration policy was a direct and obvious conse­ quence o f the R e d Scare; a more subtle but equally important result was the insertion o f anti-communism into American cultural conflicts that had previously been v i e w e d as h o m e g r o w n battles between tradi­ tional religion and secularization. In the battle over evolution, B o l ­ shevism took the place o f Spencerian social D a r w i n i s m as the enemy of old-time religion. Even William Jennings B r y a n , w h o s e economic populism had always been as m i g h t y a pillar o f his political career as his defense o f literal biblical faith, began to link D a r w i n i a n evolution with Bolshevism instead o f w i t h unconstrained capitalism. In 1924, just a year before the Scopes trial, B r y a n used the revealing phrase "scientific soviet" to describe a cabal "attempting to dictate w h a t shall be taught in our schools, and, in doing so, to m o l d the religion o f the nation."

4

86

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON T h r e e enduring elements o f twentieth-century American anti-

intellectualism may be inferred from Bryan's rhetorical melding o f fundamentalist faith w i t h opposition to the world's first Communist state and its offical atheism. First and foremost is the portrayal o f experts—not just a "soviet" but a "scientific soviet"—as an alien organism within the American b o d y politic. Bryan then expresses resentment toward an educated minority seen as a separate class, determined to impose its views on the majority. Finally, this separate class is identified as an enemy o f religion. Darwin's theory o f evolu­ tion, w h i c h has always been seen by its opponents as ideological and metaphysical rather than scientific, tapped into the vague resentment most people feel toward experts on w h o m they depend but whose w o r k they do not understand. (Consider the public's ambivalent atti­ tude toward the medical profession today.) B u t the anti-evolutionists also d r e w on a deeper, more focused anger toward ideological intel­ lectuals w h o presumed, by virtue o f having read more books than the average person, to k n o w what is best for society. T h e increasing importance o f intellectuals as experts in the early twentieth century— especially in the physical sciences and t e c h n o l o g y — d i d not, as far as most Americans w e r e concerned, translate into intellectual authority on political, social, or religious questions. T h e attraction o f twentieth-century intellectuals to communism, although that attraction was, for most, only a brief flirtation, elicited a resentment resembling the fundamentalist response to intellectuals w h o promoted evolutionism. I f evolutionism challenged the founda­ tions o f religious faith, Soviet C o m m u n i s m challenged the broader economic and political foundations o f America's faith in itself. T h e challenge had little potency during the prosperous twenties but seemed m u c h more real and potentially threatening after the 1929 stock market crash and the onset o f the Depression—events that many Americans, not only M a r x i s t intellectuals, saw as the beginning o f the end o f capitalism as they had k n o w n it. F o r intellectuals w h o came o f age between the First and Second World Wars and gravitated toward the political left, the possibilities ranged from N e w D e a l liberalism—which was not, in fact, located on the left but at the v e r y center o f the American political spectrum in the 1930s—through various varieties o f socialism w i t h native as well as European roots, to, for a small minority, the Moscow-financed

Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers

87

American C o m m u n i s t Party. B u t for every intellectual w h o actually joined the Party, there were unquestionably many more w h o sympa­ thized w i t h communism in general and w i t h Stalin's Soviet U n i o n in particular. T h e y were k n o w n as "fellow travelers," a term not w i d e l y used in the United States until the C o l d War and originally used in Russia to describe writers w h o actively engaged in literary propa­ ganda on behalf o f the Bolsheviks but did not j o i n the Party.* T h e 1930s vitiated the hopes o f those w h o believed that restricting immigration w o u l d immunize Americans against the virus o f radical philosophies. Throughout the thirties, American left-wing intellectualism and political radicalism, although greatly augmented by the presence o f brilliant German J e w i s h refugees w h o got out in time, w o u l d become increasingly h o m e g r o w n . T h e children o f earlier gen­ erations o f working-class immigrants, especially J e w s , prepared to step onto the American intellectual stage (although their presence w o u l d not be fully felt in the larger culture until after the war). T h e most prominent intellectuals w h o came o f age between the wars were American-born and should have had " M a d e in the U . S . A . " stamped on the covers o f their books. " I am an American, C h i c a g o - b o r n , " the famous opening line o f Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March (1953), might have been the epigraph for the w o r k s o f his entire J e w ­ ish American intellectual generation—regardless o f politics.

A

CONSIDERABLE IMAGINATIVE LEAP

backward is required to under­

stand w h y so many American intellectuals o f the thirties generation were deluded for so long not o n l y about the real nature o f Stalin's Soviet U n i o n but about the likelihood o f some sort o f M a r x i s t r e v o ­ lution taking hold and sweeping away capitalism in the U n i t e d States. It is certainly easy to understand the attraction o f communism in light of the panic and economic desperation o f the early thirties, before the N e w Deal infused Americans w i t h the hope that capitalism might reform itself. It is difficult, however, to comprehend the reasons w h y any intelligent citizen—intellectual or nonintellectual—could have * "Fellow traveler" (poputchik) was not a pejorative in Russian during the early Soviet era but was always used as a pejorative in the United States after the Second World War. The Bol­ sheviks needed poputchiki during the twenties but dispensed with most of these less than wholehearted fellow travelers during the purges of the thirties.

88

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

continued to imagine after the 1936 election that Americans might actually be receptive to a radical change in their form o f government. W i t h the nation still in dark economic straits in 1936, Americans over­ w h e l m i n g l y reelected Franklin D . R o o s e v e l t ; the tiny Communist Party vote dropped from .3 percent to .2 percent o f the electorate, w h i l e the American Socialist Party, always much stronger at the ballot b o x than the Communists, dropped from 2.2 percent to .4 percent. It w o u l d seem obvious that most citizens, even i f on the far left o f the political spectrum and still enduring personal economic hardship, had taken heart and hope from the N e w Deal. Intellectuals, by contrast, were even more attracted to communism in the mid-thirties than in the early years o f the Depression—partly, though not entirely, because they were more concerned than other Americans about the rise o f fascism in Europe. Membership in the American C o m m u n i s t Party rose steadily between 1935 and 1939, to around seventy-five thousand, during the period k n o w n as the Popu­ lar Front. T h r o u g h o u t those years, the Soviets ostensibly dropped their objections to n o n - C o m m u n i s t leftist movements in order to make c o m m o n cause against fascism, and the Party drew in not only intellectuals but C o m m u n i s t sympathizers in certain unions. At a time w h e n many Americans underestimated the threat o f Nazism and most w e r e committed isolationists, the ideals o f the Popular Front had enormous appeal to leftist intellectuals w h o saw Hitler (but not Stalin) for the evil creature that he was. T h e vast majority never j o i n e d the Party, and participation in organizations or literary endeav­ ors sympathetic to Soviet-backed causes—the most urgent

and

appealing being opposition to N a z i s m — w a s the most common form o f fellow traveling for intellectuals. This was also the period w h e n a sharp split began to emerge between C o m m u n i s t s and anti-Communist liberals, the latter group including such disparate men as the progressive educator J o h n D e w e y and the philosopher Sidney H o o k , w h o had been a Marxist and a sup­ porter o f the C o m m u n i s t candidate for president in 1932. In spite o f their history o f C o m m u n i s t sympathies, intellectuals like D e w e y and H o o k were not deceived w h e n Stalin branded one old Bolshevik after another as traitors and disposed o f both real and imaginary opponents in the purge trials o f 1937 and 1938. There were also younger leftists w h o never flirted w i t h Stalin's version o f communism; the best

Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers

89

descriptions o f what it was like to be a fledgling soldier in the irregu­ lar army o f the anti-Stalinist left are to be found in Irving H o w e ' s and Irving Kristol's memoirs o f their sentimental political education at 5

the C i t y C o l l e g e o f N e w Y o r k from 1936 to 1940. H o w e and Kristol were on the same side back then, although Kristol w o u l d become the hardest o f hard-line neoconservatives in the 1970s, w h i l e H o w e w o u l d , to a considerable extent, remain true to the democratic social­ ist ideals o f his youth instead o f rejecting them as guileless unrealism. T h e anti-Stalinists held forth in A l c o v e 1 o f the C i t y C o l l e g e lunchroom, and the Stalinists made their pronouncements

from

Alcove 2, whose denizens included Julius R o s e n b e r g , destined to be executed for atomic spying. Howe's description, perhaps befitting a democratic socialist, makes Alcove 1 sound like a fairly j o l l y forum. You could walk into the thick brown darkness of Alcove 1 at almost any time of day or evening and find a convenient argument about the Popular Front in France, the N e w Deal in America, the civil war in Spain, the Five-Year Plan in Russia, the theory o f per­ manent revolution, and "what M a r x really meant." . . . One friend, Izzy Kugler, had a large body of knowledge and near knowledge. In a clash with a Stalinist boy w h o m w e had lured across the border into Alcove 1, Izzy bombarded him with figures about British imperialism, and when the poor fellow expressed disbelief, Izzy sternly directed him to the library where he could "look it up." A fact was a fact. But had Izzy really been hammer­ ing him with facts? I asked about those statistics and he answered with a charming smile that, well, he had exaggerated a little (which is to say, a lot), since you had to do something to get those Stalinist sluggards to read a book!

6

But for many intellectuals—even i f they were not actually Party members—it took the 1939 N a z i - S o v i e t Pact, w h i c h allowed Hitler to gobble up Poland and thereby ushered in the Second World War, to reveal Stalin's absolute cynicism. Even so, after Hitler attacked Russia and the United States entered the w a r on the side o f the Soviets and Great Britain, Soviet-led C o m m u n i s m regained the loyalty o f many. Although the Party had lost nearly half o f its American members after the Nazi-Soviet Pact, it doubled in size from 1941 to 1944, reach-

90

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON 7

ing a high point o f about eighty thousand members. It is easy to s y m ­ pathize w i t h the exasperation o f the character played by R o b e r t R e d ford in the 1973 m o v i e The Way We Were, w h i c h chronicles the d o o m e d postwar marriage o f an apolitical W A S P and a J e w i s h e x C o m m u n i s t , played by Barbra Streisand. "Should w e get in the war, should w e not get in the w a r ? " the W A S P character asks his pinko lover. "Stalin's for Hitler, Stalin's against Hitler. It's all a lot o f politi­ cal double-talk, but y o u hold on. I don't k n o w h o w y o u do it. . . ." It takes another imaginative leap to understand the complicated relationship between the internecine intellectual battles over Soviet C o m m u n i s m in the thirties and the largely ineffectual, sometimes craven response o f the liberal intellectual community to the antiC o m m u n i s t inquisitions o f the late forties and fifties. M a n y , arguably most, features o f American anti-intellectualism—including religious fundamentalism and suspicion o f too much education—have little or no connection to the real deeds o f intellectuals. B u t the public's v i e w o f the relationship between intellectuals and communism is an excep­ tion to this rule, and that is the main reason w h y the intellectual wars over Stalinism in the thirties cannot be dismissed as an arcane chapter in American intellectual history. T h e O l d Left intellectuals w h o had been savaging one another in the thirties over Stalinism were still doing it in the fifties—this time not only in "little" intellectual maga­ zines but in the mass-circulation press and before congressional c o m ­ mittees. T h e public became accustomed to the unedifying spectacle o f fellow travelers and former Party members, including those w h o passed through the Party in revolving-door fashion, informing on one another before congressional and state legislative bodies.* T h e same intellectuals w o u l d have another g o at one another in the late sixties and seventies, as some o f the old anti-Communist liberals, like Kristol, metamorphosed into hard-line conservatives and inevitably discovered some R e d Diaper babies—children o f e x - C o m m u n i s t s — in the ranks o f the N e w Left. T h e continuing fascination w i t h the ancient relationship between * Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, whose anti-Communist liberal credentials are impecca­ ble, make an airtight case, based on the American Communist Party's own documents, that the Party succeeded in repelling a majority of Americans who took the step of joining during the thirties. From July 1931 to December 1933, 70 percent of newly recruited members turned into Party dropouts. See The American Communist Party: A Critical History, pp. 528—29.

Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers

91

some intellectuals and Soviet C o m m u n i s m — t h e right-wing and leftw i n g cottage industry o f picking scabs o f f the w o u n d s o f the A l g e r Hiss case is a prime example—cannot be attributed solely to the activ­ ities o f the handful o f American Communists w h o actually spied for the Soviet U n i o n or even to the broader phenomenon o f fellow traveling. Another crucial factor in the postwar conflation o f anticommunism and anti-intellectualism was the retrospective exaggera­ tion by intellectuals themselves o f their o w n importance and the importance o f their twenty-year-old political and personal feuds. T h r o u g h o u t the thirties, the O l d Left intellectuals w e r e a marginal group o f highbrows addressing themselves and their ideas primarily to one another, in publications like Partisan Review, a bastion o f antiCommunist liberalism by the late thirties, and The Nation, w i t h an editorial policy much more sympathetic to C o m m u n i s m and the Soviet U n i o n . O n l y in the late forties and fifties, w h e n elements o f highbrow culture began to manifest themselves in cultural institu­ tions that reached a broader portion o f the educated public, did many of the O l d Left writers, artists, and scholars—Edmund Wilson, M a r y M c C a r t h y , Nathan Glazer, D a v i d R i e s m a n , Daniel Bell, Lionel T r i l ­ ling, and Sidney H o o k , to name only a f e w — d e v e l o p the larger careers, reaching educated, middle-class readers o f popular

fiction,

literary criticism, and sociology, for w h i c h they are n o w k n o w n . These people were located at v e r y different points on the political spectrum, but what they had in c o m m o n was the m e m o r y o f c o m m u ­ nism as the defining political issue o f their y o u n g adulthood. M a n y remained as obsessed w i t h their youthful political ideas—even i f they had long since modified or abandoned them—as their congressional inquisitors. I do not mean to suggest that c o m m u n i s m was unimportant but

that

the

significance

of

communism—specifically,

Soviet

C o m m u n i s m — a s a cultural force in the U n i t e d States was e x a g g e r ­ ated not only by M c C a r t h y i t e politicians but by intellectuals them­ selves. T h e exaggeration was promulgated b y those w h o repented o f their early communist sympathies as well as those w h o did not; by those w h o resisted the pressure to inform during the fifties and those w h o did not; by those w h o remained anti-Communist liberals w i t h the emphasis on "liberal" and by those w h o abandoned liberalism altogether.

92

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON A typical overstatement appears in a 1993 memoir by Diana Tril­

ling, an anti-Communist liberal w h o did not renounce her liberalism along w i t h her fellow-traveling past. She argues that few Americans are capable o f understanding "the extent to w h i c h Stalinism domi­ nated American culture in the years before the Second World War: in art, journalism, editing and publishing, in the theater and entertain­ ment industries, in the legal profession, in the schools and universi­ ties, among church and civic leaders, everywhere in our cultural life the Soviet U n i o n exercised a control w h i c h was all but absolute."

8

T h e v e r y use o f the w o r d "Stalinism" by an American intellectual is an artifact o f the thirties, w h e n not only the small minority o f Party members but everyone w i t h communist sympathies and Marxist beliefs was presumed to approve o f Stalin and the Soviet U n i o n . That these people should have taken a closer look at the realities o f a system existing for them primarily as an intellectual abstraction is indis­ putable, but it is an entirely different issue from the scope o f so-called Stalinist cultural influence. If it is true that Americans today w o u l d not accept Trilling's notion o f an "all but absolute" control o f thirties culture by Stalinism, the rejection o f such a one-dimensional analysis is rooted in a better understanding o f reality than that displayed by many o f the Old Left intellectuals. "Stalinism" did not, in fact, dominate the culture o f most Americans, w h o had better things to do during the Depression and the Second World War than to contemplate the latest twists in the Party Une. That a writer w i t h the centrist liberal loyalties o f Diana Trilling should describe the cultural influence o f Stalinism in such absolutist terms reveals more about the inbred nature o f the N e w Y o r k intellec­ tual w o r l d o f both her youth and old age than it does about the reach o f Soviet ideology at any point in American cultural history. Intellec­ tuals and artists w i t h strong left-wing sympathies, which included communism, certainly were well represented in most o f the industries and enterprises cited by Trilling; but that hardly translated into a cul­ tural w o r l d in w h i c h the Soviet U n i o n exercised a control that was "all but absolute." T h e offices o f N e w Y o r k magazines, the stages o f B r o a d w a y theaters, and the sets o f H o l l y w o o d movies were packed w i t h fellow travelers as w e l l as a few "card-carrying" Communists; but h o w did that translate into Soviet domination? It is a fact that many international policies espoused by the Soviet

Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers

93

government were also supported by American leftists and, after America's entry into the war, by rightists w h o stopped being isola­ tionists on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. A n t i - N a z i s m belongs in this category, and it is true—especially in the late thirties—that a growing number o f movies, plays, and novels reflected anti-fascist and not anti-Communist sentiments. T h e general public, unlike intel­ lectuals, wanted to ignore both Hitler and Stalin throughout most o f the thirties. Even after Great Britain entered the w a r and parts o f L o n ­ don were being reduced to rubble on a daily basis by the blitz, it took all o f President Roosevelt's political guile to sell the Lend-Lease p r o ­ gram to the American public and push it through Congress. In August 1941, Congress passed the administration's bill to extend the Selective Service Act by just one v o t e — a measure o f the strength o f isolation­ ism even after the N a z i armies had gobbled up most o f continental Europe. So if some anti-Nazi movies and novels written by fellow travelers helped to erode powerful isolationist sentiment, and to prepare public opinion for America's eventual entry into the war, was that a bad thing? Was the reading public a dupe o f Stalin because it responded enthusiastically to J o h n Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath in 1939? Stein­ beck certainly had C o m m u n i s t friends, and he and his first wife, like many writers, visited the Soviet U n i o n and allowed the w o o l to be pulled over their eyes. O n e can only assume that Stalin continues to dominate American culture from beyond his n o w inconspicuous grave, given that The Grapes of Wrath remains one o f the most popular American novels o f all time. O r perhaps it was another v i c t o r y for Stalinism w h e n Y i p Harburg, a lifelong socialist, w r o t e the lyrics for " O v e r the R a i n b o w " ? N o t only D o r o t h y but the T i n M a n , the Scare­ crow, and the C o w a r d l y Lion must have been Stalinist dupes. N o matter that Harburg, w h o also w r o t e the lyrics for the 1932 Depres­ sion classic, "Brother, C a n Y o u Spare a D i m e ? " , exemplified the kind of humanistic socialist for w h o m hard-core Communists had only contempt. H e was blacklisted during the fifties a n y w a y — a pinko mis­ taken for a R e d . One important lesson that the O l d Left o f the thirties failed to learn from the R e d Scare generation was the indifference o f nonintellectual Americans to distinctions among shades o f pink and red. As far as ordinary Americans were concerned, anarchists, Trots-

94

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

kyists, Stalinists, and socialists, whether h o m e g r o w n or imported, all belonged in the same boat—preferably a boat bound for Russia. T h e crucial importance o f sectarian distinctions to leftist intellectuals, and the passion w i t h w h i c h they attacked one another over their disagree­ ments, w o u l d leave the entire intellectual community vulnerable to political attack w h e n , once again after the Second World War, the public began to care about R e d s .

MORE THAN

a half century after the M c C a r t h y era, the polarization

o f American politics has ruled out any consensus on either the justifi­ cations for, or the long-term cultural impact of, the hunt for domestic Communists that began shortly after the Second World War. R i g h t w i n g pundits and politicians frequently make astonishing claims link­ ing those w h o oppose the w a r in Iraq today w i t h those whose pro-Stalinist "treason" was unmasked during the M c C a r t h y era. (Do a G o o g l e search combining the names "Stalin" and "Saddam Hussein," and see h o w many hits turn up in the right-wing blogosphere.) O n the left, some journalists and historians use loaded words like "purges" to describe the firings o f college teachers and blacklisting o f entertainers and screenwriters during the late forties and fifties. I find this metaphor as offensive and inaccurate as the promiscuous use o f the term "Holocaust" to describe all kinds o f multiple mur­ ders. A purge is, by definition, something permanent: the Stalinist purges o f 1937—38 condemned millions to death, either by immediate execution or starvation and hard labor in the Gulag. Somehow, the H o l l y w o o d blacklist, w h i c h lasted from 1948 until the early 1960s, does not exactly qualify as a purge; writers sent to the Gulag did not continue to make comfortable livings by producing screenplays under pseudonyms. T h e period k n o w n in American shorthand as the M c C a r t h y era (although M c C a r t h y himself was not an important player at the beginning) extended roughly from 1946, w h e n Winston Churchill memorably declared that "an iron curtain" had descended across the continent o f Europe, to an indeterminate point in the second half o f the fifties, w h e n both politicians and voters seemed to lose interest in the spectacle o f middle-aged men and w o m e n being called to account for ideas and associations that appeared as drab and played-out as

Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers

95

many o f the people sitting in the witness chairs. T h e facts are beyond dispute, regardless o f h o w one views the goals and methods o f the Communist hunters: several thousand people lost their j o b s ; several hundred went to j a i l ; and t w o — J u l i u s and Ethel R o s e n b e r g — w e r e convicted o f atomic spying and put to death in the electric chair. In a book that expresses the conventional opinion o f the left about the postwar anti-Communist crusades, the historian Ellen Schwecker asserts that " M c C a r t h y i s m was amazingly effective" and "produced one o f the most severe episodes o f political repression the U n i t e d States has ever experienced." T h e government investigations and congressional hearings represented "a peculiarly American style o f repression—nonviolent

and consensual. O n l y t w o people w e r e

killed; only a few hundred went to jail. Its mildness may well have contributed to its efficacy."

9

Although mindful that general fear can be spread by relatively f e w arrests, I am not at all certain about the overall effectiveness o f M c C a r t h y i s m . L o n g e v i t y is surely a critical measure o f the success o f any effort to stifle thought and intimidate dissenters, and by that measure, in spite o f the unmeasurable toll in derailed careers and pri­ vate fears, the crusade against Communists was a miserable failure. T h e rapidity w i t h w h i c h n e w social protests emerged—the

civil

rights movement is the first and most obvious example—as a n t i - R e d fever receded is the most powerful argument against overstating the overall cultural impact o f the postwar hunt for Communists. T h e height o f the M c C a r t h y era is separated by less than a decade from the greatest triumphs o f the civil rights m o v e m e n t ; the no longer y o u n g but still immensely powerful J . Edgar H o o v e r did his best to persuade the American public that Communists w e r e behind the battle for racial justice, but he did not succeed. I f M c C a r t h y i t e political intimi­ dation had been truly effective in an enduring sense, the charge o f Communist influence w o u l d have been enough to stop the civil rights movement before it ever had a chance to make its case to the A m e r i ­ can public at large. T h e impact o f the M c C a r t h y era on both the individual fortunes and the general reputation o f intellectuals in American society is also open to some historical dispute. A t the time, the reputation o f intel­ lectuals was blackened in t w o ways. First, intellectuals—or people w h o looked and sounded like w h a t intellectuals were thought to l o o k

96

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

and sound hire—were indeed disproportionately represented among those called to testify before state and national investigating bodies, including the H o u s e C o m m i t t e e on U n - A m e r i c a n Activities ( H U A C ) and M c C a r t h y ' s Senate subcommittee on investigations.* It could hardly have been otherwise in v i e w o f the fact that, apart from certain unions in w h i c h the Party had gained a foothold, intellectuals had been the class most influenced not o n l y by communism but by other, more democratic leftist movements. After the war, intellectuals with communist or, m u c h more frequently, fellow-traveling pasts natu­ rally tended to be employed in the teaching profession at all levels, in the arts, and in those offices o f government requiring the services o f statisticians, historians, political analysts, and publicists. A t the state as well as the national level, the frequent presence o f "eggheads" in the witness chair at loyalty hearings could not have failed to reinforce the general impression that intellectuals were, if not actual communists, sympathetic to a nation that was n o w an enemy o f A m e r i c a . M a n y loyalty oaths, modeled after the Truman oath instituted for federal employees in 1948, were aimed at what were thought to be intellectual professions o f particular importance—such as teaching—and reinforced the old American suspicion that k n o w l ­ edge itself could be a dangerous thing. Madison Avenue account exec­ utives, surely as strategically placed as teachers to influence the minds o f America's youth, might also have been suspected by the p u b ­ lic o f harboring chronic un-American sentiments had they been required to take loyalty oaths in the forties and fifties by their profes­ sional associations. A n o t h e r powerful element in the suspicion o f intellectuals fos­ tered b y the M c C a r t h y era was an emotional melding o f religion w i t h anti-Communist patriotism, prefigured by but even more strenuously promoted than the same linkage had been during the R e d Scare after the First World War. Bryan's depiction o f evolutionary theory as the plot o f a "scientific soviet" was mild in comparison w i t h Billy G r a ­ ham's declaration in 1954 that " C o m m u n i s m must die, or Christianity must die." A s for Communists, "the devil is their G o d ; M a r x , their prophet; Lenin, their saint"—and M a r x "spewed this filthy, ungodly,

* Academic scholars generally use the acronym H C U A , but I have used H U A C , the pro­ nounceable acronym employed by the press and in conversation for more than sixty years.

Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers

97

unholy doctrine o f w o r l d socialism over the gullible people o f a degenerate E u r o p e . " Like all fierce postwar anti-Communist cru­ saders, Graham was having none o f the distinctions, so prized by intellectuals, between socialism and c o m m u n i s m .

10

T h e influence o f

the strongly anti-Communist R o m a n Catholic C h u r c h was also much greater in the America o f the fifties than the A m e r i c a o f the twenties, and clerical a n t i - C o m m u n i s m was particularly strong in N e w Y o r k , the bastion o f the O l d Left intellectuals. D u r i n g the 1950s, as a result o f his television show Life Is Worth Living, Bishop Fulton J . Sheen (who was particularly proud o f his success at converting former party members to Catholicism) w o u l d become the best k n o w n Catholic cleric in the United States. B y then, the coupling o f atheism with C o m m u n i s m had become a staple in the rhetoric o f antiCommunist crusaders throughout the nation. Intellectuals as a group were highly vulnerable on this score b e ­ cause many were, if not unabashed atheists, secular humanists w i t h little regard for traditional religion. I f c o m m u n i s m could not be proved, atheism was a handy fallback, as it was in 1949 in the case o f Luella R a a b Mundel, ousted as head o f the Fairmont State College art department in the small t o w n o f Fairmont, West Virginia. Mundel's case, like so many firings involving teachers at small, little-known institutions, w o u l d never have received w i d e r attention had it not been described in detail in a national publication by a w e l l - k n o w n author, William Manchester, w h o followed the case from start to fin­ ish in a 1952 article in Harper's. It seems that Mundel, by standing up at a seminar sponsored by the American L e g i o n and challenging the v i e w that liberals and communists were identical, aroused the ire o f a powerful member o f the West Virginia State Board o f Education. T h e board member demanded that the college president inspect Mundel's F B I file, and w h e n it turned out that M u n d e l had no F B I record at all, she was fired a n y w a y on grounds that she was an "athe­ ist." W h e n she sued for slander, M u n d e l was treated to courtroom speeches in w h i c h the opposing counsel described "atheists, C o m m u ­ nists, horse thieves and murderers" in the same breath and demanded that academic institutions hire only teachers "without any highfalutin ideas about not being able to prove there is a G o d . "

11

T h e slander suit

was dismissed, and the state board o f education went on to fire the president o f the college, w h o had been Mundel's chief character w i t -

98

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

ness. Because irreligion has been associated w i t h foreign influences and too much learning from the earliest years o f the republic, the popular American image o f intellectuals as irreverent atheists has proved even more enduring then the image o f intellectuals as pinkos. A n d although American intellectuals, like other Americans, are more likely to believe in some form o f G o d than their European counter­ parts, it is perfectly true that intellectuals as a group tend to be secularists—especially w h e n it comes to the conduct o f government. Finally, the image o f intellectuals in the fifties was undermined by their o w n conduct as informers before state legislative and congres­ sional investigating committees. N o one likes informers, even w h e n informers are providing w h a t legislators and the public believe they have a right to k n o w . T o say this is not to engage in the retrospective moral j u d g m e n t that comes all too easily to those o f us w h o , thanks primarily to the fortunate timing o f our births, have never been called on to risk middle-class livelihoods, much less anything more impor­ tant, in the service o f our moral or political convictions. T h e e x Communists or onetime fellow travelers w h o named names o f those they had k n o w n in leftist circles in the thirties and forties were able to continue to earn a living in their respective professions, but they were not liked, admired, or even tolerated by their peers w h o had taken a different position. Furthermore, they were not even respected by many hard-line anti-Communists. A l t h o u g h some o f the witnesses named names out o f a genuine conviction that anyone w h o had flirted w i t h C o m m u n i s m posed a threat to the United States and deserved to be outed, it was perfectly obvious—even to committed Communist hunters—that most o f those testifying as friendly witnesses were act­ ing out o f principles no more exalted than those o f any Mafia informer. Intellectuals and artists w h o named names, unless they had long been open and committed anti-Communists, looked weak and weaselly even to the congressional inquisitors demanding their c o m ­ pliance. B u t a natural contempt for informers does not fully explain the gut-level anti-intellectualism that is one o f the most destructive legacies o f the relatively brief era w h e n witnesses were called on not o n l y to apologize for their o w n pasts but to w r e c k the lives o f others. W i t h the exception o f the small minority w h o had never aban­ doned their illusions about the Soviet U n i o n , intellectuals in the for­ ties and fifties w e r e denouncing themselves for having once held

Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers

99

opinions that were, though not praiseworthy, inseparable from and understandable within the social and international context o f the thirties and the wartime alliance. T o have been w r o n g about Soviet C o m m u n i s m was seen, by the public and also by many intellectuals themselves, not merely as a mistake but as something more like a sin—not only against their o w n government but before the bar o f history. This condition is eloquently described by A r t h u r Miller, w h o was subpoenaed by H U A C in 1956, seven years after the o v e r w h e l m ing success o f his play Death of a Salesman and four years after the Broadway production o f The Crucible, w i t h its implicit comparison o f the Salem witch trials to the hunt for Communists. Miller, w h o was never a Party member but w h o , like other writers o f his generation, surely counted many former Communists among his friends, agreed to answer questions about his o w n political past and opinions but refused to name the names o f others. U n l i k e many writers w h o made self-aggrandizing statements o f principle against informing (the sanctimonious Lillian Hellman comes to mind) and then shielded themselves from going to j a i l b y taking the Fifth Amendment, Miller did not take the Fifth and was convicted o f contempt o f Congress in 1957. His conviction, coming as it did in the twilight o f anti-Communist fervor, was overturned on appeal. T h e parallel between the Salem w i t c h trials and anti-Communist hysteria, Miller writes in his autobiography Timebends, was the guilt of holding illicit, suppressed feelings of alienation and hostility toward standard, daylight society as defined by its most orthodox proponents. Without guilt the 1950s Red-hunt could never have generated such power. Once it was conceded that absolutely any idea remotely similar to a Marxist position was not only politically but morally illicit, the liberal, with his customary adaptations of Marxist theory and attitudes, was effectively paralyzed. T h e former Communist was guilty because he had in fact believed the Soviets were developing the system o f the future, without human exploitation and irrational waste. Even his naïveté in seeing Russia not as an earthly empire but rather as a kind o f spiritual condition was now a source of guilt and shame. . . . as in Salem, a point arrived, in the late forties, when the

100

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON rules of social intercourse quite suddenly changed, or were changed, and attitudes that had been merely

anticapitalist-

antiestablishment were n o w made unholy, morally repulsive, if not actually treasonous then implicitly so. America has always been a religious country.

12

T h e nonideological sector o f the broad nonintellectual public— that is to say, the majority o f Americans—did not exact lasting penal­ ties from intellectuals and artists w h o responded as Miller did, by talking about themselves without informing on others. Furthermore, the turn o f the historical w h e e l was relatively swift. B y the early six­ ties, The Crucible was already considered enough o f a classic to be included in many high school as well as college English classes. In m y high school in Okemos, M i c h i g a n — h a r d l y a center o f left-wing p o l i t i c s — w e studied The Crucible in m y sophomore English class in 1961 even though the teacher avoided discussing the contemporary American political context. O f course, many o f those w h o did name names also went on to achieve fame and success, or further success, in their chosen profes­ sions. T h e director Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront, probably his best k n o w n m o v i e and a commercial and critical success, was released in 1954, t w o years after he testified about his o w n brief Communist past and named names o f friends in the theater w h o were also Party m e m ­ bers in the thirties. W h e n the eighty-nine-year-old Kazan was pre­ sented w i t h a Lifetime Achievement Award at the

1999 Oscar

ceremonies, there were bitter protests from those w h o could never for­ give him for his testimony before H U A C . " I hope somebody shoots him," said Abraham Polonsky, a screenwriter blacklisted during the fifties. "It will be an interesting moment in what otherwise promises to be a dull e v e n i n g . "

13

Miller, to the surprise and displeasure o f

many, defended the award to Kazan. T h e t w o had once been close friends, before Kazan b o w e d to the H U A C demand to inform on former Communists. A l t h o u g h Miller's negative v i e w o f Kazan's role as an informer had not changed, he took the position that Kazan's achievements in the theater and film merited the award and that to deprive him o f recognition for political reasons amounted to a rewriting o f history. O f course, both Miller and Kazan were already famous at the time they were forced to decide h o w to respond to their

Reds, Pinkos, Fellow Travelers

101

congressional inquisitors, and fame affords protection as w e l l as vulnerability. F o r u n k n o w n college professors and teachers, like Luella M u n d e l , faced w i t h the same c h o i c e — w i t h their $5,000- to $io,ooo-a-year salaries on the line—there was only vulnerability. It w i l l never be possible to assess the toll that government investigations exacted from men and w o m e n o f modest means and modest ambitions w h e n they were faced w i t h the same choice as those w i t h considerable resources, outsize talent, and first-rate lawyers. E v e n as the m e m o r y o f w h o admitted to exactly what before w h o m was relegated to the dust­ bin o f American history, what remained was the suspicion that un-American ideas might be held and promulgated not only by a famous movie director, playwright, or Harvard professor, but by a local high school history teacher or a professor at a nearby state college attended not by the children o f wealth and privilege but by everyone's children.

IT is,

HOWEVER,

one o f the great cultural ironies o f the postwar era

that the fortunes o f intellectuals improved in undreamed-of fash­ ion during the v e r y period w h e n intellectuals as a class were being targeted by the anti-Communist

crusaders in government.

The

expansion o f higher education, fueled by the G I Bill, created an everincreasing demand for teachers at the university level, and faculty members w h o had once earned salaries close to the poverty line were bringing home middle-class paychecks by the end o f the fifties. Even as H U A C and its state equivalents focused on leftist influence in higher education, colleges were scrambling to hire intellectuals w h o , in the thirties, never dreamed that their k n o w l e d g e w o u l d bring in a living w a g e . " B y the early fifties w o r d began to reach N e w Y o r k that it might be possible to find a j o b — n o one I k n e w thought o f it as a career—teaching in a university," recalls Irving H o w e . Even though he was a member o f a socialist group on the Attorney General's list o f subversive organizations, H o w e was hired in 1953 to teach in the E n ­ glish department at Brandeis University. Founded in 1948, w i t h a faculty and student b o d y almost entirely J e w i s h , Brandeis was more receptive to the many different kinds o f J e w i s h leftists than many other universities—but that v e r y receptive-

102

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

ness could have left the institution especially vulnerable to an antiC o m m u n i s t inquisition. In any case, Howe's experience was far from unusual: even at the height o f postwar American anti-Communism, the need for teachers was so great that it trumped any desire for polit­ ical purity. T h e n e w professors, then in their thirties and forties, w h o formed the core o f the expanding university faculties throughout the fifties had been shaped b y the politics o f the thirties. T o eliminate every teacher w h o was once attracted to communism w o u l d have meant slamming the classroom door in the face o f the g r o w i n g num­ bers o f Americans w h o wanted to and were financially able to send their children to college. Prosperity and demography were not on the side o f those w h o wished to e x p u n g e leftists from cultural and aca­ demic institutions. T h u s the fifties, w h i c h generated the last serious R e d Scare o f the twentieth century, were also a turning point in America's need for services and products that only intellectuals—or, at the v e r y least, people w i t h educational credentials associated, whether rightly or w r o n g l y , w i t h intellectualism—could provide. F o r nonintellectuals, the combination o f suspicion and need led to a conundrum, some­ times subliminal but often explicit, that has never been resolved. If intellectuals w e r e politically untrustworthy,

h o w could they be

trusted w i t h something as important as the education o f American youth? B u t w h o else was qualified, b y temperament and training, to assume the practical burden o f instilling k n o w l e d g e in the next gener­ ation and fulfilling the aspiration, so integral to old and new A m e r i ­ can dreams, o f raising children w h o w o u l d exceed the achievements o f their parents? A t midcentury, the most profound hopes o f adults w h o subscribed to what was then called middlebrow culture were vested in the higher education o f their children. T h e parents o f baby boomers dreamed o f educating a son w h o w o u l d w o r k w i t h his head instead o f w i t h his hands and a daughter w h o w o u l d marry a man capable o f earning a living w i t h his head and not his hands. A n d that, too, posed a problem for Americans w h o needed intellectuals to help fulfill their hopes. J u s t as many Americans continued to suspect intel­ lectuals o f being pinkos, they also suspected—and the latter suspicion was better founded—that

snobbish intellectuals looked d o w n on

many o f the middlebrow aspirations o f the people w h o were willing to pay for their services.

CHAPTER FIVE

MIDDLEBROW CULTURE

FROM

N O O N TO TWILIGHT

M IDDLEBROW CULTURE, w h i c h began in organized fashion w i t h

the

early nineteenth-century lyceum m o v e m e n t — w h e n no one thought o f culture in terms o f " b r o w s " — a n d extended through the fat years of the B o o k - o f - t h e - M o n t h C l u b in the 1950s and early 1960s, was at heart a culture o f aspiration. Its aim was not so m u c h to vanquish the culture o f the gutter, although that was part o f the idea, as to offer a portal to something more elevated. I g r e w up in a family permeated by and devoted to middlebrow values; that I never heard the term "middlebrow" until I took a college course in American intellectual history is the surest sign o f h o w middle our brows w e r e . H a d I read Virginia W o o l f 's description o f middlebrow (circa 1942) as "this m i x ­ ture o f geniality and sentiment stuck together w i t h a sticky slime o f calf's-foot j e l l y , " I w o u l d not have recognized the mean-spirited car­ 1

icature o f m y o w n h o m e . B u t then, I never heard the name o f the highbrow Virginia W o o l f until I saw the 1966 m o v i e , starring Eliza­ beth Taylor and R i c h a r d Burton, o f E d w a r d Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?* Some details o f W o o l f 's portrait o f English middle­ b r o w gentility certainly applied to the J a c o b y household in Okemos, Michigan, in the late fifties. We did indeed, as W o o l f observed dis­ gustedly, have "pictures, or reproductions from pictures, by dead painters" on our walls; m y mother's taste ran to Van G o g h , R e n o i r , and Degas. I can still see the Degas ballerinas w h o adorned m y bed-

* It is a pity that Woolf did not live to comment on the taking of her highbrow image and name in vain, not only by Albee but in The Hours (2002), in which the role of Woolf is played by the movie goddess Nicole Kidman, her beauty disguised by a large false nose.

103

104

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

r o o m walls, and it w o u l d not surprise m e i f that early exposure to middlebrow reproductions had something to do w i t h a passion for art that did not emerge until m y mid-twenties. It is not that Americans w i t h middlebrow ambitions were aiming for the h i g h b r o w — a term already in w i d e and often pejorative use, in the same sense that "egghead" w o u l d be used in the 1950s—at the beginning o f the twentieth century. In 1915, the literary critic Van W y c k B r o o k s observed that until the beginning o f the twentieth cen­ tury, it was assumed that "the only hope for American society lay in s o m e h o w lifting the ' L o w b r o w ' elements in it to the level o f the ' H i g h b r o w ' elements." B r o o k s suggested, by contrast, that it was necessary for Americans to express themselves "on a middle plane between vaporous idealism and self-interested practicality."

2

The

association o f highbrow culture w i t h "vaporous idealism" and l o w ­ b r o w culture w i t h "self-interested practicality" exemplified the w i d e ­ spread acceptance, by intellectuals as well as nonintellectuals, o f the idea that devotion to the life o f the mind must somehow be opposed to a decent regard for the exigencies o f everyday life. T h e distinctive feature o f American middlebrow culture was its embodiment o f the old civic credo that anyone willing to invest time and energy in self-education might better himself. M a n y uneducated l o w b r o w s , particularly immigrants, cherished middlebrow values: the millions o f sets o f encyclopedias sold door to door from the twen­ ties through the fifties w e r e often purchased on the installment plan by parents w h o had never o w n e d a b o o k but were willing to sacrifice to provide their children w i t h information about the w o r l d that had been absent from their o w n upbringing. Remnants o f earnest middle­ b r o w striving survive today among various immigrant groups, but the larger edifice o f middlebrow culture, w h i c h once encompassed Americans o f many social classes as well as ethnic and racial back­ grounds, has collapsed. T h e disintegration and denigration o f the middlebrow are closely linked to the political and class polarization that distinguishes the current wave o f anti-intellectualism from the popular suspicion o f highbrows and eggheads that has always, to a greater or lesser degree, been a part o f the American psyche. What has been lost is an alternative to mass popular culture, imbibed uncon­ sciously and effortlessly through the audio and video portals that sur­ round us all. W h a t has been lost is the culture o f effort.

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

105

T h e fifteen-year period after the end o f the Second World War has frequently, and mistakenly, been portrayed as a cultural wasteland by those whose memories o f the fifties seem limited to N o r m a n R o c k ­ well's Saturday Evening Post covers and R i c h a r d N i x o n ' s Checkers speech. Statistics tell a different story. In i960, there were twice as many American symphony o r c h e s t r a s — 1 , 1 0 0 — a s there had been in 1949. T h e number o f community art museums had quadrupled since 1930. Recordings o f classical music accounted for 25 percent o f all record sales by the end o f the fifties, compared w i t h under 4 percent today. (The figure compares record sales in i960 w i t h C D sales in the early 2000s and does not take iTunes downloads into account. There is little reason, however, to think that classical music will be more p o p ­ ular among downloaders than it is among C D buyers.) " A r t " movie houses also proliferated in the fifties; there were more than six hundred in 1962, compared w i t h just a dozen in 1 9 4 5 .

3

What

sophisticate-manqué o f m y generation can forget the thrill o f seeing a foreign movie for the first time in an art moviehouse in a small m i d western college town? Finally, these w e r e the years o f the paperback book revolution, a development o f fundamental importance to m i d ­ dlebrows because middlebrowism was, above all, a reading culture. T o be raised in a middlebrow family in the fifties meant that there were books, magazines, and newspapers in the house and that e v e r y ­ one old enough to read had a library card. I f m u c h o f the reading material was scorned by highbrow intellectuals, the books certainly provided ample food for g r o w t h . It simply staggers me to recall the variety o f popular contemporary or near-contemporary novels, some of which came to us through the B o o k - o f - t h e - M o n t h C l u b but pri­ marily from the public library, scattered throughout the house during m y childhood. A potpourri o f favorite fiction read to tatters by age fif­ teen w o u l d include James Michener's Sayonara, Tales of the South Pacific, and Hawaii; H o w a r d Fast's Spartacus; L l o y d C . Douglas's The Robe (as long as a book had something to do w i t h ancient R o m e , I did not care whether it was written from the perspective o f a Christian, an atheist, or a lion); Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy; J o h n Hersey's The Wall; James Jones's From Here to Eternity; E d w i n O ' C o n n o r ' s The Last Hurrah; J . D . Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye; N e v i l Shute's On the Beach; Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar; and—a harbinger o f things to come—Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus.

106

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON O n e o f Roth's short stories, "Defender o f the Faith," was printed

in 1959 in The New Yorker, a magazine that bridged the gap between middlebrow and highbrow and was revered in our home as a w e e k l y emissary from the capital o f sophistication and excitement. M y hodgepodge o f contemporary fiction was only dessert reading, on top o f the classics—the meat and potatoes m y parents never pushed but s o m e h o w assumed I was ingesting. A n d they were right: I had read a g o o d deal o f Shakespeare, T w a i n , and Dickens (my favorite "old" novelist), as well as a fair amount o f first-rate eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry, by the time I began high school. A true middlebrow by W o o l f 's definition, I had read almost no poetry or fic­ tion written in the early decades o f the twentieth century. In addition to reading and displaying reproductions o f w o r k s by dead painters, middlebrow parents promoted an interest in history and current affairs. W h e n y o u took summer vacations, they always included places o f historic significance: L e x i n g t o n and Concord, G e t ­ tysburg, H y d e Park, A p p o m a t t o x . (Yes, the BOMC

News had alerted

us to B r u c e Catton's A Stillness at Appomattox in 1954.) As soon as E d w a r d R . M u r r o w ' s J Can Hear It Now broadcasts were released on the n e w long-playing 33 r p m records, m y parents bought them so that w e could hear the famous speeches o f Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and A d o l f Hitler—as well as M u r r o w ' s broadcasts from L o n d o n during the Second World War. W h e n William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (another B O M C selection) was pub­ lished in i960, I could hardly wait to read it because I had already heard the voices o f some o f the monumental historical figures o f the era. M y parents w e r e also great believers in the educational value o f television; w h e n C B S ' s high-minded Playhouse go, featuring live p r o ­ ductions o f plays, appeared in the television listings, w e were allowed to stay up even i f it was a school night. T h e r e w e r e o f course many individual, ethnic, and regional varia­ tions in middlebrow culture. M y father had no use for the w e i g h t y outlines o f history and philosophy, such as Will Durant's The Story of Civilization, considered de rigueur in so many middlebrow homes and m u c h mocked by intellectuals. His v i e w , and it probably w o u l d have surprised him had he k n o w n that it was shared by the people he called eggheads, was that the story o f civilization was already available on library shelves, in books by novelists and poets w h o s e words were

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

107

open—without the necessity o f writing a check to some commercial enterprise—to anyone w h o cared to read them. Classical music was another middlebrow enthusiasm that never entered our h o m e . M a n y of m y contemporaries, brought up in J e w i s h and Italian-American households, recall the strains o f the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts that permeated their houses every Saturday afternoon. I never heard an opera or, for that matter, any piece o f classical music other than Tchaikovsky ballet scores until m y first post-college boyfriend, w h o s e middlebrow upbringing had included children's symphony concerts, introduced me to what I had been missing. I make no claims about the greatness o f the middlebrow mosaic of m y childhood; the certification o f pieces o f cultural experience as "great" in order to market them to middle- and lower-middleclass Americans in search o f guidance was a justifiable source o f amusement—and not only, as m y father's distrust o f cultural arbiters indicated, on the part o f highbrow intellectuals. I look back on the middlebrow w i t h affection, gratitude, and regret rather than conde­ scension not because the B o o k - o f - t h e - M o n t h C l u b brought w o r k s o f genius into m y life but because the m o n t h l y pronouncements o f its reviewers were one o f the many sources that encouraged m e to seek a wider w o r l d . In our current infotainment culture, in w h i c h every consumer's opinion is supposed to be as g o o d as any critic's, it is absurd to imagine that a large commercial entity w o u l d attempt to use an objective concept o f greatness as a selling point for anything. That people should aspire to read and think about great books, or even aspire to being thought o f as the sort o f person w h o reads great books, is not a bad thing for a society. Moreover, highbrow and middlebrow culture in A m e r i c a were always more closely and fruitfully intertwined than members o f each group—especially the h i g h b r o w s — w e r e willing to admit. A l t h o u g h it was possible, in the first three decades o f the twentieth century, for American intellectuals to emerge from intellectually and education­ ally improverished l o w b r o w backgrounds, cultural leaps o f such m a g ­ nitude were the exception rather than the rule. T h e increasing specialization o f k n o w l e d g e , as well as a g r o w i n g demand for formal academic credentials, had closed o f f self-education as a route to vari­ ous professions and also to less measurable but even more important cultural enthusiasms. There w o u l d be little or no r o o m in the n e w

108

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

American century for the self-taught marvels o f the nineteenth century—an honor roll including, among many others, Clarence D a r r o w , Frederick Douglass, T h o m a s Edison, R o b e r t Ingersoll, A b r a h a m Lincoln, M a r k T w a i n , and Walt Whitman. M o s t o f the prominent American-born intellectuals w h o came o f age in the early decades o f the twentieth century, before the First World War and in the twenties and thirties, were the offspring o f solidly middlebrow families that placed a high value on formal education—regardless o f the parents' economic status, ethnic background, or the far more powerful factor o f race. T o read the memoir o f the great African-American historian J o h n H o p e Franklin, born in 1915, about g r o w i n g up in a p o o r but proud and cultured family in O k l a h o m a , or an account by Diana Trilling (1905-1996) o f a prosperous childhood as the daughter o f assimilated J e w i s h immigrants in B r o o k l y n and the suburbs o f N e w Y o r k C i t y , is to be struck by the broad reach o f middlebrow aspirations that transcended geography, class, and race. Y o u n g Diana took violin and voice lessons and dreamed, in an unfocused w a y , o f becoming a singer; sixteen-yearold J o h n wanted to hear a live performance o f an opera so much that, over the objections o f his parents, he acquiesced to segregated seating in Tulsa so that he could attend the visiting C h i c a g o C i v i c Opera C o m p a n y ' s performances o f La Traviata and La Bohème. Franklin's parents believed that N e g r o e s should pass up "optional" public activities, such as opera, rather than give in to segregation. " I chose to attend, and to this day I continue to reproach myself," Franklin writes. " W h e n e v e r I hear La Traviata or La Bohème, I still, more than seventy years later, recall the humiliating conditions under w h i c h I 4

learned to appreciate those great musical masterpieces." B u t Franklin did learn to appreciate those masterpieces; his middlebrow parents and middlebrow teachers, in segregated schools, had made sure that w h i t e A m e r i c a could not segregate his mind. Even w h e n there was no trace o f middlebrow culture in a future intellectual's family tree, there was generally an outside middlebrow mentor to light the w a y . F o r m e r Commentary editor in chief N o r m a n Podhoretz, in Making It (1967), describes the process by w h i c h his emergence from the tough, lower-class Brownsville section o f B r o o k l y n in the 1940s was facilitated by a high school English teacher:

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

109

In those days it was very unusual, and possibly even against the rules, for teachers in public high schools to associate with their students after hours. Nevertheless, Mrs. K . sometimes invited me to her home, a beautiful old brownstone located in what was per­ haps the only section o f Brooklyn fashionable enough to be intimidating. I would read her my poems and she would tell me about her family, about the schools she had gone to, about Vassar, about writers she had met, while her husband, of w h o m I was frightened to death and w h o to my utter astonishment turned out to be Jewish (but not, as Mrs. K . quite unnecessarily hastened to inform me, my kind of Jewish), sat stiffly and silently in an arm­ chair across the room, squinting at his newspaper through the first pince-nez I had ever seen outside the movies. But Mrs. K . not only had me to her house; she also—what was even more unusual—took me out a few times, to the Frick Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum, and once to the theater, where w e saw a dramatization of The Late George Apley, a play I imagine she delib­ erately chose with the not wholly mistaken idea that it would impress me with the glories of aristocratic Boston.

IF

5

MIDDLEBROW CULTURE was transmitted by families and

individual

mentors, the transmission always occurred within the broader con­ text o f mass marketing. Beginning in the 1820s, w i t h the invention o f the Napier Steam Press, capable o f turning out an unheard-of total o f 2,000 copies per hour, middlebrow culture was always closely linked to technological changes in b o o k publishing. In the twentieth cen­ tury, especially during the prosperous decades following both the First and Second World Wars, the p o w e r o f advertising greatly expanded the audience for the products o f middlebrow publishing. As J o a n Shelley R u b i n notes in her lively and evenhanded The Making of Middlebrow Culture (1992), the publishing industry, long a W A S P gentleman's club, was considerably altered in the 1920s by an influx o f young J e w i s h executives w h o believed that the potential b o o k market was much larger than had traditionally been imagined and w h o w e r e determined to reach that market through more aggressive advertising tactics.

6

110

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON T h e first manifestation o f the enormous public demand for books

that w o u l d make sense o f proliferating and specialized knowledge was the success in 1920 o f H . G . Wells's The Outline of History, the arche­ type o f the many outlines, including Durant's blockbuster series, that w o u l d continue to sell strongly until the sixties. Wells was already famous as the author o f The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The War of the Worlds (although he w o u l d become much more famous after Orson Welles's panic-inspiring 1938 radio version o f the

fictional

invasion o f planet Earth by Martians). B u t Wells's

recognizable name was only one factor in the success o f his outline. T h e First World War provided the critical stimulus to the public's desire for a greater understanding o f both the origins o f civilization and the potential threats to what humans had built: the horror at the ability and willingness o f supposedly civilized nations to tear one another and themselves apart was fresh in the minds o f Americans and Europeans. In his introduction to the second edition o f the Outline, published in 1926, Wells provided a m o v i n g description o f the emotions that had impelled him to begin the original project in 1918. "It was the last, the weariest, the most disillusioned year o f the great w a r , " Wells wrote. " E v e r y w h e r e there w e r e unwonted privations; everywhere there was mourning. T h e tale o f the dead and mutilated had mounted to many millions. M e n felt they had come to a crisis in the world's affairs. T h e y w e r e not sure whether they w e r e facing a disaster to civilization or the inauguration o f a n e w phase o f human association . . . there was a widespread realization that e v e r y w h e r e the essentials o f the huge problems that had been thrust so suddenly and tragically upon the democracies o f the w o r l d were insufficiently understood. . . . " W h e n people tried to recall the "narrow history teaching o f their brief schooldays," Wells observed, they found nothing but "an uninspiring and partially forgotten list o f national kings and presidents." T h e public had been taught history in "nationalist blinkers, ignoring every country but their o w n . " T h e answer to the old-fashioned, parochial v i e w o f history was, o f course, Wells's v e r y o w n b o o k , w i t h its broad attempt to encompass the biological origins o f human life along w i t h European, Middle Eastern, and Asian cultures. W h y should a generalist not try to take on the entire history o f the universe at a time w h e n "all the intelligent

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight people in the w o r l d , i n d e e d — w h o

were not

in

already specially

instructed—were seeking more or less consciously to 'get the hang o f w o r l d affairs as a w h o l e . T h e y were, in fact, improvising 'Outlines 7

o f History' in their minds for their o w n u s e " ? T h e first edition, a runaway best seller that topped nonaction lists for t w o years, w e n t through t w e n t y - t w o printings. Eighty years later, Wells's Outline holds up well, and it seems likely that the books, packed w i t h engaging illustrations, w e r e not just bought for show but were actually read. O n e o f the most striking aspects o f this mass-marketed project is the author's

unabashed

acceptance o f and proselytizing for D a r w i n i a n evolution. Wells had been one o f Thomas H u x l e y ' s students. T h e 1926 edition, published just a year after the Scopes " m o n k e y trial," begins w i t h a cheerfully colored full-page frontispiece o f three dinosaurs titled "Animals That Lived before the C o m i n g o f M a n . " O n e can only w i s h that b o o k w o u l d be made available today to the 25 percent o f American high school b i o l o g y teachers w h o told University o f Texas researchers that dinosaurs and humans inhabited the earth simultaneously. T h e first nine chapters o f the Outline, w h i c h deal w i t h the origins of the universe and o f all animal, including human, life, make up a naturalistic and scientific counterpart to Genesis. G e o r g e Bernard Shaw made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the early chapters o f Wells's Outline be substituted for Genesis altogether. That such books were often purchased by libraries, and by parents hoping to expose their school-age children to the best o f contemporary thought, says a good deal about the secular character o f middlebrow culture at the time. "And first, before w e begin the history o f life," Wells opens, let us tell something of the stage upon which our drama is put and of the background against which it is p l a y e d . . . . In the last few hundred years there has been an extraordinary enlargement of men's ideas about the visible universe in which they live. At the same time there has been perhaps a certain diminution in their individual self-importance. T h e y have learnt that they are items in a whole far vaster, more enduring and more wonderful than their ancestors ever dreamed or suspected. . . . The curtain that hid the unfathomable abyss of stellar distances has been drawn back only in the last three centuries. Still more

112

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON recent is our realization of the immense duration of our universe in time. A m o n g ancient peoples the Indian philosophers alone seem to have had any perception of the vast ages through which existence had passed. In the European world, until little more than a century and a half ago, men's ideas of the time things had lasted were astonishingly brief. In the Universal History, published by a syndicate of booksellers in London in 1779, it is stated that the world was created in 4,004 B.C. and (with a pleasant exactitude) at the autumnal equinox, and that the making of man crowned the w o r k of creation at Eden, upon the Euphrates, exactly two days'

journey above Basra. The confidence of those statements arose from a too literal interpretation of the Bible narrative. Very few even of the sincerest believers in the inspiration of the Bible now accept them as matter-of-fact statements.

8

T h e secularizing influence o f middlebrow culture has generally been overlooked, in part because it bore little resemblance to the athe­ ism and agnosticism that permeated highbrow intellectual circles. Like liberal Protestantism and R e f o r m J u d a i s m since the last quarter o f the nineteenth century, middlebrow thought took an accommodationist stance toward the relationship between science and religion. W i t h their emphasis on information and facts, middlebrow authors tended to adopt the argument implicit in Wells's Outline, which sug­ gests that science and religion need not conflict unless one insisted on a literal interpretation,

inappropriate

in light o f

contemporary

k n o w l e d g e , o f h o l y books. This is precisely the position taken by many scientists today in the battle against the religious right's attempts to incorporate creationism and intelligent design into high school b i o l o g y classes, but the current attempt to reconcile evolution and religion is essentially reactive and defensive in nature. T h e old middlebrow outlines, by contrast, were unabashed in their proselytizing for the scientific and the rational; while Wells did not tell people they had to abandon religion in order to accept evolution, he did tell them that they had to abandon the idea that the Bible was a factual historical record. Because middlebrow cul­ ture placed a high value on scientific discoveries and progress, its degeneration has played an important role in the melding o f anti-

Middlebrow CulturefromNoon to Twilight

113

intellectualism w i t h the fundamentalist w a r on science during the past three decades. Will Durant, w h o s e outlines o f civilization w o u l d eventually out­ sell Wells's pioneering w o r k , was also a thoroughgoing secularist, an atheist w h o had once intended to become a R o m a n Catholic priest. Before his name became the household w o r d that so annoyed m y father, Durant w o r k e d on another enormously successful commercial venture, the Little Blue B o o k s published by the eccentric E m m a n u e l Haldeman-Julius. T h e son o f a Russian immigrant

bookbinder,

Haldeman-Julius was a publishing genius w h o combined the pam­ phleteering o f the Enlightenment, the ideas o f cooperative economic effort that characterized the Progressive Era, and the n e w massmarketing techniques o f the 1920s. His project was a "university in print," w h i c h w o u l d sell for 25 cents apiece in a standard three-and-ahalf by five-inch, 15,000-word format w i t h blue covers. H e launched his venture in 1919 in a fashion that was simplicity itself: a direct mail appeal asking for $5 each from 175,000 onetime subscribers to a defunct socialist w e e k l y paper. In return, Haldeman-Julius promised the subscribers fifty pamphlets containing some o f the world's great literature and ideas, to be delivered over time as each publication came off the presses. T h e first t w o Blue B o o k s were The Rubdiydt of Omar Khayyam and Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol. B y the early twenties, Haldeman-Julius's press was turning out 240,000 B l u e B o o k s a day, including portions o f the Bible, the G r e e k classics, Goethe, Shake­ speare, Voltaire, Z o l a , H . G . Wells, and the lectures o f R o b e r t Ingersoll. In 1922, Haldeman-Julius commissioned Durant to summarize the writings o f major philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Spi­ noza, and J o h n D e w e y ; the pamphlets were advertised as aids to "Self-Education and Self-Improvement." B u t Durant's expertise was also emphasized: he was listed as W i l l Durant, P h . D . (at a time w h e n doctorates were rare) or as D r . Will Durant (a usage already consid­ ered pretentious by highbrows and false advertising by medical d o c ­ 9

tors). In 1925, Haldeman-Julius proposed that all o f Durant's B l u e B o o k essays on philosophy be marketed in a single v o l u m e by a large publisher—which turned out to be the n e w l y established firm o f Simon & Schuster. Durant's The Story of Philosophy, a 600-page tome,

114

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

consisted almost entirely o f w o r d - f o r - w o r d reprintings o f the Blue B o o k texts. B y the end o f 1925, The Story of Philosophy headed the best-seller list, establishing the prototype for the Story of Civiliza­ tion series that w o u l d make Durant a millionaire many times over. Haldeman-Julius, having commissioned the original essays, also became a wealthy man. T h e Little B l u e B o o k s , w i t h their strong debt to and component o f nineteenth-century

freethought

as well as

twentieth-century

psychology, philosophy, and sociology, represented the traditional American ideal o f self-education, as distinct from the dawning era o f self-help, w h i c h w o u l d place far more emphasis on improving per­ sonality and public image than on improving one's mind. M o r e than 300 million B l u e B o o k s were published from 1919 to 1949, just before commercial publishers began entering the paperback marketplace in a big w a y . D u r i n g the Depression, fifty secondhand Blue B o o k s could be bought for a dollar apiece and resold after reading, ensuring a huge circulation among the vast majority o f readers w h o could not afford hardcover books. " T h e r e is no w a y o f estimating h o w many millions read these b o o k s , " notes H a r r y Golden. "Other thousands upon thousands o f 'little blue books' floated around hospitals, penal institutions, C C C [Civilian Conservation Corps] camps, and military barracks."

No

10

DISCUSSION o f

middlebrow commerce w o u l d be complete w i t h ­

out mentioning t w o enterprises most mocked by intellectuals: the B o o k - o f - t h e - M o n t h C l u b ( B O M C ) , founded in 1926, and the "Great B o o k s o f the Western W o r l d " collection, introduced w i t h immense fanfare in 1952. T h e latter was a 100-pound, 32,000-page, 54-volume, 2 5 - m i l l i o n - w o r d behemoth, consisting o f 440 w o r k s by 76 authors, published by the Encyclopaedia Britannica for only $ 1 0 d o w n , w i t h the total price o f $249.95

t

o

D

e

paid on the installment plan. A l l o f these

facts were reported by the highbrow critic D w i g h t Macdonald in a 11

scathingly funny attack published in The New Yorker. Given the wellk n o w n scrupulousness o f the magazine's fact checking, it must be assumed that scales and yardsticks were applied to the actual books in the publication's former offices on West Forty-third Street in M a n ­ hattan and that the w o r d count was as precise a figure as could be

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

115

attained in the pre-computer era. Macdonald's byline in The New Yorker was one o f the many signs o f the convergence o f middlebrow and highbrow cultures after the Second World War. T h e Great B o o k s were vetted and chosen by a board headed by R o b e r t Hutchins, the legendary former chancellor o f the U n i v e r ­ sity o f Chicago (which, as a leading player in the academic-culturalindustrial complex, was part o w n e r o f the Britannica), and M o r t i m e r J . Adler, a former philosophy professor at C o l u m b i a University in the twenties and later at the University o f C h i c a g o under Hutchins. As might be expected, philosophers and theologians were heavily represented—Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, T h o m a s Aquinas, D e s ­ cartes, Spinoza, Hegel, Kant, but (mystifyingly) no Nietzsche, M a r x , or Freud. T h e series naturally included most o f the big literary names before the beginning o f the twentieth c e n t u r y — H o m e r , Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, M i l ­ ton, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. Twentieth-century fiction was largely ignored, and the omission was logical because the arbiters o f middle­ b r o w taste were, as W o o l f observed, unremittingly hostile to m o d ­ ernism in literature as w e l l as the visual and performing arts. A posh and

financially

and culturally incestuous banquet

was held for

"founding subscribers" at N e w York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and an ingratiating after-dinner speech was made by the B o o k - o f - t h e - M o n t h C l u b j u d g e Clifton Fadiman, also host o f the popular radio quiz show Information Please. Fadiman, w h o had been a student o f Adler's at Columbia, told the assembled customers that they w e r e the equiva­ lent o f the "monks o f early C h r i s t e n d o m " because they had taken on the task o f preserving, through another D a r k A g e , "the visions, the ideas, the deep cries o f anguish, the great eurekas o f revelation that make up our patent to the title o f civilized m a n . "

12

" C i v i l i z e d " meant

civilization as defined by the gatekeepers o f greatness on the install­ ment plan. T h e eurekas o f this particular civilization originated in a seminar organized by Adler in 1943 for C h i c a g o business executives. D u b b e d the "Fat Man's" class—for the size o f the pocketbooks, and perhaps the girth, o f the participants—the C h i c a g o seminar led to the forma­ tion o f similar groups across the nation, enrolling some 20,000 A m e r ­ icans by 1946. C o n t e m p o r a r y observers attributed m u c h o f the enthusiasm for the seminars to a renewed realization o f the fragility o f

Il6

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

civilization, comparable to the reaction that produced the demand for outlines o f history after the First World W a r .

13

There was also a

strong element o f conspicuous consumption in both the seminars and the Great B o o k s series. O n e advertising executive w h o participated in Adler's seminar summed up the commercial pitch by devising slogans for each o f the Great B o o k s under discussion. Aristotle's Ethics was encompassed w i t h the Une: " T h e rich don't k n o w h o w to live, but they sure k n o w w h e r e . "

14

T h e Great B o o k s , unlike the outlines o f the twenties, were launched at what w o u l d prove to be a commercially inauspicious time for such an expensive hardback venture—the v e r y point w h e n the marketing o f books was about to be transformed by paperback publishing. M a c donald noted that all o f the authors in the series were still in print and that their w o r k s could be purchased separately at a price much lower than $249.95; what he did not k n o w , in 1952, was h o w much cheaper every great b o o k w o u l d be in paperback within a few short years. B u t as Macdonald and m y father said in their nearly identical rants on the subject, the Great B o o k s w e r e intended not so much to be read as to prove to the w o r l d that one was the sort o f person w h o did read and w h o could afford the price o f a conspicuous display o f printed v o l ­ umes. O n e o f Macdonald's most telling points was that the selection o f books made little allowance for the fact that in some fields, espe­ cially science, later k n o w l e d g e contradicts earlier received truths, thereby rendering the authors o f outdated versions o f the truth (like Hippocrates) relevant o n l y to the history o f their particular disci­ plines. Macdonald places Aquinas, w h o basically repackaged Aristotle for R o m a n Catholic theology, in the same category. It is easy to sympa­ thize w i t h a reviewer stupefied by Aquinas's musings on such ques­ tions as "Whether We Should Distinguish Irascible and Concupiscible Parts in the Superior Appetite?" or "Whether an Inferior A n g e l Speaks to a Superior A n g e l ? " Still, one never knows what any reader might learn w h e n he or she happens to open a Great B o o k . W h e n I was around age eleven, and a student at St. Thomas Aquinas School in East Lansing, Michigan, I had a friend w h o s e family o w n e d the entire set o f books, w h i c h fascinated m e chiefly because o f the amount o f space they took up in the crowded living r o o m o f a good Catholic household w i t h ten children. O n one overnight visit, I opened a v o l -

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

117

ume o f Aquinas—its stiff binding suggesting that it had never been opened before—and read more o f the Summa Theologiae than was good for anyone w h o was supposed to g r o w up to be an orthodox Catholic. I was actually looking for explanations o f some o f the nuns' teachings that had begun to strike me as utter nonsense. W h y were there three persons in G o d , not four or five? W h o made G o d ? W h y w o u l d G o d arrange things so that babies w o u l d be born w i t h a stain o f sin? Aquinas had answers, all right, and they seemed even more absurd to me than the simpler formulations o f the Baltimore Catechism. T h e "infection" o f sin was automatically passed on through "procreation"—I had been specifically searching for anything about procreation—and therefore the means o f procreation themselves were particularly infected. I am sure that I w o u l d have gotten around to doubt and atheism eventually, but reading a handy chunk o f the Summa hastened the day. That there is virtue in making knowledge readily available, even in a dreary, pretentious, highly selective format, is a truth that many satirists o f middlebrow culture failed to grasp. T h e B o o k - o f - t h e - M o n t h C l u b fell into a different category from the Great B o o k s project, in that the former was designed primarily to entertain rather than to enlist Americans in the legions o f "the monks o f early Christendom." At the same time, the B O M C j u d g e s always displayed a strong predilection, in their fiction as well as nonfiction selections, for books that were, in a literal sense, heavy w i t h informational content. F r o m its founding in the twenties until the m i d sixties, w h e n hardback book clubs began to lose m u c h o f their raison d'être as a result o f competition from paperbacks, B O M C epitomized middlebrow and middle-class American taste. Like the Great B o o k s project, B O M C was based on the idea that ordinary people needed to be shepherded through the thickets o f culture b y better-educated and more sophisticated guides. A 1927 advertising brochure summed up the club's pitch by appealing to the desire for convenience and simultaneously playing on the customer's intellectual insecurity. E m p l o y ing a nannyish tone, the brochure cited the prototypical American "booklover" w h o hears about an interesting-sounding book, says to himself, " I must read that," but then fails, through indolence and m e m o r y lapses, to follow through on his g o o d intentions.

The

B O M C went on to paint a pathetic picture o f the remorseful slackard:

Il8

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

"Perhaps afterward, in a group o f bookish people, again he hears the b o o k recommended. H e confesses sadly that he had 'never got round to reading it.' "

1 5

T h e values o f those in charge o f B O M C selections in the twenties and thirties w e r e embodied by the j u d g i n g board's first chairman, H e n r y Seidel C a n b y , a onetime Yale English professor, founding edi­ tor o f the Saturday Review of Literature, and representative o f the genteel tradition in American letters. C a n b y was an antagonist o f literary realism and modernism, although his anti-modernist views w o u l d soften somewhat over the decades. B o r n in 1878, he had serious reservations about such disparate contemporary writers as William Faulkner, Ezra Pound, T . S. Eliot, Ernest H e m i n g w a y , Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J a m e s J o y c e , and D . H . L a w r e n c e — n o n e o f w h o s e w o r k s were picked as a main selection in the twenties and thir­ ties. (In 1940, H e m i n g w a y w o u l d finally make it w i t h For Whom the Bell Tolls.) T h o s e omissions alone could certainly constitute an indict­ ment o f middlebrow taste before the Second World War. B u t centrist literary taste was not static: H e m i n g w a y , Wolfe, and Fitzgerald, and to a lesser extent Faulkner, w o u l d become middlebrow literary icons after the Second World War. N o r can it be argued that the B O M C fic­ tion and nonaction selections o f the twenties and thirties were w i t h ­ out literary merit. M a i n selections during the period included Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock, Frederick L e w i s Allen's Only Yesterday, R i c h a r d Wright's Native Son, and Ignazio Silone's Bread and Wine. After the war, B O M C selections, as w e l l as the many other books reviewed in the subscribers' newsletters, began to reflect a w i d e r range o f tastes, although the j u d g e s ' belated homage to Faulkner and H e m ­ i n g w a y resulted in the selection o f books vastly inferior to the authors' earlier w o r k s . T h e b o o k club, like middlebrow culture itself, was at the height o f its influence from the late forties through the early sixties. T h e list o f books reviewed in the B O M C news from 1947 to 1965 includes many w o r k s o f fiction and nonfiction that not o n l y had a major impact at the time but have stood the test o f time: N o r m a n Mailer's The Naked and the Dead; Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms; A r t h u r Miller's Death of a Salesman (in 1949, the first play ever chosen as the club's main selection); G e o r g e Orwell's

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

119

1984; J . D . Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye; R a l p h Ellison's Invisible Man; Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; J a m e s Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time; J o s e p h Heller's Catch-22; R a c h e l Carson's Silent Spring (reviewed in 1962 b y Supreme C o u r t Justice William O . Douglas, a passionate environmentalist); M a r y M c C a r t h y ' s The Group; Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird; and 16

The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

M a n y o f these books w o u l d probably have been best sellers o f a lesser order o f magnitude w i t h o u t any notice from B O M C , whereas others—most notably Catch-22—did

not immediately attract favor­

able notice from critics and surely benefited from being brought to the attention o f B O M C subscribers. W h a t must be said o f this list is that it contains many books that, though they w e r e all " g o o d reads," also made intellectual demands on their audience and challenged much o f the received opinion o f the period. T h a t the

BOMC

also endorsed many books that have not stood the test o f time and are o f interest today only because o f what they reveal about contem­ porary conventional w i s d o m is equally true. O n e o f m y y o u t h ­ ful favorites—Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar—whose

565 pages explore

the earth-shaking importance o f a J e w i s h princess's loss o f her virginity—belongs in the latter class. M i d d l e b r o w historical novels, perennial best sellers throughout the fifties and early sixties, fell into another category altogether. H i g h b r o w critics looked d o w n on the fiction o f authors like J a m e s Michener and Irving Stone, but the sheer amount o f meticulous his­ torical research that went into the making o f these novels is an i m p o r ­ tant measure o f the gap between popular culture then and n o w . O n l y recently have serious critics begun to appreciate the virtues o f the heavily researched historical novels o f the middlebrow era. In an arti­ cle in The New York Review of Books in 2006, the art critic Ingrid R o w ­ land makes a telling comparison between The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone's best-selling 1961 historical novel based on the life o f Michelangelo, and D a n B r o w n ' s 2003 blockbuster The Da Vinci Code. Stone's 703-page novel is faithful to what is k n o w n about M i c h e l a n ­ gelo and is suffused w i t h real art history. The Da Vinci Code, b y con­ trast, distorts art history in the service o f a supernatural thriller that has nothing to do w i t h the real Leonardo, even though many gullible readers eagerly seeking out the Code sites in E u r o p e — a n d providing a

120

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

n e w source o f income for neglected cathedrals—are unaware o f the spurious nature o f the evidence. C o m m e n t i n g on a major exhibi­ tion o f Michelangelo's drawings, R o w l a n d observes that the biogra­ phical notes in the catalogue bear a strong resemblance to the novel because "Stone's careful research used the same sources to tell the same tale. . . . In these days o f The Da Vinci Code, w i t h its slapdash analysis o f Leonardo and its yarns about the H o l y Grail, Stone's novel looks especially impressive, not least because he managed to present Michelangelo's attraction for men sympathetically in days w h e n that was not so e a s y . "

17

T h e historical accuracy o f Stone's novel was not replicated in the 1965 m o v i e , in w h i c h Michelangelo, w o o d e n l y played by Charlton Heston, was given a female love interest. T h e final scene features Heston "sweating amid the marble quarries o f Cararra, [while he] con­ jures up the celestial vision o f a dirty b r o w n Sistine Chapel as the heavens resound w i t h the (as yet unwritten) Hallelujah Chorus." B o t h the novel and the m o v i e o f the Code are equally unburdened by the facts o f art history. O n e o f Brown's most comically anachronistic claims is that the somewhat effeminate image o f the "beloved disci­ p l e " J o h n in Leonardo's Last Supper was really intended to represent M a r y Magdalene. E r g o , the " C o d e . " In fact, J o h n was always repre­ sented in Renaissance art as a y o u t h w i t h flowing locks because he was thought to have been the youngest o f the twelve apostles. T h e notion that the J o h n in Leonardo's fresco was really M a r y Magdalene was necessary to B r o w n ' s thesis that Jesus did not die on the cross and that he eventually married M a r y , w h o was pregnant w i t h his baby at the time o f the crucifixion.

18

I read The Agony and the Ecstasy w h e n I was fifteen and was so fasci­ nated by Stone's descriptions o f the Sistine Chapel ceiling and Michelangelo's sculptures that I sought out reproductions in an art b o o k in a library for the first time. That kind o f connection be­ tween popular middlebrow culture and high culture is so obvious that it is almost impossible to understand w h y the idea o f a reader's actually learning something important from such w o r k s was dis­ missed so contemptuously by highbrow critics o f the thirties, forties, and fifties. H o w did Virginia W o o l f think a girl in museumless O k e mos, Michigan, was supposed to acquire an inkling o f what great sculpture might look like? I could not, after all, take the Tube to the

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

121

British M u s e u m to see the frieze that L o r d Elgin swiped from the Parthenon. T h e sheer length o f many best-selling novels attested to the m i d ­ dlebrow reader's desire for as much information as possible. B o o k buyers were interested in long reads, not quick reads. Allen D r u r y ' s Advise and Consent (1961), a political novel o f more than 700 pages, did not confine itself to political skulduggery and sex in Washington but provided a carefully researched portrait o f the procedures o f the H o u s e and Senate. (This novel also offered one o f the

first

sympathetic portraits o f homosexuality, in the person o f a tortured, closeted gay M o r m o n senator from Utah, in popular American fiction. I suspect that I was not the only teenager w h o learned about the existence o f homosexuals—and the pain they endured w h i l e con­ cealing their sexuality—from reading Advise and Consent.) Michener's Hawaii, w h i c h ran to more than 900 pages, covered everything from Presbyterian missionary history to the geological origins and char­ acteristics o f tsunamis.* I f these hefty novels often lacked literary grace, their length also attests to the diminution o f literate America's attention span during the past forty years.

AMERICA'S POSTWAR AFFLUENCE

and the expansion o f higher educa­

tion were the driving forces in the rising demand for all o f the prod­ ucts o f middlebrow culture, from books to those cheap reproductions of great paintings. A n d m o n e y also drove the cultural shift that saw an unprecedented mingling, at least on the printed page, o f intellectual highbrows and middlebrows. This shift was a source o f considerable anxiety and embarrassment to the v e r y highbrows w h o profited from publishing their w o r k in middlebrow magazines, but the eagerness o f middlebrow editors to provide a forum f o r — o r co-opt, depending on one's point o f v i e w — g e n u i n e intellectuals was surely a tribute to the vitality o f American culture at the time. A pinko past, even i f one might be called on to explain it publicly at any time, did not

* I immediately thought of Hawaii when I read about the number of lives lost in the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami because many people, watching the tide suddenly recede, had walked out to see the creatures and coral formations revealed on the ocean floor, only to have the tsunami wave return with deadly force. Michener describes a similar scene in his novel.

122

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

prevent left-wing intellectuals from obtaining b o o k contracts, report­ ing for newspapers, writing for or editing popular magazines, or gen­ erally benefiting from the rising demand for all types o f cultural commentary. B y the 1950s, some o f the most prominent N e w Y o r k intellectuals w h o had come o f age in the thirties—known (to themselves) as "the family" and predominantly but by no means w h o l l y J e w i s h — h a d broken out o f their small, highly politicized intellectual magazines. In the forties and fifties, the bylines o f highbrow writers began appear­ ing in the decidely upper-middle-class New Yorker and even in masscirculation magazines like the Saturday Evening Post. Heading the list o f those w h o published regularly in the The New Yorker was D w i g h t Macdonald, one o f the leading figures in the entangled bunch o f N e w Y o r k intellectuals w h o s e brilliance was exceeded only by their propensity for savaging one another over everything from serious matters like Stalinism to quibbles about whether it was possible to like l o w b r o w and middlebrow H o l l y w o o d movies and retain any claim to intellectual stature. Macdonald, w h o had attacked The New Yorker in the thirties (in Partisan Review) for its middlebrow commercialism, began w r i t i n g for the enemy in the forties. With his impeccable con­ trarian credentials, he apparently had no qualms about feeding at the hand he had once bitten. N o t so the y o u n g N o r m a n Podhoretz, w h o , w h e n asked to w r i t e b o o k reviews for the magazine in the early fifties, fell into a dither o f anxiety about what selling out w o u l d do to his intellectual status in N e w Y o r k . H o w could a true intellectual sully himself by writing for a publication w h o s e pages were filled w i t h ads for fashionable Fifth Avenue department stores, diamond j e w e l r y , vintage champagne, and expensive W A S P resorts? Podhoretz's tortu­ ous answer: it was all right to appear in The New Yorker because it "was never exactly a middlebrow magazine, for it has its roots in, and was perhaps the only remaining literary exemplar of, the cultural tradi­ tions o f the premodernist period—the period, that is, before the h i g h b r o w - m i d d l e b r o w split o c c u r r e d . "

19

O h , never mind!

E d m u n d Wilson, M a r y M c C a r t h y , Lionel Trilling, and Alfred K a z i n , among others, either lacked Podhoretz's delicate sensibilities or w e r e sensible enough to realize h o w ridiculous such intellectual snobbery really was. In the late forties, Irving H o w e , one o f many men o f his generation w h o faced the rude shock o f trying to make

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

123

ends meet after their G I Bill benefits ran out, had taken a part-time j o b reviewing books for Time before he eventually landed his j o b as an English professor at Brandeis. T h e conservative Luce publishing empire had, ironically, kept numerous radical N e w Y o r k intellectuals financially afloat over the years; Macdonald was once a staff w r i t e r for the business magazine Fortune. Some female members o f "the family" even w r o t e for women's magazines. W h e n Diana Trilling began c o n ­ tributing to Partisan Review in the late forties, she had already p u b ­ lished in Glamour—undoubtedly

a first for both magazines. In her

memoir, Trilling looks back on the cultural m o m e n t o f intermingling between middlebrow and highbrow w i t h a shrewd sense o f w h a t the presence o f genuine intellectuals in large-circulation magazines meant for postwar American society. She recalls that the editor of one of the popular women's magazines would tell me that there had been a recent moment in which the editors o f all the large-circulation j o u r n a l s . . . had had to decide whether to seek a more general public or, as she put it, to "raid Partisan Review. " T h e magazines which chose the latter course increased their reader­ ship; those which strove to become more popular lost circulation. What she was describing was the moment in the cultural life of this country in which what had previously been a virtually unnavigable distance between the world of high seriousness and our more popular culture began suddenly to narrow.

20

I suspect that the editor's talk about a connection between high­ b r o w bylines and increased circulation was a prevarication designed to flatter Trilling, but the fact that anyone in charge o f a popular maga­ zine w o u l d bother to tell such a fib only reinforces Trilling's point about the narrowing o f cultural distance. T h e gap w o u l d narrow even further during the early sixties, as the K e n n e d y administration made astute use o f intellectuals to highlight the difference between the N e w Frontier and the staid Eisenhower administration. B y that time, the writings o f intellectuals w e r e w i d e l y reviewed in newspapers and magazines intended for a much broader educated public. F o u r e x a m ­ ples from the first half o f the sixties were Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd, originally published in Commentary (before Podhoretz aban­ doned liberalism and turned the American J e w i s h Committee's flag-

124

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

ship publication into the voice o f neoconservatism); Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jersualem; Baldwin's The Fire Next Time; and, perhaps most striking, Michael Harrington's The Other America, all published in The New Yorker. Harrington's b o o k was closely read by intellectuals in the K e n n e d y and J o h n s o n administrations and helped give birth to L y n d o n Johnson's w a r on poverty.

YET EVEN AS middlebrow culture, bolstered b y highbrow contribu­ tions, seemed at its most robust, it was entering a period o f gradual enfeeblement fostered b y social forces that first manifested themselves in the mid-fifties and became more dominant in the sixties. T h e most important o f these was o f course television, a l u x u r y that, in the course o f just one decade, came to be considered a necessity. T h e n e w m e d i u m could not corrupt highbrow culture, because there basically was no h i g h b r o w culture on the air, but it could and did help to cor­ rupt middlebrow culture. M a n y o f the men w h o shaped the early television era had decid­ edly middlebrow aspirations; they saw "quality" programming, from the dramas broadcast on Playhouse go to E d w a r d R . M u r r o w ' s docu­ mentaries, as a complement to rather than a competitor w i t h middle­ b r o w institutions like the B O M C . N o t every component o f a television and radio n e t w o r k was expected to make a large profit. Popular programs w i t h mass appeal w o u l d subsidize more serious programs w i t h a narrower audience—a philosophy that also ruled b o o k publishing at the time. T h e classic example on television was the relationship between E d w a r d R . M u r r o w ' s hugely popular Person to Person, on w h i c h he conducted celebrity house tours and interviewed stars like Liberace and H u m p h r e y Bogart, and See It Now, which fea­ tured serious, hard-hitting, and controversial documentaries. Person to Person, w h i c h made M u r r o w ' s face as familiar in households w i t h tele­ vision as his voice had been during the radio era, premiered in the autumn o f 1953, j u s t three weeks before one o f M u r r o w ' s most m e m ­ orable See It Now programs on the human fallout o f the congressional hunt for Communists. T h e See It Now documentary chronicled the travails o f M i l o R a d u l o v i c h , an A i r Force R e s e r v e officer forced to choose between his military commission and his parents,

who

allegedly had C o m m u n i s t associations. M u r r o w ' s biographer reports

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

125

that " w h e n a friend ragged M u r r o w once in afteryears about 'ham­ ming it up on Person to Person—don't say y o u don't enjoy it,' he [ M u r ­ row] turned to the man in sudden anger: 'Listen, do y o u k n o w w h a t I can get away w i t h because Person to Person is such a big hit?' "

2 1

Y e t the

serious side o f television, and the more serious people in its first gen­ eration, were rapidly losing out to the unstoppable entertainment side of the n e w medium. T h e corruption o f middlebrow aspirations by mass entertainment values was embodied most dramatically in the fifties by the rigged quiz shows—a "sticky slime o f calf's-foot j e l l y " i f ever there was one. The quiz show phenomenon, w h i c h began w i t h The $64,000 Question in 1955 and ended abruptly in 1958 w i t h a N e w Y o r k grand j u r y inves­ tigation revealing that many contestants w e r e given answers in advance, combined the middlebrow reverence for facts w i t h the mass appeal o f any get-rich-quick scheme. M y family was among the m i l ­ lions w h o tuned in to watch brainiacs like D r . J o y c e Brothers d o m i ­ nate The $64,000 Question (in her case, everything was on the level) on the strength of, among other specialized areas o f k n o w l e d g e , her vast store o f facts about boxing. A n d w e were watching the show Twenty One w h e n Charles Van Doren, a lecturer in the English department at Columbia University and the son o f the legendary English scholar M a r k Van Doren, vanquished his opponent, Herbert Stempel, ac­ cording to a script in w h i c h both had been fed the answers and told exactly what to do to keep the show's suspense going. Van D o r e n , an intellectual prince, carried himself w i t h the air o f the dreamy Ashley Wilkes as played by Leslie H o w a r d in Gone With the Wind. P o o r S t e m pel, w h o looked like what he w a s — a classic nerd and a J e w in an America where J e w i s h intellectuals had not yet become fashionable— never had a chance in the popularity contest. Popularity w i t h the audience determined w h o w o u l d be told by the n e t w o r k to give the right answer and w h o w o u l d be required to take a dive. Some o f the questions on Twenty One really were difficult, in the sense that anyone without a broad reading background w o u l d be unlikely to come up w i t h the answers. O n the night o f the

fixed

match between Stempel and Van D o r e n , however, the questions were ridiculously easy. Van D o r e n was asked to name the actress (Eva Marie Saint) w h o played M a r l o n Brando's girlfriend in On the Waterfront. Stempel, w h o was, as it happened, a m o v i e buff, was asked the simple

126

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

question o f w h i c h film w o n the 1955 Oscar for best picture. T h e answer was Marty, starring Ernest B o r g n i n e , but Stempel went along w i t h the script and pretended not to k n o w . I was eleven years old, and what I remember is that everyone in m y family, except m y eight-year-old brother, k n e w the answers to both questions. M y father, an accountant and reformed gambler, snickered and said, " D o y o u k n o w what the odds are against a lonely g u y from B r o o k l y n not k n o w i n g that Marty w o n the Oscar last year?" M y mother replied in a shocked voice, " B o b , I don't think the televi­ sion networks w o u l d dare to do something like that. Stempel prob­ ably just got nervous and forgot." D a d snickered again and said, "Just wait and see." N e a r l y three years later, Van D o r e n admitted before a congres­ sional committee that he had perjured himself w h e n he denied involvement in the rigging o f the show before the N e w Y o r k grand j u r y . In 1959, Van D o r e n , still weaseling in his testimony, admitted that he had been the "principal s y m b o l " o f the quiz show deception but claimed that he had also been a victim because he did not k n o w , at the beginning, h o w thoroughly rigged the proceedings w o u l d be. C o m i n g as they did at the end o f the Eisenhower era, the quiz show scandals have often been cited as the miner's canary for what w o u l d become a general loss o f faith in American cultural and political insti­ tutions during the following decade. That may be true—I certainly think the revelations had a considerable impact on those w h o were m y age at the time—but the disillusionment centered more on individual cheaters like Van D o r e n than on television or any other American institution. Van Doren's life was wrecked, in part because he came from an intellectual milieu w h e r e this type o f cheating was seen as traitorous not only to the public, not only to oneself, but to the sacred vocation o f scholarship. T h e n e t w o r k executives w h o presided over the fiasco quickly found a commercial solution to what they perceived as a purely c o m ­ mercial problem: they substituted multiple sponsors for the single sponsors w h o had pressured the shows to retain some contestants and dispose o f others. W h a t the shows had been selling was a combination o f fact-based k n o w l e d g e , celebrity, and m o n e y ; the possession o f cer­ tain kinds o f k n o w l e d g e , and the ability to recall facts before an audi­ ence o f millions, could provide both fame and fortune. In the fallout

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

127

from the quiz show scandals, n e t w o r k executives dispensed w i t h the middlebrow facts and kept the celebrity and the money, proceeding from shows w i t h difficult questions to shows in w h i c h fourth-graders could come up w i t h most o f the answers. H o w e v e r disappointed Americans may have been in Van D o r e n , television itself emerged largely unscathed, free to continue the expansion o f its influence at the expense o f the print culture. At first, the process was all but imperceptible. T h e precipitous decline o f reading and writing skills, n o w attested to by every objec­ tive measure—from tests o f both children and adults to the shrinking number o f Americans w h o read for pleasure—was more than t w o decades away. B o o k s still mattered enormously, not only at the begin­ ning o f the sixties but also throughout the social convulsions o f the late sixties. Y e t there were visible signs and portents for those able to read them. Afternoon newspapers w e r e beginning to lose readers throughout the country, in metropolises and small towns, by the early sixties, and evening papers w o u l d be w e l l on their w a y to becoming an extinct species by the end o f the decade. Venerable old middlebrow magazines like the Saturday Review w e r e also hemorrhag­ ing subscribers, as n e w editors and owners tried desperately, w i t h lit­ tle success, to put a more trendy gloss on their hopelessly earnest middlebrow format and contents. Even the mass-circulation titans o f the Luce empire had begun to lose ground by the mid-sixties. Again, the main reason was television, w h i c h came into its o w n as the chief source o f breaking news during the days following President Kennedy's assassination. A l t h o u g h few cultural observers saw it c o m ­ ing, all print media were already struggling to survive in the length­ ening shadow o f television. In this precursor o f twilight, middlebrow culture—so long an instrument o f self-education for those w h o aspired to something above the lowest c o m m o n

denominator—had

nowhere to g o but d o w n .

DURING

T H E PAST D E C A D E ,

m i d d l e b r o w culture has once again

attracted the attention o f various social commentators, most w i t h a right-wing political a x to grind. Cultural conservatives today like to place blame for the decline o f the middlebrow not on the profitdriven infotainment industry but squarely on lefties and p i n k o s —

128

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

both the N e w Left o f the sixties and the highbrow O l d Left o f the thirties. D a v i d B r o o k s , a columnist for The New York Times and a ubiquitous stuffy pundit on television, assigns a heavy share o f the blame to highbrow radical intellectuals, such as Macdonald, Wilson, M a r y M c C a r t h y , and the art critic Clement Greenberg, w h o were shaped by the thirties and became even more culturally influential in the fifties and sixties. " T h e intellectuals launched assaults on what they took to be middlebrow institutions," B r o o k s writes darkly, "attacks that are so vicious that they take y o u r breath a w a y . "

22

W h a t B r o o k s must have had in mind was Macdonald's blast against everything middlebrow in his essay "Masscult and Midcult," pub­ lished in Partisan Review in i960 and read at the time mainly by that journal's small readership. Macdonald did have some v e r y nasty things to say about both mass culture and middlebrow culture. Life is a typical homogenized magazine, appearing on

the

mahogany library tables of the rich, the glass cocktail tables of the middle class, and the oilcloth kitchen tables of the poor. Its con­ tents are as thoroughly homogenized as its circulation. The same issue will p r e s e n t . . . an editorial hailing Bertrand Russell's eighti­ eth

birthday (A GREAT MIND IS STILL ANNOYING AND ADORNING OUR

AGE) across from a full-page photo of a matron arguing with a baseball umpire (MOM GETS THUMB); nine color pages of Renoir paintings followed by a picture of a roller skating horse

Some­

h o w these scramblings together seem to work all one way, degrad­ ing the serious rather than elevating the frivolous . . . that roller skating horse comes along, and the final impression is that both Renoir and the horse were talented.

23

It should be noted that Macdonald considered Life a Masscult, not a Midcult, magazine. O n e skating horse seems a fair bargain for nine full pages o f R e n o i r paintings. B u t Macdonald could not have imag­ ined a mass-circulation magazine w o r l d , just around the corner, in w h i c h no editor w o u l d dream o f devoting nine pages to any form o f real art. A t that point, H e n r y Luce was still crying all the w a y to the bank. B u t Brooks's notion that the Partisan Review crowd was in some w a y responsible for the collapse o f middlebrow culture is ludicrous.

Middlebrow Culturefrom Noon to Twilight

129

First, intellectuals did not have that kind o f influence on the general public, in spite o f their visible presence in middlebrow cultural v e n ­ ues. T h e forays o f intellectuals into middlebrow publications—in the case o f The New Yorker, upper-middlebrow publications—did noth­ ing to undermine and everything to improve the quality o f those magazines. I f Americans stopped b u y i n g Life and Look at some point in the sixties, it was not because they had paid attention to writers like Macdonald but because still pictures, even by some o f the nation's best photographers, could not provide the excitement o f film footage on television. W h e n intellectuals attacked institutions like N e w York's Metropolitan M u s e u m and the M u s e u m o f M o d e r n A r t for pander­ ing to popular taste, no one outside the intellectual c o m m u n i t y — a n d not too many intellectuals outside N e w Y o r k C i t y — p a i d the slightest attention. T h e sixties saw the beginning o f a sharp rise in m u s e u m attendance; museums, probably because they did not depend on the printed w o r d , were among the f e w middlebrow institutions

to

emerge from the sixties and seventies in a stronger financial and cul­ tural position. Macdonald saw Midcult as a greater threat than Masscult because the former represented "a corruption o f H i g h C u l t u r e " that was "able to pass itself off as the real thing." Examples o f Midcult passing itself off as the real thing included T h o r n t o n Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (indebted to Joyce's Finnegans Wake but nevertheless "pretentious and embarrassing"); the M u s e u m o f M o d e r n A r t ; Vance Packard's bestselling books The Hidden Persuaders (1957) and The Status Seekers (1959); the infiltration o f design features adapted from Bauhaus modernism into pop-up toasters, supermarkets, and cafeterias; and the American C i v i l Liberties U n i o n , described as "once avant-garde and tiny . . . n o w flourishing and respectable." T h e inclusion o f the A C L U on the list is especially bewildering, given that the A C L U ' s battles against censorship were more frequently fought on behalf o f H i g h Culture than Midcult. T h e main question as Macdonald saw it in i960 was whether all o f what he labeled Midcult atrocities merely represented " g r o w i n g pains" on the road to H i g h Culture. Don't rising social classes always go through a nouveau riche phase in which they imitate the forms of culture without under­ standing its essence? And won't those classes in time be assimi-

130

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

lated into High Culture? It is true that this has usually happened in the past. . . . Before the last century, the standards were gener­ ally agreed on and the rising new classes tried to conform to them. B y now, however, because of the disintegrative effects of Masscult . . . the standards are by no means generally ac­ cepted. T h e danger is that the values of Midcult, instead of being transitional—"the price of progress"—may now themselves be­ come a debased, permanent standard.

24

Macdonald almost had it right. Americans w o u l d move toward a debased culture as generally accepted standards were defined d o w n ­ w a r d ; but it was Masscult, not Midcult, that triumphed. A n d the dys­ peptic jeremiads o f highbrows looking d o w n on the bourgeois middle class had nothing to do w i t h what happened. Middlebrow's salient features—an affinity for b o o k s ; the desire to understand science; a strong dose o f rationalism; above all, a regard for facts—had been taken for granted since the beginning o f the twentieth century by large numbers o f Americans w h o wanted a better life for themselves and their children. H o w e v e r one regarded middlebrow culture at the beginning o f the 1960s, the erosion o f its values was neither predicted nor hastened by aging highbrow intellectuals w h o assumed that Midcult w o u l d emerge triumphant from the long era o f postwar prosperity. M i d d l e b r o w values w o u l d soon face a sustained challenge not only from the N e w L e f t — a much more plausible villain than the graying O l d Left for conservatives—but from an anti-intellectual right that w o u l d establish the framework for a counter-counterculture beneath the sixties' media radar. Middle-class America w o u l d no longer leaf through magazines that featured reproductions o f Renoirs along w i t h photographs o f equine skaters, because both the Renoirs and the horses' legs emerging from roller skates w o u l d soon be dis­ placed b y a cavalcade o f vulgar images inviting comparisons to a v e r y different portion o f the horse's anatomy.

CHAPTER SIX

B L A M I N G IT O N T H E SIXTIES

T H E S I X T I E S , w i t h a capital " S , " are unquestionably the favorite whipping post for those w h o apparently believe that American antiintellectualism and anti-rationalism first manifested themselves some­ where between the Beatles' 1964 debut on The Ed Sullivan Show and the 1969 Woodstock festival e m b o d y i n g the slogan: "We A r e the P e o ­ ple O u r Parents Warned U s Against." W h e n both conservatives and liberals talk about what Philip R o t h once described as the " d e m y t h o l ogizing decade," they are generally referring to political and social rebellion from the left, including the civil rights, antiwar, and early feminist movements, as well as everything that came to be k n o w n as "the counterculture"—the sexual revolution, experimentation w i t h mind-altering drugs, disruptions o f university life, and, last but not least, the reign o f rock music over the y o u n g . M o r e o v e r , most debates about the sixties are based on the premise that the social protests o f the decade were largely the doing o f the baby b o o m generation. T h e conflation o f these movements and cultural forces is a serious historical error, as is the premise that people in their late teens and early twenties were the most influential instigators o f demands for social change. Irving Kristol could not have been more w r o n g w h e n he asserted in 1977 in The New York Times Magazine that "the radical­ ism o f the 60s was a generational movement, bereft o f adult models 1

and adult guidance." Kristol was recalling the days o f his radical youth in the thirties, before he turned his back on Trostskyism and socialism and began his j o u r n e y toward right-wing Republican adult­ hood. Nevertheless, he v i e w e d the left-wing activists o f the thirties as superior to the radicals o f the sixties, because the O l d Left, h o w e v e r

131

132

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

philosophically misguided, was "decidedly an adult movement, in w h i c h y o u n g people w e r e permitted to participate," rather than the "bewildering and self-destructive tantrum" o f the puerile N e w Left. O f course, most o f the people providing the "adult guidance" for radical intellectuals o f Kristol's generation were either Stalinists or Trotsky ites. Notwithstanding the famous admonition against trusting anyone over thirty, many leaders o f the various protest movements o f the six­ ties were long removed from their bright college years.

2

Martin

Luther K i n g , J r . , was thirty-four w h e n he delivered his " I Have a D r e a m " speech from the top step o f the Lincoln M e m o r i a l in 1963. T h e same year, w h e n The Feminine Mystique was published, Betty Friedan was f o r t y - t w o . Daniel Ellsberg was forty w h e n he leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971. Gloria Steinem was thirty-seven w h e n she helped found Ms. magazine the following year. A s for the antiwar movement, some o f its most respected and indomitable figures were men and w o m e n w h o s e children and, in some instances, grandchildren had already reached draft age. D r . B e n ­ j a m i n Spock, the R e v e r e n d William Sloan Coffin, and Bella A b z u g , to name j u s t three, w e r e heroes to y o u n g e r antiwar demonstrators. W h a t the conservatives really meant—what they still mean t o d a y — by their dismissal o f all social protests o f the sixties as a giant temper tantrum was that regardless o f age, anyone w h o thought there was something v e r y w r o n g w i t h American society was acting like a baby. T o characterize opponents as children—or, as the sixties bashers con­ tend, demon seed—obviates any necessity to engage their arguments in serious fashion. T h e first half o f the sixties, despite the shock o f the K e n n e d y assassination and the social unrest associated w i t h the civil rights movement, was a basically stable period that continued the more hopeful cultural trends—including the battle for racial justice and the movement to control nuclear a r m s — o f the late fifties. O n e reason for the burgeoning fortunes o f liberal intellectuals in the early sixties was the developing public consensus that nuclear war, however deeply Americans might dislike Communists, was no longer an acceptable option—something that left-wing intellectuals had been saying for years and that K e n n e d y articulated as government policy in his famous 1963 American University speech calling for negotiations

Blaming It on the Sixties

133

with the Soviets on a nuclear test-ban treaty. N o t even a decade sepa­ rated the days o f m y childhood, w h e n schoolchildren were drilled in hiding under their desks to protect themselves from atomic attack, from the years w h e n Americans began to pack m o v i e theaters to see films, including On the Beach (which led the w a y in 1959), and Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe, both released in 1964. T h e r e was also a seachange in attitudes toward nuclear scientists w h o , backed up by expertise as well as civic passion, had spoken out against the arms race in the heated anti-Communist climate o f the early fifties. T h e physi­ cist J . R o b e r t Oppenheimer, k n o w n as "the father o f the atomic b o m b , " had been deprived o f his security clearance in 1954 after speaking out strongly against the arms race w i t h the Soviet U n i o n and in favor o f international control o f atomic energy. In 1963, a more mature Kennedy, chastened by his experience o f nuclear brinkman­ ship w i t h Nikita Khrushchev during the C u b a n missile crisis, con­ ferred the Enrico Fermi Award for lifetime achievement in science on Oppenheimer. T h e shift in public opinion had come about so natu­ rally and peacefully—middlebrow magazines and books helped edu­ cate the public about what w o u l d happen to the U n i t e d States even i f it emerged on the "victorious" side o f a nuclear conflict—that the change did not seem radical to a majority o f Americans. Presidents o f corporations, as well as the president o f the U n i t e d States, were say­ ing things that might have brought them a subpoena from H U A C or J o e M c C a r t h y ' s subcommittee in the early fifties. Even the trauma o f Kennedy's assassination did not truly shake the sense o f optimism that permeated those years before America's involvement in Vietnam changed everything. T h e radically rebellious half o f the sixties, whether one regards the period in a positive or a negative light, truly began w i t h the escalation of the w a r in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966. T h o s e sixties—what people usually mean w h e n they excoriate or celebrate the decade—really lasted until the mid-seventies, w h e n Saigon fell, the last American sol­ diers came home from Vietnam, and exhausted participants in the various protest movements started having babies, climbing the c o r p o ­ rate ladder, or discovering forms o f self-help and spirituality suited to the " M e Decade." D u r i n g the rebellious sixties, it often seemed (and not only to those over thirty) that someone was saying the unsayable on a daily basis. J o s e p h Heller's Catch-22, set near the end o f the S e c -

134

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

ond World War and originally published in 1961 to mixed notices by bewildered reviewers, became a best seller many times over in the late sixties, as the public began to contemplate the irrationality o f the Vietnam War. N o v e l s did not have to be overtly political to derive energy from an environment in w h i c h both external censorship and self-censorship had lost m u c h o f their force. Roth's best-selling Portnoy's Complaint, published in 1969, is a case in point. T h e connection between the novel's scandalous success and contemporary social upheavals has been best described by the author himself: Without the disasters and upheavals of the year 1968, coming as they did at the end o f a decade that had been marked by blasphe­ mous defiance of authority and loss of faith in the public order, I doubt that a book like mine would have achieved much renown in 1969. Even three or four years earlier, a realistic novel that treated family authority with comical impiety and depicted sex as the far­ cical side of a seemingly respectable citizen's life would probably have been a good deal less tolerable—and comprehensible—to the middle-class Americans w h o bought the book, and would have been treated much more marginally (and, I suspect, more hostilely) by the media that publicized it. But by the final year of the sixties, the national education in the irrational and the extreme had been so brilliantly conducted by our Dr. Johnson, with help from both enemies and friends, that, for all its tasteless revelations about everyday sexual obsession and the unromantic side of the family romance, even something like Portnoy's Complaint was sud­ denly within the range of the tolerable. Finding that they could tolerate it may even have been a source of the book's appeal to a good number of its readers.

3

U n l i k e R o t h , many Americans w h o lived through the sixties have forgotten that the nation's education in the irrational, w h i c h often included attacks on rationality itself, was being conducted from both the right and the left. S o m e o f these assaults, certainly the most w i d e l y publicized ones, came from the N e w Left and were experi­ enced w i t h particular force on university campuses. Others, however, came from the religious and political right and were either overlooked or dismissed as curiosities out o f j o i n t w i t h the times by the national

Blaming It on the Sixties

135

media. After the overwhelming defeat o f B a r r y G o l d w a t e r in the 1964 presidential election, the mainstream press paid little attention to conservatives for the next ten years. Y e t the foundation for a n e w brand o f religion-infused conservatism was laid in the late sixties and early seventies. T h e old-fashioned libertarian conservatism o f G o l d water was on the wane, but a new, religiously based conservatism was on the rise. D u r i n g the sixties, Protestant fundamentalists built a kindergarten-through-college

n e t w o r k o f Christian schools w h o s e

graduates w o u l d become warriors in the army o f the religious right in the 1980s. Even as students attacked the authority o f secular universi­ ties, fundamentalist

proselytizers w e r e bringing millions o f other

young people into their fold. Y e t nearly all evaluations o f the legacies o f the sixties, by liberals as well as conservatives, regard the presum­ ably radical counterculture as the sine qua non o f the entire e r a — certainly o f those w h o were y o u n g . * Moreover, the decade is customarily examined through a peculiar anthropomorphic lens, as i f "the Sixties" had been an independent actor instead o f a stage on w h i c h many comedic and tragic social dra­ mas were played. O n e o f the most embittered right-wing critics o f the sixties, R o b e r t B o r k , takes the anthropomorphism a step further and calls the decade a cancer, incapable o f cure and always ready to invade the b o d y politic one more time. "As the rioting and riotousness died d o w n in the early 1970s and seemingly disappeared alto­ gether in the last half o f that decade," B o r k writes, " . . . it seemed, at last, that the Sixties were over. T h e y were not. It was a malignant decade that, after a fifteen-year remission, returned in the 1980s to metastasize more devastatingly throughout our culture than it had in the Sixties, not w i t h tumult but quietly, in the moral and political assumptions o f those w h o n o w control and guide our major cultural institutions."

4

Bork's rejection by the Senate w h e n R o n a l d R e a g a n

nominated him for the Supreme C o u r t in 1987 might account for his conviction that the eighties marked the second coming o f the cancer first diagnosed in the sixties. T h e right-wing take on the sixties is essentially a political indict* Notable exceptions include The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (1997), by Thomas Frank, and America Divided: The Civil War of the îçéos (2004), by Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin. See also Todd Gitlin's afterword to Reassessing the Sixties: Debating the Political and Cultural Legacy (1996).

136

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

ment masquerading as a defense o f Western culture. O n e infallible marker is the capitalization o f the w o r d " M o v e m e n t " by right-wing intellectuals, w h o lump the serious w i t h the absurd, the righteous w i t h the cynical, the altruistic w i t h the opportunistic whenever they refer to any o f the social protest movements o f the era. Commentary magazine, under the editorship o f N o r m a n Podhoretz in the early seventies, may have started this trend o f referring to "the M o v e m e n t " as i f it w e r e a disciplined organization like the American Communist Party o f the thirties. Protesters against the immorality and futility o f America's w a r in Vietnam? T h e M o v e m e n t . Protesters w h o cherished a fantasy o f H o C h i M i n h as a democratic socialist? T h e Movement. N o n v i o l e n t y o u n g demonstrators? T h e M o v e m e n t . Bomb-planting Weathermen? T h e M o v e m e n t . Feminists w h o wanted to legalize abortion? T h e M o v e m e n t . Feminists w h o insisted that heterosexual w o m e n must stop "sleeping w i t h the enemy"? T h e M o v e m e n t . Stu­ dents w h o wanted universities to hire more black and female faculty members? T h e M o v e m e n t . Students w h o wanted to do away w i t h grading, exams, and assigned reading lists? T h e M o v e m e n t . Environ­ mentalists? T h e M o v e m e n t . According to this logic, the first Earth D a y , held in 1970, might as well have been M a y D a y in M o s c o w ' s R e d Square. A n d if members o f "the M o v e m e n t " were as unified in their views as the old C o m ­ munists, then they must have been aided b y — w h o else?—"fellow travelers." In his self-congratulatory m e m o i r Breaking Ranks (1979), Podhoretz includes R a m s e y C l a r k , the op-ed page o f The New York Times, and the American C i v i l Liberties U n i o n in his designated cate­ g o r y o f fellow travelers. (The A C L U may be the only organization w i t h the distinction o f having been stigmatized as a bourgeois dupe b y D w i g h t Macdonald and as a fellow-traveling dupe by Podhoretz.) " O n questions ranging from crime to the nature o f art, from drugs to economic g r o w t h , from e c o l o g y to the n e w egalitarianism," P o d ­ horetz asserts, "the dogmas o f the M o v e m e n t — b o t h in their u n e x purgated state and in the sanitized versions that had by n o w become the conventional w i s d o m o f the fellow-traveling culture laying claim to the epithet [sic] 'liberal'—Commentary became perhaps the single most visible scourge o f the M o v e m e n t within the intellectual c o m ­ munity."

5

F o r conservatives like Kristol and Podhoretz, the M o v e ­

ment could only be anti-intellectual because no real intellectual could

Blaming It on the Sixties

137

possibly disagree w i t h them. T h e existence o f anti-intellectualism on the right was never acknowledged in the conservative perorations o f the early seventies, because the concept o f an all-powerful left was as essential to their demonization o f radicalism and liberalism then as it is now. F o r different reasons, many liberals have also downplayed the sig­ nificance o f the conservative sixties—the Other Sixties that formed a counter-counterculture. In liberal m y t h o l o g y , especially the m y t h o l ­ o g y o f those w h o participated actively in various dissident m o v e ­ ments, the sixties were supposed to have been " o u r " time. It is still difficult for liberals o f m y generation to stomach the historical fact that the children o f the sixties included not o n l y those w h o helped bring d o w n Lyndon Johnson's presidency but those w h o voted for R i c h a r d N i x o n in 1968 and w o r k e d to create the " R e a g a n revolution" a scant six years after N i x o n was driven from office by Watergate. One component o f this emotional denial may be the guilt o f many graying radicals at having helped elect N i x o n by staying away from the polls in 1968. After the nomination o f Hubert H . H u m p h r e y and the police rampage against antiwar demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in C h i c a g o , the bitterness

o f many

who

opposed the w a r ran so deep that they w o u l d not even consider voting for Humphrey. C o l d War Democratic Party liberals were seen as the enemy. University presidents w h o ruled their campuses w i t h a firm hand were seen as the enemy. T h e real enemies o f liberalism and intellectualism—the religious fundamentalists and far right political operators serving as mentors to y o u n g T o m DeLays and N e w t Gingriches—were conducting their education in the irrational, far from the media spotlight, and y o u n g radicals therefore k n e w as little as most o f the neoconservative N e w Y o r k intellectuals did about the Other Sixties. T h e cultural realities o f the decade, and their l o n g term effect on intellectual life in America, do not fit neatly into either a conservative or a liberal political script.

C O L L E G E C A M P U S E S were o f course the setting for some o f the major cultural battles o f the era, and although the conflicts often began w i t h an issue related to the Vietnam War, they eventually extended to v i r ­ tually every aspect o f university life, from rules governing students'

138

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

social behavior to the curriculum. A t the beginning o f the decade all universities, both public and private, maintained an in loco parentis rela­ tionship to their undergraduate students. It should be recalled that twenty-one, not eighteen, was then the age o f legal majority, and most college students were in fact minors in the eyes o f the law. When I entered Michigan State University in 1963, a girl—applying the w o r d " w o m a n " to female students o f that era is an anachronism— could be expelled simply for setting foot in an off-campus apartment occupied by a member o f the opposite sex. Universities generally maintained a core curriculum that was the academic equivalent o f Great B o o k s . B y the early seventies, most public and private universi­ ties had abandoned in loco parentis and diluted their core academic requirements. That these changes occurred is indisputable, but the reasons w h y they occurred are not. T h e conventional attack on the sixties from the right, issuing from professors w h o have somehow managed to flourish within academia in spite o f their claim that the academy was destroyed by the upheavals o f the demonic decade, por­ trays campuses overrun and paralyzed first by antiwar crazies, then by gun-toting black militants, and finally by bra-burning feminists—all sworn enemies o f everything g o o d in Western civilization. T h e script goes something like this: O n c e upon a time (in the glorious fifties, to be precise), there was both order and freedom in American cultural life, especially in the universities that served as citadels o f learning and beacons to the rest o f society. Yes, a f e w left-leaning professors had problems during what liberals call the M c C a r t h y era, but, really, M c C a r t h y was too unimportant to attach his name to an "era." F o r the most part, stu­ dents and professors pursued truth w i t h little interference from the worlds o f gross commercialism and gross politics. T h i n k Periclean Athens, the University o f Heidelberg in the nineteenth century, O x f o r d and C a m b r i d g e before the Great War, and that is the higher learning Americans enjoyed—except in much larger numbers than had ever been the case in human history. T h e n the barbarians stormed the gates—no, the barbarians w e r e already inside the gates. Instead o f studying for their exams and listening to their teachers, students began to fancy themselves liberators o f Americans o f a different color. T h e n they started demonstrating against a distant w a r — e v e n though they themselves were safe on the campuses. N i c e girls w h o never

Blaming It on the Sixties

139

used to speak in graduate seminars unless they were spoken to started talking—and what did they have to say that was w o r t h listening to, anyway? A n embattled professor could not hope to do anything about this sad state o f affairs, apart from pursuing tenure, continuing to col­ lect his paycheck, and letting the kids do w h a t they wanted. O h , w o e ! Or, as Alexander Pope (someone none o f those rotten little ignora­ muses w o u l d ever bother to read) w r o t e : "Loi thy dread empire, Chaos!

is restored; /Light dies before thy uncreating word; / Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, / And universal darkness buries all. "* T h e most influential academic conservative evisceration o f the sixties was Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987), in which the University o f C h i c a g o philosophy professor, w h o died in 1992, asserted that in the fifties, "no universities w e r e better than the best American universities in the things that have to do w i t h a liberal education and arousing in students the awareness o f their intellectual needs." B l o o m accurately noted that since the mid-i930s, American universities had benefited greatly from the influx o f émigré intellec­ tuals fleeing N a z i G e r m a n y — p r o d u c i n g an invigorated American academia that served as an intellectual refuge from tyranny and a storehouse o f k n o w l e d g e for the nation and the w o r l d . " I f in 1930 American universities had simply disappeared," B l o o m w r o t e , "the general store o f learning o f general significance w o u l d not have been seriously damaged, although it w o u l d surely not have been a g o o d thing for us. B u t in i960, inasmuch as most o f intellectual life had long ago settled in universities and the American ones w e r e the best, their decay or collapse was a catastrophe. M u c h o f the great tradition was here, an alien and w e a k transplant, perched precariously in enclaves, vulnerable to native populism and vulgarity. In the m i d sixties the natives, in the guise o f students, attacked."

6

That the "natives" were on the warpath against all forms o f author­ ity, including the educational authority

o f universities and

the

pieties o f middlebrow culture, is beyond question. That the typical American university was a glorious center o f higher learning at the beginning o f the sixties is a sentimental falsehood, even though both public and private institutions did maintain a more rigorous core cur­ riculum than they w o u l d by the mid-seventies. B y the mid-sixties,

* Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1743).

140

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

Thorstein Veblen's 1904 description o f university presidents as "cap­ tains o f erudition"—a variation on the w i d e l y used

turn-of-the-

century phrase "captains o f i n d u s t r y " — w o u l d or should have been considered a description entirely lacking in irony by anyone engaged in the business o f higher education. T h e erosion o f traditional liberal education got under w a y in earnest after the Second World War, w h e n the G I Bill made it possible for millions o f working-class veter­ ans to become the first members o f their families to attend college. Things may not have changed much in the I v y League and Seven Sisters schools between 1945 and 1965, but they certainly had in most public institutions, w h i c h unabashedly embraced the unintellectual mission o f providing vocational training for ever-expanding numbers o f students. I f institutions like Michigan State maintained certain core requirements, these were offered more in service to the fifties p o p p s y c h o l o g y ideal o f "well-roundedness" than in the spirit o f a traditional and demanding liberal arts education. Liberal arts were thought to be particularly important for girls, still presumed to be in pursuit o f a " M r s . " D e g r e e along w i t h a bachelor's degree, because educated, well-rounded mothers—as

m y high school counselor

had also emphasized—would be better equipped to educate their children. T h e campus uprisings o f the late sixties, w h i c h began at the most elite public and private institutions and quickly spread to less selective colleges across the land, were on one level a consequence o f a conflict between t w o generations that had benefited from the postwar expan­ sion o f higher education. T h e veterans w h o took advantage o f the G I Bill were profoundly grateful for the chance to g o to college because a diploma was their passport to a white-collar j o b , but their children regarded higher education as a birthright and assumed that jobs w o u l d be there w h e n they w e r e ready to take on adult responsibilities. T h e generation gap was a special irritant at universities because, by the time the campuses began exploding in the late sixties, a considerable proportion o f tenured faculty members and mid-level administrators were members o f the grateful generation—in w h i c h I include not only the veterans but the small cohort born during the Depression. M e m b e r s o f the grateful generation at universities had extra rea­ sons to be grateful because an academic career, w h i c h seemed a sure route to genteel poverty in the early fifties, had turned out to be a

Blaming It on the Sixties

141

comfortable upper-middle-class sinecure as university budgets and faculty expanded along w i t h student enrollment. T h e r e was also an element o f fear: middle-aged academics w h o had only recently attained financial security saw the student uprisings as a threat not only to the academic character but to the financial existence o f universities—especially those dependent on public support. This mixture o f gratitude and insecurity fostered inconsistent responses, alternating laxity and rigidity, w h e n the boomers—yes, the ungrate­ ful generation—rose up to say that there was something w r o n g w i t h the education their parents had felt so lucky to receive. O n the one hand, the grateful generation overestimated the p o w e r o f the rebels and failed to understand and use every institution's biggest bargaining chip—the emotional and financial dependency o f most o f the y o u n g on the continuation o f their status as college students in g o o d stand­ ing. O n the other hand, those in charge o f universities also underesti­ mated the degree to w h i c h the impersonal nature o f undergraduate education at large institutions had alienated a critical minority o f their students—often the best and the brightest. M o s t administrators had little idea o f h o w and w h e n to use either the carrot o f talking seri­ ously to the students or the stick o f expulsion. According to the right, traditional liberal arts requirements w e r e abandoned in the second half o f the sixties and the first half o f the seventies because N e w Left faculty members, in cahoots w i t h N e w Left students drunk on their p o w e r to disrupt campuses, were deter­ mined to shatter academic hierarchy and, in the process, replace West­ ern Civilization w i t h courses favored by the invading hordes o f neo-Marxists, militant blacks, and angry feminists. T h e problem w i t h that argument is that radical N e w Left activists never came close to attaining a majority among students, m u c h less faculty, on most campuses—including the elite institutions that w e r e centers o f stu­ dent protest and garnered the most extensive national publicity. A t Columbia University, where the administration closed the school in response to a student strike in A p r i l 1968, only about 1,000 o f the 4,400 undergraduates w e r e actually on strike, and many fewer took part in the occupation o f buildings. That was, as one historian notes, a large minority—but still a m i n o r i t y .

7

At the time, the unremitting incidence o f turmoil on college cam­ puses made student protesters look much more dominant than they

142

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

actually were. N o one w h o lived through the period, whether as an outsider or a member o f an academic community, will forget the birth o f the Free Speech movement on the Berkeley campus o f the University o f California in 1964 and the mass arrests at Sproul Hall; the student occupation o f L o w Library at C o l u m b i a in 1968 ; the menacing posture o f black students wielding guns at Cornell University in 1969; or the shooting o f antiwar demonstrators

by National

Guardsmen at K e n t State University and by police at Jackson State C o l l e g e in 1970. T h e images are equally indelible for those w h o cherish, despise, or have a m i x e d v i e w o f the cultural legacy o f the sixties. Conservatives, however, always focus on the acts o f lèse-majesté committed by students and rarely mention either the

shootings

at K e n t and J a c k s o n State, or police actions authorized by other universities—except to maintain that any action taken to suppress the student protests was justified. A n d regardless o f h o w student rebellions were handled at various universities, the disruptive protests were over by the mid-seventies. T h e rebels were replaced by devoted careerists, among students and faculty alike, w i t h little time or inclination to challenge the existing order o f things. W h y , then, did campus upheavals that proved to be finite phenomena

have such a

far-reaching impact on American universities? A l l o f the campus protesters o f the sixties, including faculty as well as students, w e r e enraged at academic hierarchies that had produced some o f the leading strategists o f the Vietnam War. Their anger was directed not at academic programs per se—especially not liberal arts—but at the quasi-corporate structure o f universities and the close connections between some o f the nation's most respected higher education institutions and research funded by the military. T h e covert institutional

association between C o l u m b i a and the Institute for

Defense Analysis (IDA), a weapons research think tank financed by the U . S . Department o f Defense, typified the kind o f affiliation that touched off antiwar demonstrations on campuses throughout the nation. A t C o l u m b i a , the weapons research connection produced the mass protests that disrupted normal academic life on the Morningside Heights campus throughout the spring o f 1968. (The university eventually severed its association w i t h I D A . ) Staughton L y n d , an assistant professor o f history at Yale and one o f the most prominent

N e w Left faculty members involved in

Blaming It on the Sixties

143

the antiwar movement, had given voice to the anger directed at the "military-academic c o m p l e x " at one o f the first w i d e l y publicized teach-ins, on the Berkeley campus in 1965. R e p l y i n g to accusations from other faculty members that there was nothing scholarly about his opposition to the war, L y n d declared, " I am employed by Yale University, the institution w h i c h produced the architect o f the B a y o f Pigs, R i c h a r d Bissell; the author o f Plan S i x for Vietnam, W. W. R o s t o w [special assistant to presidents K e n n e d y and J o h n s o n ] ; and that unagonized reappraiser, M c G e o r g e B u n d y [also a hawkish aide to both Kennedy and J o h n s o n ] . . . . I think I k n o w something about the I v y League training w h i c h these unelected experts receive: a training in snobbishness, in provincial ethnocentrism, in a cynical and manip8

ulative attitude toward human b e i n g s . " Lynd, w h o did not have tenure at the time, was fired by Yale and eventually became a labor lawyer. M a n y o f the best k n o w n leaders o f the N e w Left initially sounded as disillusioned as conservatives w o u l d in later years about what they considered the academy's betrayal o f traditional scholarly ideals. M a r k R u d d , the most visible protest leader at C o l u m b i a , said that he had entered the university "expecting the I v y T o w e r on the H i l l — a place where committed scholars w o u l d search for truth in a w o r l d that desperately needed help. Instead, I found a huge corporation that made money from real estate, government research contracts, and student fees; teachers w h o cared only for advancement in their narrow areas o f study; worst o f all, an institution hopelessly mired in the 9

society's racism and militarism." O n e can charge dissidents like R u d d with naïveté or w i t h a disingenuous concern for scholarship only insofar as it supported their o w n social v i e w s ; but it is unfair—and unscholarly by any standard o f disinterested scholarship—to call them anti-intellectual

barbarians or, in Bloom's imperial argot,

"natives." Yet there is no question that the anger in the air over the war, and over the connections between the defense industry and the university departments

engaged in scientific research,

metamor-

phosed into a general rage—sometimes focused and sometimes n o t — directed at all academic hierarchy. If antiwar demonstrations did not always focus on the general curriculum, blacks and w o m e n did. A n d although many blacks and feminists were calling not for the exclusion o f the classics but for the

144

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

inclusion o f minority and women's studies, some o f the most vocal, vulgar, and stupid representatives o f both groups—usually selfappointed and always skillful at gaining media attention—did want to jettison those portions o f the curriculum dominated by what were scornfully called D W E M s (Dead White European Males). I was an education reporter covering many campus disputes for The Washington Post during those years, and I was the same age as many o f the student protesters. It was never clear to me w h y anyone, among the students or the faculty, thought there was some inherent

incompatibility

between teaching the traditional Great B o o k s and teaching w o r k s by the w o m e n and African Americans w h o never appeared on any o f the old middlebrow or highbrow lists o f essential reading. After years o f reflection, I have concluded that the abandonment o f many tradi­ tional academic requirements did not come about because radicals had more real p o w e r than academic traditionalists but because the majority o f faculty and administrators, regardless o f their academic and political views, reacted w i t h a combination o f spinelessness and animus—directed

as much

toward one another

as toward

the

students—that precluded fruitful negotiation. M o r e often than not, those w h o tried to mediate were attacked from all sides. T h e right wing's v i e w o f student demands for changes in universi­ ties was conditioned by its hostility toward all social protest. N e o c o n servatives in academia even blurred the distinction between the civil rights movement o f the early sixties and Black P o w e r militancy o f the late sixties. B l o o m , for instance, heaped scorn on white students from the N o r t h w h o participated in the civil rights movement in the South. It [the civil rights activism of northern college students] consisted mostly in going off to marches and demonstrations that were vacationlike, usually during school term, with the confident expectation that they would not be penalized by their professors for missing assignments while they were off doing important deeds, in places where they had never been and to which they would never return, and where, therefore, they did not have to pay any price for their stand, as did those w h o had to stay and live there. . . . T h e last significant student participation in the civil rights movement was in the march on Washington in 1964. After that, Black Power came to the fore, the system of segregation in

Blaming It on the Sixties

145

the South was dismantled, and white students had nothing more to contribute other than to egg on Black Power excesses, the insti­ gators of which did not want their help. The students were unaware that the teachings of equality, the promise o f the Decla­ ration of Independence, the study o f the Constitution,

the

knowledge of our history and many more things were the painstakingly earned and stored-up capital that supported them.

10

I k n o w o f no other passage—certainly none in as influential a book—that so clearly exemplifies the reasons w h y the w o r d o f the right cannot be taken at face value in discussions o f either the open­ ings or closings o f the American mind. Bloom's description o f civil rights demonstrations in the South as "vacationlike" suggests not only that he lacked personal experience o f the drawn-out and dangerous struggle for racial justice but that he never bothered to read the news o f the day. Even his dates are w r o n g ; by "the march on Washington," he presumably means the march led by K i n g , w h i c h took place not in 1964 but in 1963. A s for the statement that the march marked the end o f significant student participation in the civil rights

movement,

B l o o m apparently forgot the "freedom summer" o f 1964 and the voter registration drive for w h i c h A n d r e w G o o d m a n and Michael Schwerner, t w o white students from N e w Y o r k C i t y , and J a m e s Chaney, a black Mississippian, gave their lives. S o m e vacation. B l o o m is certainly to be believed w h e n he recalls that during the sixties, he sat on various committees at C o r n e l l University and " c o n ­ tinuously and futilely voted against dropping one requirement after the n e x t . "

11

B u t it must have been difficult for liberals to entertain

seriously the academic arguments o f a professor w h o s e disdain for all social protesters was so pervasive. I f I had been a y o u n g professor o f classics at Cornell (hardly likely given the scant representation

of

w o m e n on university faculties at the time), I w o u l d have stood foursquare behind m y favorite D W E M s until I heard men like B l o o m handing d o w n their opinions about "natives"—a group that surely included any w o m a n w h o had the temerity to challenge male profes­ sors about anything. T h e n m y innate cultural conservationism w o u l d probably have been overcome by the sort o f rage that makes reason­ able discourse impossible. I do not say that w i t h pride, because any professor w h o w o u l d allow political anger to o v e r w h e l m academic

146

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

j u d g m e n t has no business on a university faculty. Y e t that is exactly w h a t happened—on both sides—in the sixties and early seventies. M o s t o f the fury was confined to departments in the liberal arts and social sciences; the "hard" sciences, apart from the termination o f some defense-related

research projects, were largely unaffected.

T h e r e is no excuse for tenured professors—meeting w i t h bloodyminded colleagues is, after all, part o f their j o b description—who failed to give Bloom's academic arguments a fair hearing because they hated his politics. Neither is there an excuse for right-wing professors w h o failed to distinguish between their academic standards and their conservative social views. What is clear, however, is that liberals and conservatives were no more interested in talking to one another on campuses during the sixties than they are today: i f one wishes to play the "blame g a m e , " there is plenty o f blame to g o around. O n e o f the most reprehensible results o f this abdication o f respon­ sibility was the ghettoization o f African-American, women's, and ethnic studies. W i t h a combination o f backbone and sensitivity, uni­ versity faculty members—whatever their politics—might have dealt w i t h student demands for curriculum change in a v e r y different way. W h o or w h a t was to stop them from including black studies and women's studies in the core curriculum instead o f assigning the new courses to an academic ghetto? Were professors o f the sixties quaking behind their lecterns because they feared that the students w o u l d stop applying to universities and take their places in the workforce as jani­ tors and waiters? T h e liberals, and many conservatives as well, caved not because they were intimidated by student protests but because shunting ethnic and women's studies into a minority ghetto was the easiest thing to do. T h e creation o f intellectual ghettos expanded the number o f fac­ ulty j o b s and left the still o v e r w h e l m i n g l y white male faculties free to teach history or American literature or sociology as they had always taught i t — f r o m a w h i t e male v i e w p o i n t . O n e o f the dirty little secrets o f many w h i t e liberals on college campuses for the past thirty years has been that they share Bloom's contempt for multiculturalism but do not openly voice their disdain. Saul Bellow's famous remark, " W h o is the Tolstoy o f the Zulus? T h e Proust o f the Papuans?", res­ onates throughout academia today. In the early nineties, there was grumbling in academia w h e n T o n i Morrison's novel Beloved (1987)

Blaming It on the Sixties

147

began to make its w a y into college English syllabuses w i t h w h a t was considered unseemly speed. " T h e conservative canard heard in those days was that left-wing professors w e r e casting aside Shakespeare in favor o f M o r r i s o n , " writes A . O . Scott in The New York Times Book 12

Review.

In fact, some white liberals were spreading the same canard:

a fair number o f liberals as w e l l as conservatives were quite willing to throw the multiculturalists a bone by including M o r r i s o n on their reading lists while continuing to make little r o o m for the w o r k o f Langston Hughes or R a l p h Ellison (to cite just t w o examples) outside o f specialized courses in African-American literature. T o o many white professors today could not care less whether most white stu­ dents are exposed to black American writers, and some o f the multi­ cultural empire builders are equally willing to sign off on a curriculum for African-American studies majors that does not expose them to H e n r y James and Edith Wharton. T h e same willingness to ghettoize is also evident in the teaching o f history. A few years ago, I was delivering a lecture at a state university in Southern

California and happened

to mention J o h n

Hope

Franklin's Mirror to America. Franklin's autobiography is unique because it applies the powers o f observation o f a great historian, born in 1915, to all o f the important issues involving race in A m e r i c a in the twentieth century. It is a w o r k o f American history, not only African-American history, and belongs in every H i s t o r y 101 syllabus in every American college. After m y lecture, a w h i t e

student

approached me and said she had read Franklin's b o o k in her elective African-American history course. I asked her i f there were any other white students in the class, and she said there was one Vietnameseborn student, but everyone else, including the professor, was black. T h e de facto segregation o f minority studies that prevails at many institutions, in classes attended almost entirely by minority students and taught by professors from the same minority, is as bad for blacks, Hispanics, and Asians as it is for the w h i t e majority at universities, because putting such courses in a special category devalues them for anyone not planning a career in the multicultural studies ghetto. " I sit w i t h Shakespeare and he winces not," W. E . B . D u B o i s w r o t e in 1903 in The Souls of Black Folk. "Across the color line I m o v e arm in arm w i t h Balzac and D u m a s , w h e r e smiling men and w e l c o m i n g w o m e n glide in gilded halls. F r o m out the caves o f evening that swing

148

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery o f stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all gra­ ciously w i t h no scorn nor condescension. S o , w e d w i t h Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life y o u grudge us, O knightly A m e r i c a ? "

13

It is nothing less than a tragedy that large numbers o f twenty-firstcentury college graduates o f all races are as ignorant o f those words as I was on the day I received m y diploma from Michigan State, more than forty years ago, w i t h o u t ever having been required to read a sin­ gle w o r d written by a black American.

B O T H T H E GRATEFUL and the ungrateful generations got their share of the spoils in the settlement that was reached on most university cam­ puses in the mid-seventies. In many instances, university administra­ tors not only signed off on but instigated such arrangements. Even at universities thought to be citadels o f the counterculture, faculties w e r e content to accommodate student demands within a traditional hierarchical structure, as long as there were enough j o b s to g o around. Sheldon S. Wolin, a political science professor w h o was one o f the leading faculty supporters o f protest movements at Berkeley in the 1960s, notes that b y 1969, "the vast majority o f the faculty drew back from the heavy civic commitment involved, not only in rethinking the nature o f the university but in reorganizing it as well. Such an involvement seemed incompatible w i t h the idea o f a 'research univer­ sity' that had attracted a distinguished faculty in the first place." T h e main desire o f the faculty at Berkeley, as on many other campuses, was to return to the "real w o r k " o f research and publication.

14

As the

historian Maurice Isserman notes, " T h e transformation o f the intel­ lectual class from a marginal, adversarial role to a securely institution­ alized one w e n t on apace in the 1960s regardless o f the momentary radical ascendancy on campuses."

15

O f course it is still possible to get a first-rate liberal education in any number o f American colleges. S o m e institutions have more rigor­ ous requirements than others, and, in any event, it is always possible for self-selected lovers o f learning to learn. H i g h culture can never be obliterated as long as the species continues to produce extraordinary individuals w i t h the inclination and fortitude to pursue their interests and talents against the grain o f the mass culture surrounding them.

Blaming It on the Sixties

149

T h e real loser, throughout thirty years o f steadily expanding enroll­ ment in institutions o f higher education, has been the large middle group o f students—those w h o , in an era o f more rigorous academic requirements, had a g o o d chance o f emerging from their studies w i t h at least a liberal middlebrow education. Thanks to the erosion o f core studies, it is n o w possible at many institutions o f so-called higher learning for a student to receive a degree in p s y c h o l o g y w i t h o u t hav­ ing taken a mid-level b i o l o g y course; for an African-American studies major to graduate without reading the basic texts o f the " w h i t e " Enlightenment; for a business major to graduate w i t h o u t having stud­ ied any literature after her freshman year. A n d all o f these college graduates, should they choose to become teachers at any level o f the educational system, will pass on their narrowness and ignorance to the next generation. D u r i n g the past ten years, many institutions have m o v e d to restore a stronger core curriculum (as they also did in the late seventies), but this grudging, formulaic trend is higher education's equivalent o f the frantic emphasis on standardized testing in elementary and secondary schools: it has everything to do w i t h politics—both academic politics and, in the case o f public universities, the politics o f getting

financial

support from state legislatures. W h e n university officials start talking about a return to "the basics," it is a sure bet that some prominent state legislator or governor has zeroed in on the academic shortcom­ ings o f State U . and that no one is referring to the unquantifiable and more genuine learning w h o s e importance within a society cannot be measured by test scores and can only be mourned in its absence.

A T THE HEIGHT o f the antiwar movement and the various rebellions playing out on college campuses and city streets, the Other Sixties were also unfolding, out o f sight o f the television cameras that brought

social protest—or

rather,

television's version o f social

protest—into American living rooms on the nightly news. T h e press was out in force, however, for the Other America's largest demonstra­ tion o f the decade: the inauguration o f R i c h a r d N i x o n on J a n u a r y 2 2 , 1969. The Washington Post had assigned me, along w i t h most o f the younger reporters on the city staff, to the miserable task o f standing outdoors on a raw day in order to follow the progress o f N i x o n ' s inau-

150

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

gural parade along Pennsylvania Avenue. Taking notes w i t h numb fingers, I watched as a float filled w i t h robotically cheerful young men and w o m e n passed by, to the strains o f an infernal ditty titled " U p W i t h People." T h e paean to ordinary people assured the shivering inaugural c r o w d that " y o u meet e m wherever y o u g o . " Here on parade was what N i x o n had dubbed the silent majority, a collection o f neatly g r o o m e d y o u n g people w h o were not long­ haired weirdos but the sixties equivalent o f our current president's beloved "folks." Like N i x o n ' s o w n daughters, J u l i e and Tricia, the y o u n g Republicans converging on Washington looked as i f they had never marched in a peace demonstration, failed to get regular hair­ cuts, gone bare-legged instead o f wearing pantyhose w i t h their skirts, or lived w i t h a member o f the opposite sex without being married. " T h e sixties are over," I moaned that night, as m y colleagues and I d r o w n e d our inaugural sorrows in the scotch that, in spite o f the p o p ­ ularity o f marijuana among our contemporaries on college campuses, all y o u n g reporters o f m y generation still consumed in copious quan­ tities in order to prove that w e were one o f the boys—especially if w e w e r e in the still tiny minority o f girls. T h e year 1968 had been filled w i t h such terrible events that even an action-junkie journalist could not m o u r n its passing. A t the Post, w e had watched w i t h horror as smoke and flames rose over our city dur­ ing the days o f rioting that followed King's assassination. T h e n came R o b e r t Kennedy's murder, the Soviet Union's invasion o f Czechoslo­ vakia, and the Democratic National Convention in C h i c a g o — t h e lat­ ter t w o events unfolding almost simultaneously on television in the third w e e k o f August. B l o o d flowed in the streets o f both Prague, w h e r e Soviet soldiers killed more than seventy and w o u n d e d more than seven hundred, and C h i c a g o , w h e r e M a y o r R i c h a r d J . Daley's police clubbed demonstrators and television cameras recorded, in real time, the sight o f bloodied y o u n g men and w o m e n fleeing for their lives and seeking refuge in the lobby o f the Hilton Hotel. Hundreds w e r e injured in C h i c a g o but, "miraculously," no one died from the clubbings.

16

T h e demonstrators had waved signs proclaiming: " T h e

W h o l e World Is Watching," and that was true. B u t the w o r l d — a t least the part o f the w o r l d composed o f Americans w h o w o u l d vote for N i x o n — w o u l d not interpret the events in C h i c a g o as the demon­ strators interpreted and experienced them. Instead o f seeing out-of-

Blaming It on the Sixties

151

control police attacking unarmed kids, m u c h o f the public saw defenders o f law and order, pushed beyond endurance by unwashed hippies chanting obscenities and scorning every traditional notion o f propriety and decency. T o some degree, a vote for N i x o n represented a vote for the silent majority's concept o f desirable family values and manners—for Pat Nixon's g o o d Republican cloth coat, for t w o duti­ ful daughters w h o dressed, looked, and spoke like the elder daughter in Father Knows Best. It is impossible to single out one determining factor in N i x o n ' s improbable comeback during that year o f blood and rage. M a n y disil­ lusioned supporters o f Senator Eugene M c C a r t h y , in their early twenties and eligible to vote for the first time, did sit out the election. Some Americans mistakenly thought that N i x o n , simply because the Democrats had presided over the escalation o f the war, was more likely than H u m p h r e y to end it. B u t N i x o n ' s support was always strongest among voters w h o hated antiwar protesters.

Humphrey

carried only one southern state, Texas, in 1968. Alabama governor George Wallace, running on a third-party ticket, carried Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and N i x o n carried all the other southern and border states. H a d Wallace not been running, N i x o n w o u l d certainly have w o n the entire South (as he did in 1972). Democrats were, after all, responsible for passing the C i v i l R i g h t s A c t o f 1964, w h i c h mandated desegregation o f public accommodations, and the Voting R i g h t s Act o f 1965 : southerners had g o o d reason to think that such challenges to their w a y o f life w o u l d never have become law if a Republican had been in the W h i t e H o u s e . Even absent the dying issue o f legal segregation, N i x o n was the perfect candidate for those w h o resented all o f the cultural changes o f the sixties. O n e o f the persistent motifs o f his career had been a barely disguised e n v y o f those w h o benefited from educational and e c o ­ nomic advantages that he had never enjoyed as a y o u n g man. A t a time w h e n college campuses were seen as the incubators o f left-wing anti­ w a r protests, Nixon's long association w i t h anti-intellectualism and anti-Communism were campaign assets. D i c k N i x o n , the perfect rep­ resentative o f the Other Sixties, stood for everything and everyone opposed to draft-dodging eggheads w h o had never w o r k e d a day in their lives. In 1969, a Gallup Poll conducted for Newsweek revealed the breadth

152

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

and depth o f the silent majority's disapproval o f student demonstra­ tors. (Significantly, the Newsweek poll was limited to white adults. Blacks were not considered "middle Americans," the group targeted by the pollsters.) M o r e than 84 percent felt that protesters on college campuses had been treated "too leniently" by university and law enforcement authorities. M o r e than 85 percent also thought that black militants had been dealt w i t h too leniently.

17

"It is almost

impossible to overstate the resentment in middle America against the recent turbulence on the nation's college campuses," observed one analyst, adding that the resentment "has a special spice for those in the lower economic brackets" because they see the protests as a manifesta­ tion o f "ingratitude and irresponsibility on the part o f those w h o have a chance that they never g o t . " Abraham Kaplan, a professor o f philos­ ophy at the University o f Michigan—another major center o f stu­ dent protest

and the birthplace o f Students for a Democratic

S o c i e t y — c o m m e n t e d that the y o u n g demonstrators had violated their parents' image " o f what college is—a place where there are trees, w h e r e the kids drink cocoa, eat marshmallows, read Shakespeare, and once in the spring the boys can look at the girls' underthings."

18

This image o f ungrateful, privileged y o u t h spilled over onto the intellectuals w h o w e r e presumed to be running the colleges—and running them badly, in the opinion o f parents w h o were not happy about w r i t i n g tuition checks to institutions that had allowed classes to be canceled as a result o f student disruptions. S. I. Hayakawa, presi­ dent o f San Francisco State College, became a hero to conservatives w h e n he took strong action to suppress protest demonstrations on his campus, and his actions resonated throughout the country because they took place against the backdrop o f a city regarded as the head­ quarters o f the counterculture. It was not lost on Hayakawa's sup­ porters that San Francisco State was then a commuter school with a large enrollment o f students w h o represented the first generation in their families to attend college, w h i l e Berkeley, across San Francisco Bay, was one o f the schools o f choice for affluent Californians. College-educated parents were much more likely than others to feel that there was some justification for student protests; they were also less antagonistic toward the "sexual revolution" and less concerned about a decline in traditional religious values. As the sixties ended,

Blaming It on the Sixties

153

the press generally treated the silent majority or middle A m e r i c a — presumed to be identical—as a group defined mainly b y blue-collar j o b status and a relatively l o w level o f education. T w o other elements—regional and religious identification—were largely ignored by the media except w h e n civil rights issues w e r e being discusssed. Yet religious and regional loyalties played crucial roles throughout the Other Sixties, as they have in the renewed cul­ ture wars o f the past twenty years. T h e old combination o f funda­ mentalism w i t h anti-intellectualism, coupled w i t h a n e w disdain for scientific as well as scholarly "elites," was one o f the most undercovered stories o f the demythologizing decade. G e o r g e Wallace summed up the mixture o f class, regional, and anti-intellectual resentment that animated his campaign w h e n he declared, " T h e great pointy heads w h o k n e w best h o w to run everybody's life have had their day."

O F ALL the cultural phenomena slighted b y the contemporary media and academic community, the rejuvenation o f fundamentalist reli­ gion was unquestionably the most important. N o t that fundamental­ ism had ever really gone away, but it received a j o l t o f adrenaline from both the civil rights laws o f the early sixties and the cultural rebellions o f the late sixties. T h e fundamentalist resurgence was profoundly anti-intellectual, in part because the pointy heads w e r e seen as the source o f school desegregation plans cooked up by rich liberal intel­ lectuals at the expense o f ordinary people w h o could not afford segre­ gated private schools, or public schools in affluent l i l y - w h i t e neighborhoods, for their children. B u t an equally powerful element in the n e w fundamentalist anti-intellectualism was hatred o f liberal intellectual trends within churches themselves. T h e r e is no question that the anti-liberal white Christian fundamentalists o f the s i x t i e s — including those w h o were y o u n g at the time and those w h o w e r e already important church leaders—have garnered more souls for their flock during the past forty years than socially liberal Christian reli­ gious figures, like the R e v e r e n d William Sloan Coffin and Father R o b e r t Drinan, w h o were k n o w n for their crusading against the V i e t ­ nam War and on behalf o f other progressive social causes. T h e funda­ mentalists concentrated on converting people to their particular religious beliefs, while clerics like Coffin and Drinan wanted to per-

154

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

suade people o f many religious beliefs to support their vision o f a m o r e just America. D u r i n g the sixties, fundamentalist churches, from conservative Southern Baptists to sects like the Pentecostals, g r e w at the expense o f mainstream, generally more liberal Protestant denominations ranging from the Lutherans and Presbyterians on the right to Unitarians on the left. T h e trend has continued to this day. A key figure in the fun­ damentalist movement o f the sixties was the charismatic Dallas preacher W. A . Criswell, w h o , on October 1 3 , 1968, delivered a rous­ ing sermon titled " W h y I Preach That the Bible Is Literally T r u e " from the pulpit o f his huge, 26,000-member First Baptist Church o f Dallas. Criswell, w h o died in 2002 at age ninety-two, was described in an obituary in Christianity Today as "a h o l y roller w i t h a P h . D . . . . w h o preached w i t h the bombast o f B i l l y Sunday and the urgency o f Savonarola." A n important player in the post-1960 rightward m o v e ­ ment o f the Southern Baptist C o n v e n t i o n — t h e largest denomina­ tional g r o u p in the n a t i o n — C r i s w e l l once excoriated political and religious liberals as " s k u n k s . "

19

A graduate o f Baylor University, a

Baptist institution since it was chartered in 1845, Criswell considered his alma mater far too liberal for the training o f orthodox ministers and in 1971 founded his o w n fundamentalist seminary, the Criswell C e n t e r for Biblical Studies.* Even m o r e important for the future o f what w o u l d come to be k n o w n as the Christian right, Dallas's First Baptist C h u r c h organized an entire system o f private schools, originally designed to avoid desegregation but ultimately serving the much larger purpose o f edu­ cating Christian children w i t h o u t secular influences like the teaching o f evolution. Because Criswell was one o f the most influential Baptist pastors in the South, his educational strategy was w i d e l y replicated by devout r i g h t - w i n g evangelicals throughout the region. T h e resulting private school system ensured that "the children o f church members and like-minded people could m o v e from kindergarten through grad­ uate study in school environments that they considered theologically safe, unlike those found in the public schools and universities and in

* In 1991, a majority of the Baylor board of trustees voted to sever all legal ties with the Texas Baptist Convention.

Blaming It on the Sixties

155

denominationally affiliated schools . . . considered w a y w a r d , such as Southern Methodist University and B a y l o r U n i v e r s i t y . "

20

T h e resurgent fundamentalists w e r e saying no to more than the counterculture o f the sixties; like William Jennings B r y a n and his fol­ lowers in the first three decades o f the century, the n e w fundamental­ ist generation was also saying no to intellectualism and modernism. Outside the South, the strength and single-mindedness o f the n e w fundamentalists were rarely noted. O n e exception occurred in J u n e 1970, less than a month after the killings o f the students at K e n t State and Jackson State, w h e n the Southern Baptist Convention held its 125th annual meeting. In this time o f immense social turmoil, the main issue roiling the Southern Baptists was not the Vietnam War. What really angered the 13,355 delegates, called "messengers" and representing more than 35,000 Baptist churches, was the publication of a w o r k o f biblical criticism suggesting that the first five books o f the Bible were drawn from many sources over a long period o f time rather than dictated by G o d directly to Moses. T h e v i e w o f the Bible as the w o r k o f many human hands and minds, albeit divinely inspired, has been held by mainstream biblical scholars, including many J e w s and Catholics as w e l l as Protestants, since the middle o f the nineteenth century; the question o f whether the Bible is the literal w o r d o f G o d has divided fundamentalists from more liberal Protestant denominations since the eighteenth century. Yet an overwhelming majority o f the Southern Baptist delegates w e r e outraged that their Sunday School Board had authorized publication of a w o r k that cast doubt on the divine authorship o f the Bible. In a front-page article—the prominent display was extremely rare at the time for any religion story unconnected to a racial dispute—The New York Times described the controversy as "a reflection o f the g r o w i n g tension between increasingly urban-oriented and academically quali­ fied national leaders and traditional rural and anti-intellectual ele­ ments o f the denomination." Defenders o f the b o o k w e r e shouted d o w n on the convention floor. O n e pastor rose to say that Southern Baptists were compromising their tradition o f biblical literalism by "using p s y c h o l o g y " and becoming involved in

counterculture-

inspired practices like "sensitivity training" for clergy. " I believe the Bible," said the R e v e r e n d R o b e r t Scott. "Jesus believed the Bible. Southern Baptists believe the Bible. It's been said that w e ' v e got r o o m

156

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

for the most conservative and the most liberal in the Southern Baptist Convention. B u t brother, I say that's too much r o o m . "

21

T h e author o f the offending book, the British Baptist scholar G . H e n t o n Davis, also had the temerity to suggest that Abraham may have misunderstood God's command w h e n he agreed to sacrifice Isaac. In fact, the Southern Baptists were right to identify creeping theological liberalism in this particular piece o f biblical revisionism. Liberal religious believers have always had a problem w i t h a capricious G o d w h o w o u l d be so cruel as to demand that a man sacrifice his only son, and placing the onus on Abraham certainly lets J e h o v a h off the hook. M o r e o v e r , i f Abraham did misunderstand G o d , w h o is to say that Jesus did not misunderstand his Father's desires on that fateful day in Jerusalem? That w o u l d certainly be an unholy thought for any fundamentalist. After the convention voted to bar its Sunday School Board from distributing the offending book, one prescient Baptist officiai linked the reaction to a broader political polarization and an "ultraconservative tide" sweeping the country. "Southern Baptists as a w h o l e have always mirrored their culture, and this is a tragedy," said the R e v ­ erend L e e Porter, pastor o f the First Baptist Church o f Bellaire in Houston. " I w i s h this weren't so, but it i s . "

22

O v e r the next twenty

years, what the Times referred to as "urban-oriented and academically qualified" Southern Baptists were overwhelmed by politically and culturally conservative anti-intellectuals. Baptists w h o believed that religion was compatible w i t h science and modern scholarship (includ­ ing biblical scholarship) w o u n d up leaving and j o i n i n g churches affili­ ated w i t h the more liberal American Baptist C o n v e n t i o n — a move reminiscent o f the northward j o u r n e y made by pro-evolution scien­ tists in the nineteenth century. A n d many Southern Baptist C o n v e n ­ tion pastors and church members became Christian soldiers in the army o f the N e w R i g h t . A n equally important development was the rise o f a powerful Christian right-wing y o u t h movement, the Campus Crusade for Christ, w h o s e members w e r e dubbed "Jesus freaks" by their contem­ poraries on the left. T h e C a m p u s Crusade was actually founded in 1951 by Bill Bright, a southern California businessman, but it did not gain any real traction at universities outside the Bible Belt until the late sixties, w h e n the evangelists began appealing to y o u n g men and

Blaming It on the Sixties

157

w o m e n , many disillusioned w i t h drugs and the sexual revolution and looking for a w a y to remake their lives. In a m o v e o f great symbolic importance, the group held its national convention in 1967 at B e r k e ­ ley, where a y o u n g evangelist named J o n Braun stood on the steps o f Sproul Hall and praised Jesus as "the world's greatest revolutionary." As Isserman and Michael Kazin point out in their history o f the divided sixties, the initial appeal o f the C a m p u s Crusade evangelists was greatly enhanced by their deliberate adoption and adaptation o f counterculture dress and language, minus the obscenities, for the pur­ pose o f preaching old-time religion. With long hair and tie-dyed clothes, the religious crusaders looked exactly like their radical left contemporaries. S o m e organizations adopted imitation-hip names like the Christian World Liberation Front and the Jesus Christ Light and P o w e r C o m p a n y and opened shelters for y o u n g people burned out b y d r u g s .

23

T h e appeal o f the

Christian fundamentalists was similar to that o f strict Hasidic sects in the J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y : they offered rules and certainty to some young men and w o m e n w h o had found o n l y unhappiness w h e r e oth­ ers had found personal freedom. T h e C a m p u s Crusade, w h i c h had only 109 paid employees in i960, g r e w into a national organization with 6,500 staffers and a budget o f $42 million by the mid-seventies.

24

Today, the Crusade is a proselytizing international organization—its activities are especially controversial in M u s l i m countries—with more than 27,000 paid staff and 225,000 volunteers in 190 countries.* D u r i n g the sixties and early seventies, the resurgence o f militant fundamentalism was largely ignored not o n l y by the general press but the emerging n e w breed o f pointy-headed conservative intellectuals. T o fundamentalists, as to most o f the American public, pointy heads were synonymous w i t h liberals. T h e conservative pointy heads, many of them N e w Y o r k J e w s , may have k n o w n as little about fundamen­ talists as fundamentalists did about t h e m — o r they may simply not

* At American colleges today, one of the Campus Crusade's more effective endeavors is counter-programming aimed at speakers presenting a liberal or secular point of view. When I delivered a lecture about my book Freethinkers at Eastern Kentucky University, the large and active Campus Crusade chapter sponsored a combination lecture/revival meeting featuring a speaker who claimed to have overcome his pedophile impulses by being born again in Christ. M y speech attracted only about 150 students, and I was told that the recovering pedophile drew an audience of 500 on the same night.

158

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

have k n o w n what to say about the right-wing religious revival. In 1970, the year Commentary came out o f the neoconservative closet and launched its attack on the counterculture, the editors had nothing to say about the fundamentalist counter-counterculture in the making. O f course, Commentary was published by the American J e w i s h C o m m i t t e e and edited mainly by J e w s , and conservative secular J e w ­ ish intellectuals have always had a problem facing and 'fessing up to the pivotal role o f Christian fundamentalists in the overall conserva­ tive movement. Ten years before the Christian right flexed its muscles during the R e a g a n campaign, it probably never occurred to the J e w ­ ish defenders o f the n e w conservative faith that they w o u l d have to deal seriously w i t h political allies w h o strongly supported the state o f Israel mainly because it is home to the plain o f Armageddon—the place w h e r e Jesus is expected to return for the final battle o f good against evil, w h i c h w i l l put an end to J e w s and everyone else w h o has not accepted Jesus as the Messiah. O n that day, contributors to Com­ mentary and The Nation—past

and present—will finally be bound for

the bottomless pit in the same boat. Also destined for the pit are large numbers o f liberal Catholics. In v i e w i n g the American religious landscape o f the sixties, American Catholicism must be regarded as a special case because the reform movement within the Catholic C h u r c h was led from the Vatican and began w i t h the 1958 election o f J o h n X X I I I as pope. T h e Catholicism in w h i c h I was baptized in 1945 and confirmed in 1956 represented, as one Catholic w i t noted, "the only the C h u r c h . " T h e Reverend A n d r e w M . Greeley writes, "the mantra that governed Catholic life in the 19th and early 20th centuries was that 'the church should not change, cannot change, and w i l l not change'—a counterpart o f the old Baltimore Catechism's contention that ' G o d always was, always w i l l be, and always remains the same.' "

2 5

B u t the church did begin to

change under Pope J o h n , the octogenarian w h o was the most progres­ sive pontiff in centuries. Everything one heard about the rotund pope, born A n g e l o Giuseppe R o n c a l l i and k n o w n for the aid he had rendered imperiled J e w s during the Second World War, was humane and endearing. O n e o f his first actions was to abandon the old custom, adhered to by his gaunt predecessor, Pius X I I , that the pope always eats alone. In 1962, J o h n convened the Second Vatican Council in R o m e in an effort to update rituals and doctrine and breathe new life

Blaming It on the Sixties

159

into an institution that had long been dominated from the top by antimodernism and an obsession w i t h controlling the sexual practices o f the faithful. W h e n he greeted J e w i s h observers (another first) attend­ ing Vatican I I , the pope, alluding to his middle name and the Bible story o f J o s e p h and his brothers, w e l c o m e d the rabbis w i t h the state­ ment: " I am Joseph, y o u r brother." T o those not raised on pre-Vatican II Catholicism, it is difficult to convey the aura o f freedom and hopefulness that fueled debate within the church during the brief period o f John's papacy. M a n y Catholics hoped that priests w o u l d be allowed to marry, that the church w o u l d ease its condemnation o f divorce and allow remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments, and, above all, that the Vatican w o u l d rescind the ban on artificial birth control that tortured married Catholics w i t h the prospect o f eternal damnation for the mortal sin o f having sex while using contraceptives. T h e w o r k o f Vatican II had barely begun w h e n Pope J o h n died, and, given the authoritarian nature o f the church, no attempts at institutional liberalization could succeed without the support o f a committed activist pope. B u t the genie could not be returned to the bottle for Catholics in the U n i t e d States and Europe. D u r i n g the sixties, American-born Catholics became more like mainstream Protestants in their relationship to religious doctrine and ecclesiastical authority: they still wanted to be baptized, married, and buried in the church, but they w e r e not about to let priests, bishops, or popes tell them w h a t to think or h o w they should behave in the privacy o f their bedrooms. "Cafeteria Catholics" was the contemptuous

term invented by theological conservatives to

describe their more liberal brethren. However, there was also a v e r y different breed o f "cafeteria Catholics," deeply angered by changes in ritual, such as the abandon­ ment o f the Latin mass, and by the increasingly outspoken opposition o f many priests, nuns, and even bishops to racial discrimination and the Vietnam War. A l t h o u g h many grassroots Catholic social conser­ vatives were as anti-intellectual as southern fundamentalist Protes­ tants, their anti-intellectualism was rooted not in biblical literalism but in a longing for the pre—Vatican II church o f their youth. These disillusioned right-wing Catholics w o u l d , in the years after the 1973 Supreme C o u r t decision legalizing abortion, form a previously unimaginable alliance w i t h fundamentalist Protestants. Like the fun-

IÔO

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

damentalists, w h o were suspicious o f secularizing forces at Protestant institutions such as Baylor, the right-wing cafeteria Catholics disap­ proved o f secularizing trends at the oldest, most venerated Catholic institutions o f higher education. T h e best American Catholic univer­ sities, encouraged by J o h n X X I I I ' s ecumenicism, were turning them­ selves into first-rate centers o f secular as w e l l as religious learning during the late fifties and early sixties, and the influence o f liberal Catholic intellectuals at those institutions remains a thorn in the side o f Vatican conservatives to this day. American Catholic battles over the changes set in motion by J o h n X X I I I were also fought out at a high intellectual level, w i t h the liberal Catholic intellectuals o f Com­ monweal and the Jesuit w e e k l y America on one side and the right-wing warriors o f William F . Buckley's National Review on the other. B u c k ­ ley himself, the voice o f y o u n g conservatism since the publication in 1951 o f God and Man at Yale, was anti-secular, not anti-intellectual. His defense o f traditional Catholicism was only one part o f a broader cultural, political, and economic conservatism that anticipated the neoconservative revolt o f many J e w i s h intellectuals by fifteen years. B y 1968, R i c h a r d N i x o n already understood that conservative reli­ gious believers, including fundamentalist Protestants and right-wing Catholics, could form a n e w base for the Republican Party. D u r i n g the campaign, D i c k and Pat N i x o n did not bother to call on R e i n hold Niebuhr, the most prominent liberal Protestant theologian in A m e r i c a ; they did, however, make a well-publicized appearance in Pittsburgh at one o f Graham's "crusades." A t the inauguration, G r a ­ ham returned the favor b y offering thanks to a G o d w h o "hast per­ mitted R i c h a r d N i x o n to lead us at this momentous hour o f history." A n d w h e n N i x o n opened the W h i t e H o u s e to religious services, G r a ­ ham was the first speaker. H e was often seen at gala events, including 26

a W h i t e H o u s e dinner for N e i l A r m s t r o n g . Just six months into the N i x o n administration, N i e b u h r attacked what he called the " N i x o n G r a h a m doctrine" for its insistence that America's massive problems o f race and poverty be remedied by individual spiritual solutions rather than social action in w h i c h government had a responsibility to participate.

27

His article, titled " T h e King's Chapel and the King's

C o u r t , " was published in Christianity and Crisis, a major organ o f lib­ eral Protestantism. T h e followers o f evangelists like Graham formed a n e w p o o l o f conservative voters w h o had already abandoned the old

Blaming It on the Sixties

161

N e w Deal coalition, and they were ripe for the political alliance w i t h conservative Catholics that w o u l d emerge after the 1973 Supreme C o u r t decision legalizing abortion. But whenever religious trends were analyzed in the sixties and early seventies, both the press and distinguished scholars concentrated almost exclusively on the secularizing and liberalizing religious impulses most evident among people like themselves. In his magiste­ rial A Religious History of the American People (1972), the Yale University historian Sydney E . Anlstrom describes "religious antitraditionalism" as the spiritual hallmark o f the sixties. O n e o f the strongest elements o f this anti-traditionalism, he argues, was a " g r o w i n g commitment to a naturalism or 'secularism' and corresponding creeping doubts about the supernatural or sacral." T h e secularist influence, he adds, had been reinforced by "increasing doubt as to the capacity o f present-day ecclesiastical, politial, social, and educational institutions to rectify the country's deep-seated w o e s . "

2 8

A footnote on the

penultimate

page o f Ahlstrom's book offers a fascinating insight into the reasons w h y most intellectuals, whether liberal or conservative, failed to per­ ceive the strength o f the anti-secular and anti-intellectual fundamen­ talist revolt brewing between the coasts—and especially in the South. In A p r i l - M a y 1970 the final two weeks o f my course on American religious history were swallowed up in the turmoil of demonstra­ tions and protest related to a widely publicized trial o f several Black Panthers in N e w Haven, the American invasion of C a m b o ­ dia, the National Guard's killing of four students at Kent State University, and the police slaying of two more at Jackson State College. The course, in other words, merged with the subject matter in this concluding chapter [on the s i x t i e s ] . . . . Only with the passage of time, if ever, will it become clearer which elements of the situation had the most enduring effects and which ones, therefore, should have registered their impact on would-be histo­ rians. H o w much more impossible it is to account for a whole nation's turmoil during an entire decade!

29

There is no awareness in this passage o f the existence o f millions o f devoutly religious Americans w h o thought that professors had no business teaching religious history in the first place if they allowed

IÔ2

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

their courses to be "swallowed u p " by w o r l d l y events. Far from being impressed b y the naturalistic and secularistic logic that was suppos­ edly sweeping the nation, the resurgent fundamentalists o f the sixties reaffirmed their faith in the supernatural—including the God-blessed exceptionalism o f the U n i t e d States—and their contempt for an intellectualism based on either secularism or rationalism. In politics, education, and above all religion, both the left- and the right-wing children o f the sixties were leaving what w o u l d prove to be a lasting anti-intellectual imprint on the culture. B u t the most powerful legacy o f the sixties w o u l d be the decade's youth culture, w h i c h crossed class, racial, and religious lines and, in doing so, unleashed more potent anti-intellectual and anti-rational forces than those engendered b y any form o f politics and social protest.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

LEGACIES: Y O U T H C U L T U R E A N D CELEBRITY CULTURE

O F THE M A N Y potent myths associated w i t h the sixties, the most wrongheaded is a widespread tendency to equate and conflate the decade's youth culture w i t h its left-wing counterculture. T h e y o u t h culture derived its immense p o w e r precisely from its capacity to tran­ scend social and ideological boundaries that Americans had long taken for granted, and that transcendence was made possible b y the huge y o u n g demographic and a completely apolitical marketing machine eager to meet every desire o f those under the magical mark of thirty. Youthful preferences in fashion, movies, television p r o ­ grams, poetry (remember R o d M c K u e n ? ) , and, above all, music be­ came indistinguishable from popular culture as a w h o l e . M y reservations about the sixties y o u t h culture, and m y character­ ization o f many o f its attributes as anti-intellectual, have more to do with its ubiquitousness than w i t h its particulars. A popular culture driven almost entirely b y the preferences o f the y o u n g — a s opposed to one in w h i c h generational tastes f o r m a distinctive but not neces­ sarily dominant n e w strand—discourages the making o f important intellectual and aesthetic distinctions and tends to discard the best expressions o f popular culture from the past. M y eyes m a y g r o w misty, along w i t h the millions o f m y contemporaries w h o turn out for Paul M c C a r t n e y ' s concerts, w h e n I hear "Yesterday" or " W h e n I'm 64," but that attests to nothing except m y nostalgia for a time w h e n the possibility o f being sixty-four years old was as unreal as the possibility o f celebrating m y thousandth birthday. T h e decline o f j a z z in the sixties, even in the black c o m m u n i t y that gave birth to this dis­ tinctively American art form, is just one e x a m p l e — a particularly 163

IÔ4

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

depressing o n e — o f w h a t can g o w r o n g w h e n youth culture and pop culture become synonymous. B o t h y o u n g liberals and y o u n g conser­ vatives bought into the mass-marketed, cleverly packaged pop ethos o f their generation, and the cleverness o f the packaging was demon­ strated by the conviction o f millions o f the y o u n g that their product choices, unlike those o f an older generation brainwashed by "Madison A v e n u e , " were expressions o f free-spirited individuality. It was a burst o f sheer brilliance, i f not divine inspiration, for the Christian Crusade's y o u n g evangelists to raise their profile by preach­ ing from the steps o f Sproul Hall and letting their hair g r o w . T h e unmistakable and powerful message was that y o u could love both Jesus and J o h n Lennon—notwithstanding Lennon's 1966 comment that "the Beatles are more popular than J e s u s , " w h i c h set off protests throughout the Bible Belt and earned Lennon a personal rebuke from the Vatican. A s more than one observer noted at the time, icono­ graphie depictions o f the Christian savior did bear a strong resem­ blance to the long-haired Lennon o f the late sixties. T h e Christian Crusade message had so little intellectual content—-Jesus, the greatest revolutionary of all time melded to love, love, love—that it could be spun to please anyone o f almost any political persuasion, and to sell any­ thing to almost anyone. B o t h the Christian right and the Christian left are still spinning it today, along w i t h the Chase Manhattan Bank, w h i c h in 2006 launched a spectacularly successful television commer­ cial that assured prospective customers, " A l l Y o u N e e d Is L o v e , " w h i l e displaying one image after another o f s e x y - l o o k i n g men and w o m e n l o v i n g l y swiping their Chase-issued credit cards. T h e same apolitical marketing techniques, enhanced by the proliferation o f portable devices for storing and listening to music, have been equally effective during the past t w e n t y years in persuading rich white kids and p o o r black kids to embrace the misogynist, violent, often racist, and always vulgar lyrics o f most rap and hip-hop. In an ironic twist, the mass marketing o f sixties pop music was intimately connected w i t h the depoliticization o f older songs long associated w i t h the O l d Left. F o l k songs that had been considered faintly or forthrightly subversive during the M c C a r t h y era served as an important link between the dissident bohemian culture o f the fifties and the broader counterculture o f the sixties, but they also became quite acceptable—albeit in sanitized versions omitting certain

Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture lyrics that could be considered critical o f A m e r i c a — t o those w h o hated everything else about the counterculture. W o o d y Guthrie's "This Land Is Y o u r L a n d , " written in 1940 and considered a left-wing anthem throughout the forties and into the fifties, exemplified the mainstreaming o f the once subversive. In his novel Going All the Way, set in the early fifties in Indianapolis, D a n Wakefield describes his y o u n g , insecure protagonist's first encounter w i t h the song: "It was a record o f a g u y singing and playing the guitar, but it wasn't hillbilly music exactly. It sounded to Sonny more like English folk songs but it was about America. Something about This land is y o u r land, and it's m y land. . . . T h e words seemed a little communistic."

1

N o t by 1968, w h e n "This Land Is Y o u r L a n d , " w i t h singers sound­ ing more like the M o r m o n Tabernacle C h o i r than Guthrie, blared cheerfully from the " U p With People" float during the N i x o n inau­ gural. Pete Seeger's " I f I H a d a H a m m e r , " performed at C o m m u n i s t rallies in 1949 by Seeger and his group, the Weavers, was recorded in 1962 by Peter, Paul, and M a r y , and led the H i t Parade. A year later, " I f I H a d a H a m m e r " was mainstream enough for the group to sing it from the steps o f the Lincoln M e m o r i a l before Martin Luther K i n g delivered his oration. B y then, no one cared that the song had been written by a man cited ten times for contempt o f Congress after testi­ fying before the House C o m m i t t e e on U n - A m e r i c a n Activities in !955- W h i c h side were y o u on during the sixties? There were many ways to tell, but taste in pop music was not among them. It is all the more remarkable that this depoliticization occurred at a time w h e n opposing political passions seemed to be tearing the country apart. O f course, every generation has its beloved music, rituals, drugs, and sentimental history. What set the children o f the sixties apart from their predecessors was the disproportionate size o f the baby b o o m bulge in relation to the overall population. N e a r l y 78 million children were born from 1946 through 1964—the baby b o o m period as defined by demographers—and more than t w o thirds were born before i960. T h e y n o w make up nearly 28 percent o f the American population, and in the year 2030, w h e n the youngest boomers w i l l turn sixty-six and the oldest w i l l be eighty-four, they w i l l still account 2

for 20 percent o f Americans. T h e y o u n g e r boomers were not old enough actually to participate in the protests o f the sixties, but they were old enough to absorb the commercial youth culture created by

165

166

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

their near contemporaries. A child born in 1957, w h i c h marked the high point o f the baby b o o m , g r e w up w i t h the sights and sounds o f the sixties youth culture—the television, the music, the cultural reference points highlighted by the media. Moreoever, the boomers helped shape and change the tastes o f their parents as well as their y o u n g e r siblings. A glance at family snap­ shots from the fifties, for instance, shows a society in w h i c h teenagers dressed v e r y differently from adults, but by the early seventies, the family album shows the different generations wearing the same uni­ sex clothes—especially at casual events. T h e G a p was established in 1969, supposedly to supply the casual clothing demands o f those on the y o u n g e r side o f the generational divide, but the retail chain and its many imitators actually obliterated the generation gap in clothing. In the thirties and forties, teenage girls had looked to movie stars like Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and J o a n Crawford for style cues: the goal for the y o u n g was to look like sophisticated grown-ups. In the early sixties, Jacqueline K e n n e d y and Audrey Hepburn—still g r o w n - u p s — w e r e style icons. B y the end o f the decade, however, the grown-ups were taking their cues from the y o u n g . Even Jacqueline K e n n e d y Onassis, albeit at the highest level o f fashion, was dressing y o u n g e r by the end o f the sixties; her long hair, casual-seeming, art­ fully and expensively tailored pants, and silk T-shirts made her look y o u n g e r at forty than she had as the carefully coiffed, white-gloved First L a d y o f C a m e l o t in her early thirties. T h e point is not that these changes were bad (although some o f the more monomaniacal neocons have linked casual dress—yet another plot o f the M o v e m e n t ! — w i t h sloppy thinking) but that those w h o were y o u n g forty years ago have exerted a disproportionate and last­ ing influence, for better and for worse, on every generation they have touched. B a b y boomers—the oldest just s i x t y - t w o and the youngest just forty-four—are running just about everything today. T h e y are in charge o f media conglomerates, government agencies, universities, the computer software business, service industries, and retailing. Marketing decisions about h o w to appeal to what is always described as "the coveted i8-to-34 age g r o u p " are being made, in many instances, by people w h o s e membership in that age group expired in the early years o f the R e a g a n administration. Given their political and financial power, those w h o came o f age in the sixties and early

Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture seventies—on the political right and left—can hardly avoid accepting their share o f responsibility for what has happened to American popular culture over the past four decades.

MY

SOMEWHAT jaundiced v i e w o f the sixties y o u t h culture was

shaped by an accident o f personal history that isolated me, for t w o crucial years in m y mid-twenties, from the kaleidoscope o f distrac­ tions that had filled m y days and nights and to w h i c h , through m y role as a reporter, I had made m y o w n modest contribution. In 1969, at age twenty-four, I married the Post's M o s c o w correspondent, took a leave of absence from m y reporting j o b , accompanied m y n e w husband to Russia, and began w o r k on m y first book. I had landed on the moon—the drab and repressive Soviet U n i o n ruled b y a gerontocracy in which Leonid Brezhnev, w h o got along v e r y well w i t h R i c h a r d N i x o n , was first among equals. Without the distractions offered by a prosperous and relatively uncensored society, I found that writing, reading, thinking, and talking w i t h friends offered the o n l y means o f occupying m y mind and m y time. Strict Soviet censorship meant that the classics o f drama, ballet, and music were the o n l y enjoyable sources o f public entertainment, and commercial sources o f private entertainment—including

the Internet and small, portable devices

for recording music—did not yet exist. T h e Soviet U n i o n did o f course have television, but apart from sports, the programming included nothing that could remotely be classified as entertaining. There were many things to see and do in M o s c o w , but everything w o r t h seeing and doing was, in some fash­ ion, a serious matter. A n evening at the theater usually meant a C h e k h o v play or an adaptation o f a great Russian novel. Concerts meant classical music, because the authorities frowned on most West­ ern popular music. T h e performers w e r e generally musicians o f the first rank, because government travel restrictions meant that artists were not free to control their o w n careers by performing abroad. O n e o f the most exciting, meaningful nights o f m y life was a performance in February 1971 by the stellar Russian cellist Mstislav R o s t r o p o v i c h and his students from the M o s c o w Conservatory. H e had j u s t written an open letter defending his friend Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the Soviet authorities had already begun to punish him by canceling his

167

168

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

performances abroad. E v e r y o n e in the audience k n e w this, and every­ one in the hall stood for ten minutes and applauded before he began to play w i t h tears in his eyes. A s it turned out, this w o u l d be the last time Rostropovich was allowed to perform in M o s c o w until his return in 1993, after the disso­ lution o f the Soviet U n i o n . " M u s i c and art are a w h o l e spiritual world in R u s s i a , " he told m e in an interview, after he had been forced to leave his homeland by the authorities. "In Russia, w h e n people go to a concert, they don't g o to it as an attraction, as an entertainment, but to feel l i f e . . . . F o r us art is bread. I w o u l d like to communicate that to people h e r e . "

3

Rostropovich's observation was a precise description o f every aspect o f the private cultural life Russians shared w i t h their friends. T h e value that m y Russian friends placed on high culture opened a n e w w o r l d to me. A n evening in a Russian home might easily include an impromptu j a z z concert and a recitation o f the verses o f the great twentieth-century Russian p o e t s — A n n a Akhmatova, Boris Paster­ nak, and Osip Mandelstam, w h o s e w o r k s had been suppressed throughout most o f the Soviet era. (Mandelstam, w h o was arrested and died in the G u l a g in 1938 after writing an irreverent verse about Stalin, was not published at all.) Russian friends also wanted to leaf through m y art books and pore over reproductions o f famous paint­ ings from Western museums, in c i t i e s — N e w Y o r k , Boston, Paris, Florence, L o n d o n , A m s t e r d a m — t h e y were sure they w o u l d never be able to visit because no one w i t h their political views w o u l d ever be allowed to travel outside the Soviet U n i o n . I reconstructed a recent visit to Florence for an artist friend, and as I tried to describe specific streets and v i e w s in m y less than perfect Russian, I felt a searing shame at having taken for granted m y freedom to travel anywhere to gaze on the masterpieces o f Western culture. T h e r e was a dissident y o u t h culture in the Soviet U n i o n ; but in contrast to the Western y o u t h culture, the rebellious y o u n g in R u s ­ sia w e r e intimately and self-consciously tied to the Russian cultural past. T h e written w o r d was all important. A cultural "happening" was not a performance by a rock band but the arrival at someone's apartment o f a typewritten samizdat manuscript—perhaps some new poems by the y o u n g Leningrad poet J o s e p h B r o d s k y or a copy o f Vospominaniye, the powerful m e m o i r by Osip Mandelstam's w i d o w ,

Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture Nadezhda.* T h e Russians I k n e w were true intellectuals—men and w o m e n w h o lived for ideas and beauty and cultivated both under great duress. F o r them, devotion to all that was best in Russian and w o r l d culture was a survival strategy in a society they w o u l d never have chosen. F o r a fortunate y o u n g American, free to come and g o as she pleased, there was great value in living for a time in a w o r l d o f scarcity, in w h i c h serious men and w o m e n , bound by external con­ straints unimaginable to most Westerners, sought and maintained inner freedom. M y Russian years enabled me, in fact forced me, to v i e w many aspects o f American society—especially its smug selfcongratulation about liberties that were an unearned birthright for most citizens—from a v e r y different perspective. B u t m y time in M o s c o w altered m y responses to American popular culture to a much greater degree, because I had been granted the privilege, for t w o impressionable y o u n g years, o f living among people w h o s e tastes were impervious to mass marketing—whether the product was being pushed by government or business. W h e n I returned to the United States, w i t h the poetry o f A k h m a ­ tova and B r o d s k y in m y mind and heart, I found myself ill at ease in a cultural milieu where Paul Simon and B o b D y l a n were being lionized as true poets, w i t h D y l a n sometimes being compared to M i l t o n , B y r o n , D o n n e , and Keats. There was nothing n e w about the ten­ dency o f y o u n g people in the sixties to evaluate the arts solely on the basis o f their capacity to evoke strong emotions: every generation judges popular music, in particular, by its ability to elicit tears and sexual excitement—the more o f both the better. O n e o f the more droll right-wing diatribes against the sixties concerns rock music, which cultural conservatives like B l o o m , B o r k , and the Harvard g o v ­ ernment professor H a r v e y C . Mansfield criticize not only because they make a principle o f hating everything about the era but on the specious ground that rock differs from all other popular music in its direct appeal to lust. " R o c k is sex on parade," Mansfield soberly 4

declares. A s opposed to forms o f p o p music in w h i c h sex is not on parade? Mansfield praises j a z z and the blues; he apparently thinks that

* Madame Mandelstam's memoir was published in English in 1970 under the title Hope Against Hope (Atheneum).

169

170

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

the " j e l l y " in "Jelly R o l l B l u e s " refers to a substance eaten with peanut butter. T h e most aggravating result o f the reign o f rock was that everyone took it too seriously. Undeterred by the censorious grumbling o f the cultural right, the gaseous theologians o f the cultural left have long attempted to enshrine the music o f the sixties counterculture—as if this particular p o p manifestation possesses a mystical and philosophi­ cal significance raising it above the level o f mere entertainment. S o n g ­ writers o f the sixties w e r e hailed as great poets by a pretentious new class o f academic critics—much longer in the tooth than the average music c o n s u m e r — w h o hitched old techniques o f literary criticism to the rising generation o f p o p stars. Christopher R i c k s , a professor o f humanities at Boston University and the O x f o r d Professor o f Poetry, compared Dylan's " L a y , Lady, L a y , " in w h i c h said lady is told to extend herself across a "big brass bed," to J o h n Donne's elegy, " T o His Mistress G o i n g to B e d . " (Backs, w h o is a truly distinguished scholar o f real English poetry, inexplicably ignores Dylan's role in confusing the distinction between " h e " and " l a y " for boomers w h o came o f age under the spell o f this song.) T h e publication in 2003 o f Ricks's Dylan's Visions of Sin, an unreadable 517-page tome that makes one long for a D w i g h t Macdonald to give it the skewering it deserves, was a landmark in the continuing hagiography o f sixties pop culture. D y l a n and Simon, as it happens, were always quick to dismiss such nonsense. Simon spoke most forcefully on this point in a 1968 inter­ v i e w , in w h i c h he observed that "the lyrics o f pop songs are so banal that i f y o u s h o w a spark o f intelligence, they call y o u a poet. A n d if y o u say you're not a poet, then people think you're putting yourself d o w n . B u t the people w h o call y o u a poet are people w h o never read poetry. Like poetry was something defined by B o b D y l a n . T h e y 5

never read, say, Wallace Stevens. That's p o e t r y . " Simon added that he did not consider himself, D y l a n , or the Beatles real musicians, because real musicians must be virtuosos on their instruments. D y l a n , asked w h a t his songs were "about," famously replied, " S o m e o f them are about three minutes and some are about five minutes."

6

O f course most p o p music enthusiasts never k n e w or cared what academics w e r e saying about their favorite songs, but the com­ bination o f respectful criticism from certified intellectuals w i t h increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for the marketing o f mass

Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture entertainment offered a preview o f a future in w h i c h the entire idea o f critical authority, o f any objective standards for assessing artistic qual­ ity, w o u l d be considered laughable. Resistance to the idea o f aesthetic hierarchy is unquestionably one o f the most powerful cultural lega­ cies o f the sixties, and it is n o w a leitmotif o f m u c h o f the art, music, and literary criticism produced by baby boomers w h o write for main­ stream media. A perfect specimen o f the genre is an essay by Allan Kozinn, a classical music critic for The New York Times w h o also occa­ sionally writes about p o p music. K o z i n n compares n e w versions recorded by new b a n d s — k n o w n in the trade as c o v e r s — o f legendary Beatles songs. Lately I've been wondering why, as a more than casual Beatles fan, I'm not interested in note-perfect covers by Beatles tribute bands, even though, as a classical music critic, I happily spend my nights listening to re-creations—covers, in a w a y — o f Beethoven sym­ phonies and Haydn string quartets. What, when it comes down to it, is the difference? Obviously, this is something of a comparison between apples and oranges: we first heard the Beatles' music on their own recordings, whose sounds are imprinted on our memories and are definitive. Our first encounters with, say, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony were through performances that, however spectacu­ lar, have no direct link to Beethoven himself. Yet Beethoven's score of the work is a detailed blueprint of how he expected it to sound, and any performance will be governed by that, allow­ ing for interpretive leeway that may be subtle or dramatic. A cover band, hoping to reproduce the original recording, has less 7

flexibility.

What, w h e n it comes d o w n to it, is the difference? It is the differ­ ence between Beethoven's N i n t h S y m p h o n y (or any Beethoven s y m ­ phony) and any song or collection o f songs by the Beatles. T h e difference is the infinitely greater emotional richness, technical c o m ­ plexity, and beauty o f Beethoven. I too am a Beatles fan, but, let's face it, if y o u ' v e heard one version o f " S g t . Pepper's L o n e l y Hearts C l u b Band," y o u ' v e pretty much heard them all. (An exception was a d o o w o p version recorded in the nineties, and about that, the less said the

171

172

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

better.) In his heart, K o z i n n must k n o w this, or he w o u l d be a rock music critic and not a classical music critic. O f course it is possible— in fact, it is e a s y — t o love both Beethoven and the Beatles, but any suggestion that they rise to the same level o f musical genius is a gener­ ational delusion propelled by marketing and the sentimentality to w h i c h marketers cater so assiduously. In 1956, C h u c k Berry's hit single " R o l l O v e r Beethoven" heralded the rise o f fifties rock-and-roll w i t h the sassy line, " R o l l over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news." T h e song, w h i c h can still make me j u m p off a couch and start gyrating, became even more p o p ­ ular in the sixties after being recorded and performed frequently in concert by the Beatles. H o w e v e r , many o f the younger, secondgeneration " R o l l O v e r B e e t h o v e n " fans o f the sixties and seventies had never listened to Beethoven or Tchaikovsky. J u s t as "This Land Is Y o u r L a n d " was removed from its historical context by the N i x o n cheerleaders, the title " R o l l O v e r Beethoven" lost its w i t and its sting at a time w h e n fewer and fewer y o u n g people had any interest in D W E M composers. In the long run, nothing dumbs d o w n culture more effectively than the ripping o f popular art—good, bad, or indif­ ferent in quality—from its specific cultural antecedents. T h e decline o f once c o m m o n cultural k n o w l e d g e among the y o u n g was encouraged throughout the sixties not only by the everenlarging m a w o f the entertainment behemoth but by changes in the curriculum o f public elementary and secondary schools. Until the mid-fifties, most public schools in cities and suburbs included music classes in a standard curriculum that forced children to learn some­ thing, i f only cultural reference points like the first few bars o f Beethoven's Fifth S y m p h o n y , about classical music. In a considerable number o f these schools, children also learned h o w to read music. That began to change in the late fifties, w i t h the panic over Sputnik, and the trend continued throughout the sixties, as public schools made haste to jettison music and art classes—called "frills"—in favor o f beefed-up science and mathematics designed to ensure that the Russians w o u l d never again beat us in a space race. M a x R a f f e r t y , a crochety right-winger w h o served as California's elected Superintendent o f Public Instruction throughout most o f the decade, providing another example o f the counter-counterculture at w o r k , decried art and music programs as "finger painting" and "folk

Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture

173

8

dancing." A l t h o u g h he was a tireless proponent o f Latin, R a f f e r t y was either uninterested in or unable to imagine an art or music cur­ riculum that emphasized classics, and California voters approved o f his combination o f anti-intellectual rhetoric and opposition to p r o ­ gressive education.* T h r o u g h o u t the nation, the American tendency to value education only in terms o f its practical results—a p h e n o m e ­ non as old as the republic—reasserted itself strongly in the "no frills" decisions o f many local and state school boards. That the eliminated frills had once provided children w i t h some exposure to a higher cul­ ture than pop was a matter o f little concern to the public.

A L L OF THE D R I V I N G social forces o f the sixties—the counterculture, the counter-counterculture,

and the popular y o u t h culture—were

stimulated by television. In a history devoted entirely to the events o f 1968, M a r k Kurlansky writes that "all o f this [was] occurring at the moment that television was coming o f age but was still n e w enough not to have yet become controlled, distilled, and packaged the w a y it is today." Yes and no. It is true, as Kurlansky argues, that in the late sixties, "the phenomenon o f a same-day broadcast from another part 9

o f the w o r l d was in itself a gripping n e w technological w o n d e r . " Y e t in one critical respect, coverage o f news and the people w h o made it—not only in the political arena but in the arts and in the vast realm o f private experience that included sexual behavior and drug u s e — was already assuming its present packaged and distilled form. T h e culture o f celebrity, defined by the media's circular capacity to create stars w h o shine not because o f specific deeds but mainly because they are the objects o f media attention, was a true child o f the sixties. N o one summed up the process better than the Y i p p i e - t u r n e d entrepreneur J e r r y R u b i n , w h o , looking back on his sixties escapades in 1976 from the ripe old age o f thirty-seven, boasted: "People respect famous people—they are automatically interested in w h a t I have to say. N o b o d y k n o w s exactly w h a t I have done, but they k n o w 10

I'm famous."

A decade later, R u b i n w o u l d grasp the spirit o f yet

* In 1970, in a characteristic California about-face, Rafferty was defeated for reelection by Wilson C . Riles, a noted black educator, a liberal, and a strong supporter of the federal aid to education programs established under the Johnson administration.

174

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

another age by organizing " n e t w o r k i n g " nightclub events for upscale Manhattanites and trying to drum up investors for a vague plan to establish a national chain o f "networking restaurants." O f course, there was nothing n e w about the importance o f celebrities—some o f them even intellectual celebrities—in American culture. Charles Lindbergh was a bigger celebrity in the twenties than N e i l A r m s t r o n g was in the sixties; Ernest H e m i n g w a y , even without television and b o o k tours, was more famous than N o r m a n Mailer.

11

W h a t distinguished the sixties from earlier stages o f the American love affair w i t h celebrities was not j u s t the g r o w i n g p o w e r o f televi­ sion but the proliferation o f movements and causes, all requiring individuals—celebrities—for purposes o f illustration. H a d the sixties really given birth to the overarching M o v e m e n t o f right-wing myth, there w o u l d have been no need for the media to seek, find, and anoint so many demi-celebrities as leaders. There was no feminist or antiwar or black p o w e r central headquarters for a reporter to call, and there was no reliable w a y to ascertain w h o spoke for w h o m or h o w many. K i n g was arguably the last American leader o f a social protest movement w h o s e claims to leadership, w h i l e ultimately certified and publicized by the media, w e r e grounded in years o f grassroots w o r k that made h i m a genuine rather than a media-appointed spokesman for millions o f black Americans. F o r w h o m did R u b i n , M a r k R u d d , Abbie Hoffman, Eldridge Cleaver, or T i m o t h y Leary speak? W h o k n e w ? A s Rubin's 1976 comment suggests, it took Americans less than a decade to forget exactly w h a t his connection had been w i t h the anti­ w a r movement and w i t h various events such as the San Francisco " B e I n " o f 1967. A t the " B e - I n , " tens o f thousands o f y o u n g and not so y o u n g people, decked out in love beads and smoking pot in full v i e w o f national television cameras, gathered in Golden Gate Park to hear speakers w h o included R u b i n , Allen Ginsberg, and T i m o t h y Leary, the e x - H a r v a r d psychologist w h o s e chief mission had become propa­ gandizing for psychedelic drugs and delivering the message, "Turn on, tune in, drop out." W h a t Americans saw on their televisions was a spontaneousappearing gathering—carefully orchestrated, in fact, by the medias a w y expressionist painter Michael B o w e n — t h a t conflated antiwar messages, hatred o f government bureaucracy, drugs, gurus, and, as always, rock music. T h e highlighted speakers ranged from serious

Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture

175

people to dangerous frauds like Leary, but the toxic fumes o f celebrity culture were the strongest drugs being dispensed and consumed. T h e selling o f Leary personified what the sociologist and media critic T o d d Gitlin has aptly called "the marketing o f transgression," a process that w o r k e d for the transgressions and transgressors o f the sixties and continues to w o r k , on a more sophisticated level and w i t h an ever-expanding reach, for the most popular transgressive products o f the twenty-first century. Leary was a lunatic, as anyone not blinded by the celebrity m a ­ chine k n e w forty years ago. H e was nothing more, as one student observed at the time, than "a Harvard professor w h o dropped a c i d . "

12

H e had been hired by Harvard's psychology department in 1959 on the strength o f his reputation

as a specialist in personality

assessment—an area o f expertise apparently absent from the delibera­ tions o f his Harvard interviewing committee—but he was fired in 1963 as a result o f the negative publicity surrounding his proselytizing for L S D . Y e t he became famous largely on the strength o f his ability to convince some members o f the media that there might be some­ thing to his claim that psychedelics could unlock previously hidden creativity (perhaps even turn a newspaper or television reporter into a poet or a novelist). H e also had a gift for hooking up w i t h immensely rich people w h o financed his proselytizing and his drugs. In the m i d sixties in Millbrook, N e w Y o r k , w h e r e Leary threw lavish tripping parties on an estate provided by three heirs to the M e l l o n fortune, the former professor became the object o f numerous prosecutions by the local assistant district attorney, G . G o r d o n Liddy, before L i d d y acquired his o w n fame as one o f the masterminds o f the Watergate break-in at Democratic National C o m m i t t e e headquarters. T h e tale o f Leary's escapades, ending w i t h his arrest in 1973 on fed­ eral drug charges and his decision to turn state's evidence in order to avoid a twenty-five-year prison sentence, unfolds in all o f its sordid detail in R o b e r t Greenfield's Timothy Leary: A Biography (2006), an exhaustive and exhausting 704-page tome. T h e book, w h i c h received an enormous amount o f publicity, is a tribute to the lasting p o w e r o f celebrity, including vintage celebrity, branding. S o m e worthless celebrities really do get more than fifteen minutes o f fame. B o t h the sentimentalizers and the bashers o f the sixties have a stake in building up scarecrow celebrities w h o are held up as heroic or cau-

176

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

tionary examples o f the splendid or sordid developments o f the decade. Leary's role in the drug culture o f the sixties was a case o f the times making the man rather than the reverse; he was born, after all, in 1920, and his "gateway d r u g " to psychedelics was not marijuana but the legal chemical substance, alcohol, favored by his generation. For a variety o f reasons, the appeal o f d r u g s — w h i c h had never really bro­ ken out o f a bohemian "some get a kick from cocaine" subculture in the past—expanded in the sixties to a broader middle-class public. It is doubtful that L e a r y w o u l d have had any cultural influence at all, except on those students unlucky enough to cross his path personally, if the television cameras had never been tuned into and turned on for his performances. O n e thing is certain: more American kids got hooked on mari­ juana, L S D , and heroin in Vietnam than they did listening to Leary in Harvard Yard or Golden Gate Park. Like rock music, the drug culture crossed racial, class, and political barriers. B y focusing on a celebrity as the embodiment o f a phenomenon that was reaching every level o f American society, the media generated publicity that both demonized and glamorized drugs but eschewed any real analysis o f w h y drug use was on the rise and what the change in behavior meant for the future. Watching reports about the " B e - I n " on the evening news, Middle Americans might have been thinking about what a j e r k Leary was or h o w shocked they w e r e at the sight o f a girl w h o s e love beads did not quite hide the outline o f her nipples. T h e younger members o f the audience—for they w e r e an audience, just as the event itself was a performance—might

have been thinking about h o w much

they

w o u l d like to be in San Francisco themselves to take a firsthand look at the goings-on. A t that point, it is unlikely that many audience m e m b e r s — w h e t h e r adherents o f the counterculture or the countercounterculture—were thinking about American boys getting hooked on heroin in the back alleys and brothels o f Saigon.

I HAVE SPOKEN mainly o f television as the medium through which the culture o f celebrity was propagated, but the print media—far more important then than n o w — a l s o played an important role. I was proud o f w o r k i n g for a newspaper that gave reporters the time and

Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture

177

space to tell stories in greater depth than television was able to p r o ­ vide, and at the time I did not v i e w print journalism as a competitor o f television. T h e r e were still three newspapers in Washington, and the Evening Star was the main competitor o f the Post. T h e j o b o f tele­ vision, as I saw it, was to provide same-day pictures o f w h a t was hap­ pening around the w o r l d ; the j o b o f the newspaper—my j o b — w a s to explain w h y these things were happening. B u t even forty years ago, as I walked around Washington w i t h m y reporter's notebook in hand, and phoned m y stories in to the city desk i f there was breaking news, the expansion o f television news was subtlely changing the w a y newspaper reporters did their j o b s . M y awareness that self-appointed spokesmen, always the quickest protesters to step up to the television microphones, w o u l d be appear­ ing on the evening news before m y story appeared in the morning paper created extra pressure to find m y o w n spokesmen—in effect, to anoint m y o w n local celebrities. In general, m y approach to the p r o b ­ lem was to look for representatives less flashy and more thoughtful than the ones w h o appeared on television. In the spring o f 1968, H o w a r d University, the nation's oldest and best k n o w n black institu­ tion o f higher education, was wracked by the same kind o f student protests that were disrupting predominantly w h i t e campuses across the nation. Some o f the issues, including the w a r and the limits o f free speech, were identical to those at w h i t e colleges, but others involved the increasingly abrasive debate between y o u n g blacks and their par­ ents' and grandparents' generations about h o w far blacks should g o to accommodate themselves to a white w o r l d . Most o f the H o w a r d students featured on television w e r e a n g r y looking y o u n g men, Stokely Carmichaels manques sporting Afros and dark sunglasses. I chose to interview the editor o f the student newspaper, Adrienne Manns, partly because she was the campus n e w s ­ paper editor, partly because she seemed more thoughtful than some o f the other student leaders, and partly because she was a w o m a n — a n d , in what was still the pre-feminist era, I was getting tired o f always see­ ing men identified as the only leaders w h o s e opinions

counted.

Manns introduced me to the sardonic phrase "chitterling education," a philosophy rooted in the era o f segregation, w h e n H o w a r d was the pinnacle o f achievement for any outstanding black scholar because

178

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

w h i t e universities did not hire Negroes (as they called themselves then). T o lose one's j o b at H o w a r d meant there was nowhere to g o but d o w n , and that made for a quiescent faculty. Protesters at H o w a r d believed that chitterling education accounted for the older faculty's expectation that students refrain from any criti­ cism o f the education they were getting because they should be grate­ ful to be getting any education at all. I f white veterans were members o f the grateful generation, the N e g r o elders at H o w a r d were doubly grateful. T h e older generation also expected students to be deferential to whites, Manns said, citing as an example the administration's sharp curtailment o f all speech on campus after H o w a r d students had shouted d o w n the Selective Service Administration's director general Lewis B . Hershey. I was impressed by Manns's argument: it was cer­ tainly true that H o w a r d students had done no more than white stu­ dents had done across the nation w h e n military recruiters appeared on campus. " T h e administration is not sympathetic to the new m o o d o f the black student," Manns told me. "Most o f them don't understand; if they do understand, they v i e w what we're saying as a challenge to what they've built up, to their o w n identity." Later, w h e n I interviewed the university's sixty-seven-year-old president, J a m e s M . Nabrit, J r . , he brought me up short by reminding m e that it had o n l y been t w e n t y years since President H a r r y S. T r u ­ man desegregated the military by executive order. T w e n t y years was not enough time, he said, for members o f his generation to approve o f students d r o w n i n g out the voice o f a general w h o had come to their campus to speak. In the same vein, Nabrit mused about his days as the lone N e g r o in his law school classes at Northwestern University: When I was a student at Northwestern, my white classmates would all stamp their feet whenever I started to recite . . . the pro­ fessors never called on me. One day I asked my question anyway. T h e professor just turned to the class and said, "As I was saying before w e were interrupted. . . . " If I had been thin-skinned, I would have left but I stayed on to make the highest average in the class. Today's N e g r o students armor themselves in a different way . . . those of us w h o are older have difficulty breaking away from our own experiences so w e can be receptive to new ways of thinking.

13

Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture B o t h Nabrit and Manns were right, but I left m y interview w i t h the conviction that the president o f H o w a r d understood the students much better than they realized—and that he certainly understood them much better than they understood him. T h e entire affair was infinitely more complicated than the action-filled story I had told in m y daily articles for the Post. I do not think that I turned Manns, or any other student leaders at H o w a r d , into celebrities, and m u c h o f the material from m y interviews w i t h both Manns and Nabrit did o r i g i ­ nally appear in the paper. Nevertheless, I could not do justice to the s t o r y — w h i c h was really a tale o f the limits white A m e r i c a had long placed on the ambitions o f black Americans and differing genera­ tional views o f those limits—until Saturday Review, in the waning stage o f its middlebrow life, gave me 4,000 words to w r i t e about H o w a r d . T h e more limited the space, the greater had been the temp­ tation to rely on a demi-celebrity and shortchange w h a t was really a story about history. A n d if I had failed to fully convey the compli­ cated historical roots and implications o f the H o w a r d controversy in the many articles I w r o t e for the Post, television had broadcast w h a t amounted to a daily cartoon o f angry y o u n g men in p h o n y dashikis and embarrassed-looking old men in suits and ties. T h e celebrity-making role o f the media was even more evident in N e w Y o r k newspaper coverage o f the student uprising at C o l u m b i a , w h i c h came to a head soon after the student rebellion at H o w a r d . T h e N e w Y o r k television stations and newspapers fixated on M a r k R u d d as the dominant campus leader. A n d because N e w Y o r k was the media capital o f the nation, R u d d — w h o combined articulateness, a fair portion o f wild-eyed charisma, and the story line o f a nice J e w i s h b o y taking on "the system" instead o f w o r k i n g toward the goal o f b e c o m ­ ing " m y son, the d o c t o r " — w a s converted almost instantly from a local spokesman into a national celebrity. T h e influence o f the celebrity culture on the print media was evinced by the decision o f The New York Times Magazine to reject the idea o f running an article on the entire student movement or on Columbia's military connec­ tions and instead to try to obtain a profile o f R u d d .

1 4

In The Whole World Is Watching (originally published in 1980, w h e n former editors' memories were still relatively fresh), T o d d Gitlin p r o ­ vides an insightful account o f the magazine's editorial process. T h e process was circular: the pressure to "personalize" was directly p r o -

179

180

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

portional to the bigness o f the story, and the story g r e w bigger the more it was personalized. That a major university's relationship with the defense establishment was a real story in itself—worthy o f inves­ tigation w i t h or w i t h o u t the campus turmoil, w i t h or without the presence o f television cameras—was beside the point. Without the student demonstrations, there was no story as far as either newspapers or television were concerned, and without a media-anointed leader, there was no focal point for news coverage. Newspapers could dig deeper than television, but they could not take a completely different tack. I f a reporter failed to quote someone w h o appeared in a televi­ sion news segment, her editor w o u l d ask w h y . The

insistence on celebrity personalization w o u l d become even

more intense w i t h the birth o f the n e w feminist movement, because j u d g i n g w o m e n on the basis o f their appearance is as acceptable in the culture of journalism as it is throughout American culture. It was no accident that journalists w h o wished to advance the cause o f femi­ nism seized on the glamorous Gloria Steinem as the voice o f the women's movement. With her mane o f streaked hair and a svelte body that had once enabled her to pass as a Playboy bunny while doing research for a magazine article, Steinem was a living refutation o f the negative stereotype o f a feminist as an u g l y w o m a n w h o could not possibly hope to get a man. Steinem was in fact a real leader, but that is not w h y she got so much more coverage than other, equally real feminist leaders. Anti-feminist journalists, by contrast, loved to focus on writers like Andrea D w o r k i n , a fat, unkempt w o m a n considered by some to be a brilliant and original thinker but utterly lacking in conventional feminine attractiveness. Feminists w h o were careless about their appearance, and w h o clearly did not care about making themselves attractive to men, supported all o f the stereotypes about "women's libbers" as frustrated losers in the dating game. T h e image became the message.

I N A N A S T U T E ESSAY on the ways in w h i c h contemporary preoccupa­ tions influence every historian's assessment o f the past, Arthur Schlesinger, J r . , observes that it is impossible to "put a coin in a slot and have history come out. F o r the past is a chaos o f events and per­ sonalities into w h i c h w e cannot penetrate. It is beyond retrieval and it

Legacies: Youth Culture and Celebrity Culture is beyond reconstruction. A l l historians k n o w this in their souls." H e adds that "conceptions o f the past are far from stable," and that w h e n " n e w urgencies arise in our o w n times and lives, the historian's spot­ light shifts, probing n o w into the shadows, throwing into sharp relief things that w e r e always there but that earlier historians had carelessly excised from the collective m e m o r y . "

15

Schlesinger was speaking o f

history in general, but his observation is even more pertinent w h e n the history in question is relatively recent and the "historians" were themselves actors in the drama. Conceptions o f the past k n o w n as "the Sixties" are not only unsta­ ble but, for the moment, irreconcilable. Current assessments o f the sixties are in no w a y comparable to the many books written in the fiftes, sixties, and seventies about America in the thirties, because there is no consensus today about the political legacy o f the sixties. T h e legacy o f the N e w Deal, by contrast, was assimilated during the postwar years by nearly every group within American s o c i e t y — something the Bush administration discovered o n l y w h e n it started pushing for the privatization o f Social Security and most voters reacted w i t h fear and anger. N o politician understood the irreversibil­ ity o f certain N e w Deal precepts better than R o n a l d R e a g a n , w h o was shrewd enough never to say a cross w o r d about Social Security or its offspring, Medicare, and w h o always took great pains to emphasize that his political conservatism in no w a y detracted from his respect for Franklin Roosevelt. T h e sixties, however, remain a source o f bitter controversy in a nation whose presidents for the past sixteen years have been Bill C l i n ­ ton, an exemplar o f the counterculture, followed b y G e o r g e W. Bush, a product o f the conservative Other Sixties (although the reports o f Bush's w i l d youth suggest that he too sampled the wares in the coun­ terculture bazaar). M o s t "histories" o f the sixties being written today are really memoirs by authors intent on justifying or repudiating their youthful selves and taking one more w h a c k at their old adversaries. Debates about the cultural legacy o f the sixties are generally con­ ducted on the same politicized ground, in a fashion obscuring the fact that the most enduring and important anti-intellectual forces o f the decade were apolitical: they could—and w o u l d — b e used in the ser­ vice o f any and every form o f politics. T h e real importance o f the sixties in American intellectual history

181

182

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

is that they marked the beginning o f the eclipse o f the print culture by the culture o f v i d e o : the political street theater o f the late sixties was perfectly suited to v i d e o , and vice versa. It will never be possible to tell the tail from the dog, because video w o r k s well for nearly every actor on the political stage—whether a student celebrity shouting through a megaphone on the steps o f a university library or a presi­ dent bragging "Mission Accomplished" on the deck o f an aircraft car­ rier. T h e o n l y kind o f politics that does not lend itself to video images is any political appeal to thoughtfulness, reason, and logic. T h e fusion o f v i d e o , the culture o f celebrity, and the marketing o f youth is the real anti-intellectual legacy o f the sixties. I f — i f only!—this trifecta had been n a r r o w l y political, it could never have gained the power it exercises in every area o f American culture today.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

THE N E W OLD-TIME

RELIGION

IN SPITE OF various pronouncements concerning the "death o f G o d " in the late sixties, there was never any likelihood that religion w o u l d wither away in American life. It did seem likely, though, that the reli­ gious landscape o f the late twentieth century w o u l d acquire a less dogmatic character and that the prosperity and expanded educational opportunity o f the postwar era w o u l d undermine the more ardent, literal, parochial, and anti-rational forms o f faith that had long flour­ ished in the uniquely free American religious marketplace. G r o w i n g up in the fifties and sixties in a small t o w n in mid-Michigan, I breathed in the ethos o f a c o m m u n i t y in w h i c h religion occupied a private, not a public, role. I attended both public and R o m a n Catholic parochial schools, and m y parents' decisions on such matters w e r e determined by their evaluation o f the quality o f the public schools in the neighborhoods where w e l i v e d — b y secular rather than religious considerations. T h e y took m y brother out o f a public school w h e r e he was having trouble learning to read, and they decided

against

Catholic high schools because the local public schools were thought to provide more rigorous preparation for college-bound students. F r o m a child's vantage point,

the main difference

between

parochial and public schools was that mass, prayer, and catechism classes were not a part o f the public school day. T h e absence o f prayer and religious instruction in public schools was taken for granted: if y o u wanted y o u r children to receive religious teaching or spiritual exhortations in class, y o u paid tuition to a parochial school for that purpose. A l t h o u g h nearly everyone in our Michigan suburb went to some church on Sunday, and a f e w — a v e r y f e w — w e n t to temple on

183

184

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

Saturday, there probably w o u l d have been hell to pay if some teacher had decided to open her class w i t h a prayer or if a prayer for the v i c ­ tory o f O k e m o s H i g h School had been offered up over the loud­ speaker before a football game. T h e 1962 Supreme C o u r t decision Engel v. Vitale, w h i c h declared even nondenominational school prayer unconstitutional and aroused the ire o f conservative Protestant and R o m a n Catholic clerics across the nation, caused scarcely a ripple in our school district. We did not pray in our schools anyway, so w h y should anyone have been upset about the decision? In its omission o f public school prayers, Okemos, Michigan, was the rule rather than the exception. T h e day after the Engel decision was handed d o w n , a survey o f education officials found that prayer was a routine practice in only one third o f the nation's 1

school districts. School prayer was generally confined to areas o f the country and neighborhoods, usually in rural settings or small towns, w i t h homogenous student bodies. There were no Christian clubs or Christian proselytizers in the Okemos public schools, because it was highly unusual for anyone, o f any religion, to make a conspicuous public show o f faith. T h o s e w h o did so, like the Jehovah's Witness family across the street and the Christian Scientists d o w n the block, w e r e considered decidedly peculiar. I n o w realize that many Okemos residents o f m y parents' genera­ tion were children or grandchildren o f immigrants and had g r o w n up in city neighorhoods w h e r e religion and ethnicity were assumed to be the most important predictors o f the future. B y becoming the first members o f their families to attend college and m o v i n g to the expanding postwar suburbs, these second- and

third-generation

Americans had cast their lot w i t h a different w a y o f life. B o t h subur­ banization and higher education were secularizing forces, in that they brought together people o f different faiths and ethnic backgrounds on the same turf in a manner that could not help but erode certain tra­ ditional loyalties. T h e unprecedented incidence o f interfaith marriage among baby boomers, even though

such unions were strongly

opposed by many religious leaders as recently as the sixties and seven­ ties, offers what may be the most powerful evidence o f the decreasing importance o f sectarian religious loyalties in the private lives o f fami­ lies bringing up children in the t w o decades after the Second World War. M o s t baby boomers w e r e not raised to fear that they w o u l d go to

The New Old- Time Religion

185

hell or, in the case o f J e w s , that their parents w o u l d sit shiva, i f they married outside their faith. As for public life, J o h n K e n n e d y could never have been elected the nations first Catholic president i f religion had not been on the w a n e as a divisive force. A n integral element o f Kennedy's election strategy was his portrayal o f religion as a private rather than a public affair. " I do not speak for m y church on public matters—and the church does not speak for m e " was the famous reassurance uttered by the candi­ date at a press conference before Protestant ministers in Houston. O n e did not have to be among G e o r g e Wallace's "great pointy-heads" to have concluded, by the middle o f the 1960s, that less traditional forms o f religion, incorporating secular values, w o u l d become more influential in American culture and politics during the closing decades o f the twentieth century. I cannot prove it, because public opinion pollsters were not asking many questions in the sixties about specific religious beliefs or their influence on public issues, but I think that most o f the adults in m y neighborhood w o u l d have scoffed at any suggestion that Genesis should receive equal time w i t h D a r w i n in public school b i o l o g y classes. I am quite certain that they w o u l d have been puzzled by the question, because the teaching o f evolution was even less o f an issue than school prayer. That is not to say that m y parents' friends and neighbors w e r e irre­ ligious or anti-religious but that they w e r e perfectly comfortable w i t h the idea that Caesar and G o d had separate domains. Like so many American academics and liberal clergy o f that era, they w o u l d have seen fundamentalist biblical literalism as a primitive f o r m o f faith that belonged to a less educated past, in w h i c h religion had yet to come to terms w i t h modern k n o w l e d g e . T h e Other Sixties, and their stirrings o f resurgent right-wing religious fundamentalism, w e r e as invisible to residents o f the middle-class suburb w h e r e I was raised, populated by families w i t h middlebrow aspirations, as they w e r e to the g o v e r n ­ ing and academic elites.

A s W E N O W K N O W , the conclusion that American fundamentalists were a dying breed was a misjudgment o f historic (dare one call it bibheal?) proportions. T h e g r o w t h o f fundamentalist denominations at the expense o f mainstream and liberal Protestantism, w h i c h began in

186

T H E A G E OF A M E R I C A N

UNREASON

the fifties, accelerated throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties and gave birth to the Christian right. O n l y 46 percent o f American Protestants in 2003, compared w i t h 59 percent in i960, identified themselves as members o f "mainline" denominations."

2

Episco­

palians, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Unitarians, four o f the oldest and most influential Protestant mainline denominations, lost ground steadily to churches affiliated w i t h the Southern Baptist Convention, w h i c h had reasserted its fundamentalist identity so strongly during the turbulent sixties. In i960, the Methodist C h u r c h alone had 2 mil­ lion more members than Southern Baptist churches; by the beginning o f the twenty-first century, Southern Baptists w o u l d outnumber Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and members o f the United C h u r c h o f Christ combined. B e t w e e n 1979 and 1985, the hard-core fundamentalists within the Southern Baptist Convention—those w h o agreed w i t h the R e v e r e n d W. A . Criswell's v i e w o f religious liberals as "skunks"—gained con­ 3

trol o f the denomination's elective and administrative offices. M a n y church members allied w i t h the libertarian side o f Baptist tradition found a n e w spiritual h o m e in the more liberal evangelical American Baptist Churches o f the U . S . A . , the current name for the northern denomination that emerged after Baptists originally split over the issue o f slavery in 1845. Fundamentalist influence among the South­ ern Baptists solidified just in time for the 1980 presidential campaign, and R o n a l d R e a g a n became the first Republican candidate to openly court conservative Christian voters. T h e movement o f Protestant fundamentalists into the Republican Party represented a political shift o f historic proportions, and political analysts w h o had ignored the right-wing religious undercurrents during the Other Sixties were taken b y surprise. M a n y observers have argued that the current

fundamentalist

revival is simply one more cyclical manifestation, like the First Great Awakening in the mid-eighteenth century and the Second Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century, o f the emotional, per­ sonal religion that always played an important role in American cul­ ture. In this v i e w , the revival o f fundamentalism in the last three decades has been a response to the social upheavals o f the late sixties and early seventies, w i t h the defining event being the 1973 Supreme C o u r t decision, Roe v. Wade, legalizing abortion. J u s t as the Second

The New Old- Time Religion

187

Great Awakening arose from the social dislocation o f the American Revolution, the late twentieth-century

fundamentalist

resurgence

can be v i e w e d as a "course correction" in an unsettled society. This explanation is certainly comforting to the nonreligious, w h o long to believe that there w i l l be an end to a phenomenon that discomfits and baffles them; secularists w o u l d like to think that American fundamen­ talists, even though they are not likely to disappear before the "rap­ ture," will nevertheless settle d o w n for a g o o d long rest and stop interfering w i t h secular matters. But this soothing analysis does not take into account the disjunc­ tion that exists today between fundamentalist faith and the sum o f human k n o w l e d g e : it is much easier to understand w h y an American w o u l d have sought the answer to life's problems in a passionate "born again" relationship w i t h G o d in 1800 than in 2000. Furthermore, the potential for lethal practical consequences increases as the

gap

between evidence-based science and faith widens. It did relatively lit­ tle harm in the early nineteenth century for preachers to proclaim that sickness and death must be accepted as God's punishment for sin, because science and medicine had almost nothing to offer as an alter­ native to acceptance o f the divine w i l l . It does great harm today, h o w ­ ever, for Protestant fundamentalists

and r i g h t - w i n g Catholics to

insist, against all scientific evidence, that condoms do nothing to halt the spread o f A I D S and that abstinence—the o n l y method sanctioned by G o d and the course least likely to be followed by humans—is the single morally legitimate w a y to fight life-threatening disease. N o r did it really matter if vast numbers o f Americans believed, at the time of the Second Great Awakening, that the earth was exactly four thou­ sand years old. It matters v e r y m u c h today because creationism, which denies the most critical scientific insights not only o f the t w e n ­ tieth but o f the nineteenth century, has adversely affected public edu­ cation in many areas o f the nation and is one important reason w h y American high school students k n o w less about science than their contemporaries in Europe and Asia. What does it mean to be an American fundamentalist in the first decade o f the twenty-first century? T h e w o r d "fundamentalism" is rarely used in surveys o f Americans' religious self-identification, in large measure because the term is considered a pejorative even by many fundamentalists

themselves. Pollsters usually ask whether

188

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

Americans consider themselves "evangelicals," because evangelical is a broader, less loaded term that can encompass both theological liber­ als and theological conservatives. F o r m e r President J i m m y Carter and President G e o r g e W. B u s h are both evangelicals, but Bush's state­ ments indicate that he is a fundamentalist w h i l e Carter, w h o strongly supports the teaching o f evolution in schools, falls on the liberal side o f the evangelical divide. T h e main difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals, although they share a faith that rests on an intimate, personal relationship between G o d and man, is that not all evangelicals regard the Bible as literally true but all fundamentalists do. Yet inconsistencies abound even among the one third o f A m e r i ­ cans w h o say that they consider the Bible the literal w o r d o f G o d — not merely "inspired by G o d " but, from the serpent in the Garden o f Eden to Jesus' resurrection from the grave, an explicit blueprint handed d o w n by the deity, w i t h Part I going directly to Moses and Part I I through Jesus to the twelve apostles. Even more A m e r i c a n s — four in ten—believe that G o d made man in his present form, in one distinct act o f creation, during the past 10,000 years. There is some­ thing mysterious about the finding that Americans are more likely to believe in the creation account set forth in Genesis than they are to credit the literal truth o f the w h o l e Bible. Apparently many people accept the story that G o d created A d a m out o f dust and Eve out o f Adam's rib but balk at subsequent w h i m s o f the Supreme Being, say, sending a flood to destroy everyone on earth but one family or mak­ ing a ninety-year-old w o m a n pregnant by her hundred-year-old hus­ band Abraham, the progenitor o f the J e w i s h people, and then asking Abraham to kill his o n l y son. A similar inconsistency is apparent in polls showing that nearly t w o thirds o f Americans believe in heaven 4

but fewer than half believe in hell. It seems that the American ten­ dency to choose from a cafeteria-style theological menu is not limited to Catholics. Regardless o f h o w fundamentalists fine-tune their beliefs, there is unquestionably a powerful correlation between religious fundamen­ talism and lack o f education. A p p r o x i m a t e l y 45 percent o f those w h o have no education beyond high school believe in the literal truth o f the Bible, w h i l e only 29 percent w i t h some college—and just 19 per­ cent o f college graduates—share that old-time faith. Secularism, skepticism, and acceptance o f mainstream science all rise w i t h educa-

The New Old- Time Religion

189

tion; t w o thirds o f college graduates, but only about one third o f high school graduates, believe that living beings have evolved over t i m e — with or without the guiding hand o f a creator.

5

Fundamentalists understandably resent any mention, especially w h e n the subject is mentioned by secularists, o f the correlation between poor education and biblical literalism. It is a fact, however, that the South remains the most educationally backward region o f the nation, and southerners are far more likely than other Americans to profess fundamentalist faith. T h e education gap between northern and southern states has o f course diminished since the time o f the Scopes trial—most markedly after the Second World War—but the South still lags several percentage points behind the

Northeast,

Midwest, and West in its proportion o f both college and high school graduates. Some states in the D e e p South, including Louisiana, M i s ­ sissippi, and Arkansas, lag at least 10 percentage points behind the West and Northeast in high school graduation rates.

6

Since the end o f legal segregation, boosterism about the " N e w South" has obscured the fact that the O l d South still lives on in many public school systems that fail to serve either blacks or p o o r whites. T h e abysmal state o f public education in N e w Orleans became appar­ ent to the rest o f the nation only w h e n Hurricane Katrina cast a harsh light on the poverty o f many o f the city's residents. T h e causes o f the South's education deficit are c o m p l e x and inseparable from

the

region's heritage o f segregation, but there is no question that religious fundamentalism—particularly since the sixties—encourages lack o f commitment to public education or that p o o r education encourages biblical literalism. In politics, the nexus between fundamentalism and lack o f education has enabled right-wing Christian candidates to tap into suspicion o f educated "elites." At the same time, the Christian right has placed increasing empha­ sis on the development o f its o w n "elites" through o f a n e t w o r k o f ultra-conservative Christian colleges. Institutions like B o b J o n e s U n i ­ versity in Greenville, South C a r o l i n a — n o w an obligatory stop for all Republican presidential candidates—and Patrick H e n r y College in Purcellville, Virginia, w h o s e motto is " F o r Christ and for L i b e r t y , " were intended not only as an alternative to purely secular institutions but also to universities w i t h religious roots, such as B a y l o r and South­ ern Methodist, w h i c h fundamentalists consider corrupted by secular

190

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

values. Patrick H e n r y , located about fifty miles west o f Washington, D . C . , was established specifically to train conservative fundamental­ ists for j o b s in government. M o s t o f its students are the products o f home schooling, a practice lauded b y the most extreme elements o f the Christian right, and campus life is carefully supervised in an effort to maintain the religious and ideological purity o f the students' faithbased elementary and secondary education. F o r several days before the 2004 presidential election, classes were canceled because so many 7

students w e r e w o r k i n g in the campaign to reelect B u s h . B y placing students in a college environment that reinforces rather than chal­ lenges the values they learned as children—a mission contrary to that o f secular institutions—American fundamentalists are attempting to produce a n e w generation w i t h a higher education g o o d enough to dispel old backwoods stereotypes but limited enough to protect the y o u n g from the secular culture's assaults on biblically literal Christianity. A n o t h e r critical difference between the fundamentalist revivals o f the past and the present is the political engagement o f modern funda­ mentalists on the side o f one party and their belief that it is both a right and a religious duty to institutionalize their moral values. A s William Jennings Bryan's long career demonstrates most forcefully, fundamentalists were never completely disengaged from politics, but their civic involvement was rarely—Bryan's anti-evolution campaign being the exception—focused on the propagation o f their religious beliefs. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fundamentalists, as well as evangelicals w h o did not adhere to strict fundamentalism, were generally more concerned about being let alone by the government to practice their religion than about imposing their religious practices on others. M o d e r n fundamentalists have forgotten, if they ever knew, that they o w e their liberty o f conscience to the demonized Enlighten­ ment rationalism that gave birth to the secular Constitution. In a 2006 survey b y the P e w F o r u m , one question asked, " W h i c h should be the more important influence on the laws o f the United States? Should it be the Bible or should it be the will o f the American people, even w h e n it conflicts w i t h the Bible?" A n astounding 60 per­ cent o f w h i t e evangelical Christians replied that the Bible, not the w i l l o f the people, should shape U . S . law. That point o f v i e w was held b y o n l y 16 percent o f w h i t e mainline Protestants, 23 percent o f

The New Old- Time Religion

191

Catholics, and 7 percent o f those identifying themselves as secularists. Black Protestants, by a margin o f 53 to 44 percent, were the only other group that favored the Bible instead o f the people's will. A s has often been noted, African Americans are the one group for w h o m biblical literalism translates into support for liberal rather than conser­ vative social policies—a mind-set directly descended from the days w h e n slaves looked to the Bible, especially the story o f E x o d u s , as a divine source o f hope for liberation from slavery.

8

These findings are particularly striking because they suggest that nonfundamentalists are losing ground within the evangelical m o v e ­ ment itself. I f six in ten white evangelicals believe that the Bible should provide the basis for American law, it stands to reason that the same proportion o f evangelicals belong not to the tolerant side o f evangelical Protestantism represented by Carter but to the authoritar­ ian side embodied by such organizations as James Dobson's Focus on the Family and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. These people may prefer to call themselves and be called by the more socially acceptable name "evangelical," but they are in fact hard-core fundamentalists dedicated to the Christianizing o f American public institutions.

MANY SCHOLARS and journalists w h o might be considered members of "the elites" simply do not understand the depth and sincerity o f literal biblical faith in America today. In the question-and-answer ses­ sions following m y lectures, I have often been asked by secular skep­ tics whether I think that openly religious political leaders like Bush really believe what they say about their faith or whether they are sim­ ply using religion, in cynical fashion, to satisfy their political base. M y audiences often express surprise w h e n I offer m y opinion that B u s h believes every w o r d he says about religion and that a religious h y p ­ ocrite might make a less dangerous president. W h e n B u s h famously told B o b Woodward o f The Washington Post that he had consulted a "Higher Father" instead o f his earthly father, President G e o r g e H . W. Bush, about going to w a r in Iraq, he was offering a key to his thinking that should have been taken at face value by his opponents as well as his supporters. After encountering opposition from some members o f his o w n party over the issue o f the administration's treatment o f

192

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

imprisoned terrorist suspects, the president comforted himself with the notion that his foreign policy designs might yet be saved by A m e r ­ icans experiencing "a T h i r d [Great] Awakening." H e k n e w this, he told conservative columnists, because so many ordinary citizens had told him that they were praying for h i m .

9

Bush's use o f the term "Awakening" is revealing because it shows that the president, h o w e v e r deficient he may be in his knowledge o f w o r l d history, is steeped in the history o f his religion. In the realitybased universe, Republicans like Senator J o h n M c C a i n , a former pris­ oner o f w a r tortured by the N o r t h Vietnamese, were concerned not about the direction o f American prayers but about the likelihood that if A m e r i c a unilaterally jettisoned the rules laid out in the Geneva Conventions, other countries w o u l d feel perfectly free to torture U . S . prisoners o f war. Serious misconceptions about the true nature o f modern A m e r i ­ can fundamentalism can be found among members o f the nation's genuine intellectual elite. In October 2006, Foreign Affairs published an article, " G o d ' s C o u n t r y , " by Walter Russell Mead, w h o bears the w e i g h t y title o f H e n r y A . Kissinger Senior F e l l o w for U . S . Foreign Policy at the C o u n c i l on Foreign Relations. T h e C o u n c i l on Foreign Relations is just about as high in the establishment as one can go, and Foreign Affairs is its bible. In his discussion o f evangelical influence on foreign policy, particularly in the Bush administration, M e a d unin­ tentionally shows himself to be a perfect example o f his contention that "most students o f foreign policy in the United States and abroad are relatively unfamiliar w i t h conservative U . S . Protestantism." H e first draws a dubious distinction among fundamentalism,

liberal

Protestantism, and evangelicalism: T h e three contemporary streams of American Protestantism (fun­ damentalist, liberal, and evangelical) lead to very different ideas about what the country's role in the world should be. In this con­ text, the most important differences have to do with the degree to which each promotes optimism about the possibilities for a stable, peaceful, and enlightened international order and the importance each places on the difference between believers and nonbelievers. In a nutshell, fundamentalists are deeply pessimistic about the

The New Old- Time Religion

193

prospects for world order and see an unbridgeable divide between believers and nonbelievers. Liberals are optimistic about

the

prospects for world order and see little difference between Chris­ tians

and

nonbelievers.

between these extremes.

And evangelicals stand

somewhere

10

T h o s e distinctions had more validity a century

ago—although

many religious historians w o u l d regard Mead's description as a gross oversimplification o f nineteenth- as w e l l as twentieth-century evangelicalism—but they have little meaning today. Mead's basic error is his failure to recognize that a majority o f conservative evan­ gelicals today—the six in ten w h o want the Bible to determine U . S . law—are fundamentalists dedicated to remaking American society and the w o r l d in their biblical image. W h a t is the w a r in Iraq, if not a foolishly optimistic effort to bring "enlightened" democracy to a nation in darkness? T h e unquestioning support for Israel that M e a d describes as the most prominent example o f "evangelical" influence on U . S . foreign policy is really an example o f fundamentalist influ­ ence on foreign policy. Fundamentalists support Israel's occupation o f all biblical lands, and strongly oppose the establishment o f a Palestin­ ian state, because they regard the J e w i s h presence in the H o l y Land as part o f God's plan for the second coming o f Jesus. T h e reappearance o f Jesus, w h i c h will mean the disappearance o f J e w s and other nonChristians w h o no longer have a divine purpose to serve, may not be an optimistic scenario for members o f the C o u n c i l on Foreign R e l a ­ tions, but it is certainly the height o f optimism for far right Christians w h o support their self-interested form o f Z i o n i s m . Representatives o f the liberal evangelical tradition, including for­ mer presidents Carter and Bill Clinton, are committed to avoiding Armageddon (figuratively and literally) and have therefore tried to w o r k out a negotiated settlement between Israelis and Arabs. Incredi­ bly, M e a d also insists that fundamentalists, "despite some increase in their numbers and political visibility, remain less influential [than evangelicals]."

It is undoubtedly

comforting

for

advocates

of

realpolitik to believe in the fantasy that important government deci­ sions have been influenced by an amorphous but basically rational group called evangelicals rather than by rapture-anticipating

funda-

194

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

mentalists, w h o are immeasurably less sophisticated about interna­ tional realities than B r y a n was w h e n he served as W o o d r o w Wilson's secretary o f state. Apart from Israel, the willingness o f fundamentalist evangelicals to sanction American military and diplomatic intervention abroad is generally limited to situations in w h i c h Christians, or the freedom o f Christians to proselytize, are threatened. American fundamentalists have displayed little concern about violent clashes between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in the M i d d l e East—except in Iraq, where American forces are threatened—but they speak out forcefully, and advocate for American action, wherever Muslims threaten J e w s or Christian Arabs. In 2006, w h e n a M u s l i m convert to Christianity was threat­ ened w i t h execution under Islamic law in Afghanistan, the Bush administration quickly made it clear to the Afghan government that the U n i t e d States w o u l d not tolerate such an action, and the convert was whisked away as a refugee to R o m e . In its focus on the rights o f Christians around the w o r l d , the fundamentalist evangelical posture on foreign policy today bears a strong resemblance to the old antiC o m m u n i s t alliance between Protestant fundamentalists and A m e r i ­ can Catholics. T h e Soviets were equal opportunity suppressors o f Christian, J e w i s h , and M u s l i m religious liberty within their sphere o f influence, but American policy in the forties and fifties, to the extent that it was influenced b y domestic religious forces, focused almost entirely on the Christian "captive nations." A s for Catholics, w h o m M e a d simply ignores as an influence on foreign policy, another critical difference between American fundamentalism in the present and the past is the absence o f antiCatholicism from the current w a v e o f biblically based religious revivalism. Protestant fundamentalist leaders have n o w allied them­ selves w i t h the most conservative w i n g o f American Catholicism in a fashion that w o u l d have been unthinkable fifty years ago. In order to be elected, K e n n e d y had to assure both liberal and conservative Protestants that he w o u l d not be taking his orders in the O v a l Office from the Vatican. Back then, in spite o f their shared opposition to "atheistic

Communism,"

hard-core

fundamentalists

still called

Catholics papists. Today, although fundamentalists are just as leary o f liberal Catholics as o f liberal Protestants, the Protestant right is closely allied to the minority o f right-wing American Catholics

The New Old- Time Religion

195

whose defining characteristic is devotion to the d o g m a o f papal infal­ libility and its attendant prohibitions against abortion, h o m o s e x u a l ­ ity, premarital sex, and birth control. This group, although its adherence to d o g m a runs counter to the more liberal views o f the majority o f lay American Catholics, n o w includes nearly every bishop and cardinal in the U n i t e d States. O n issues such as homosexuality and abortion, the Catholic laity's posi­ tion is closer to that o f Americans w h o profess no religion, as w e l l as to the stance o f mainline Protestants and J e w s , than to the views o f Protestant evangelical fundamentalists.

M o r e than t w o thirds o f

white Catholics and mainline Protestants reject the idea that school boards ought to have the right to fire homosexual teachers, but 60 percent o f white evangelicals think that homosexual teachers ought to lose their j o b s . O n l y 37 percent o f Catholics, compared w i t h 58 percent o f Protestant evangelicals, want stricter abortion laws. Per­ haps the most telling finding about the difference between main­ stream Catholics and right-wing Protestants is that fewer than one in four Catholics regard the Bible as literally true.

11

T h e alliance between the Protestant and Catholic right is really rooted in the sixties, even though it was solidified in 1973 b y Roe v. Wade. W h e n Pope J o h n X X I I I died, dissident Catholics w h o had hated the reforms o f the Second Vatican C o u n c i l hoped for a reaffir­ mation o f traditional dogma and papal infallibility. John's successor was the much more cautious and conservative Pope Paul V I , w h o reigned from 1963 to 1978; and w h e n Paul V I died, the C o l l e g e o f Cardinals elected K a r o l Wojtyla, a Polish prelate o f great personal charisma, as the next p o n t i f f * A s Pope J o h n Paul I I , Wojtyla c o m ­ bined a command o f the mass media w i t h the most conservative theological posture since Pope Pius I X , w h o in the nineteenth cen­ tury pushed the doctrine o f papal infallibility through the First Vatican Council. A s church leaders shaped by the

modernizing

impulses o f the sixties began to die off during the t w e n t y - s i x years of J o h n Paul's papacy, he managed to undo m u c h o f the w o r k o f Vatican II by appointing bishops and cardinals w h o shared his theo­ logical conservatism.

* The elevation of Wojtyla was preceded by a one-month interregnum, in which the Italian cardinal Albino Luciani reigned as Pope John Paul I before dying unexpectedly.

196

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON T h e continuing rift within American Catholicism divides those

w h o approved o f the modernizing and democratizing trends envi­ sioned during the Vatican II era from those w h o welcomed J o h n Paul II's reassertion not o n l y o f papal infallibility but o f traditional Catholic doctrine on sexual morality, in w h i c h artificial birth control, masturbation, homosexuality, and remarriage after divorce are all considered mortal sins. T h e political alliance between traditionalist American Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants is based not only on a shared v i e w o f sexual morality but on a shared piety and devo­ tion to regular religious observance. Post-election studies showed that the most reliable predictor o f support for President G e o r g e W. Bush was not religious affiliation, for either Protestants or Catholics, but frequency o f church attendance. Whatever their religion, those w h o attended church at least once a w e e k voted overwhelmingly for Bush in 2004. M o n t h l y churchgoers split their votes almost evenly, while those w h o attended only a f e w times a year voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic ticket. " T h e idea that there is a Catholic vote was sim­ p l y not borne out in this election," observed J o h n K . White, professor o f political science at the Catholic University o f America. " T h e gap seems to be between regular attendance at church and less regular attendance."

12

A m o n g both Catholics and Protestants, the frequent

churchgoers identified themselves as "traditionalist" and gave Bush more than three quarters o f their votes. Yet M e a d claims, contrary to all available evidence, that combat­ ting Catholic influence is still one o f the major aims o f American fun­ damentalism. W h a t unites Protestant fundamentalists and right-wing Catholics today, in both the religious and political arenas, is a shared hatred o f secularism and the influence o f secular values on culture and public life. T h e r e are some significant differences between the Catholic hierarchy and Protestant fundamentalist

leaders; despite

their c o m m o n ground on sexual issues w i t h the Protestant right, the Catholic bishops do not embrace politically conservative values on matters o f economic and social justice. M a n y Catholic bishops, for instance, have spoken out strongly against proposals to deal harshly w i t h illegal immigrants. O n other crucial cultural issues, however, the far right factions within Catholicism and Protestantism are in full agreement. Like neoconservative J e w s as well as

fundamentalist

The New Old- Time Religion

197

Protestants, right-wing Catholics explicitly link liberal trends w i t h i n their church to the secular rebellions o f the sixties. T h e R e v e r e n d J o h n M c C l o s k e y , a prominent priest in Washington and a member o f the shadowy right-wing organization Opus D e i , calls the years after Vatican I I (the late sixties) a "generally unfortu­ nate period for our country and our C h u r c h . " H e inveighs against what he calls "nominal" Catholic universities such as N o t r e D a m e and G e o r g e t o w n because they have committed the ghastly offense o f endorsing concepts like "openness, just society . . . diversity, and p r o ­ fessional preparation."

13

M c C l o s k e y has supervised the conversions

to Catholicism o f such high-profile Washington figures as Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas and a former Methodist, and the columnist R o b e r t N o v a k , w h o was born a J e w . In his zeal for conversion o f prominent personalities, M c C l o s k e y follows in the footsteps o f Fulton J . Sheen, w h o specialized in repentant e x Communists in the forties and fifties but also snagged such luminaries as Clare B o o t h e Luce and H e n r y F o r d I I . T h e conservative Catholic opposition to secularism is based not on biblical literalism but on the belief that there can be no personal morality, and no legitimate political system, that does not a c k n o w l ­ edge G o d as the ultimate authority. Presumably, representatives o f the Catholic and Protestant right do not discuss their differing views about the Bible and papal authority w h e n they sit d o w n together at anti-abortion strategy meetings or "abstinence" conferences designed to discourage contraceptive use among teenagers and promote chas­ tity as the only w a y to avoid pregnancy. A t the highest levels o f g o v ­ ernment, the alliance w i t h the Catholic right has provided Protestant fundamentalists w i t h cover against charges that the real goal o f A m e r ­ ican fundamentalism is a right-wing Protestant theocracy. It is no accident that Bush chose extremely conservative Catholics, J o h n G . Roberts and Samuel A . Alito, to fill the first t w o vacancies that opened up on the Supreme C o u r t during his presidency. One o f the strangest spectacles in the political history o f the past eight years was the Protestant right's uprising, in 2005, against Bush's nomination o f his personal lawyer, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme C o u r t . Bush's core constituency was up in arms about Miers's n o m i ­ nation because she was suspected o f being insufficiently dedicated to

198

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

overturning Roe v. Wade—even though Miers was not only a conser­ vative Southern Baptist but a member o f a church in Dallas where abortion is frequently denounced from the pulpit. She did make a 1993 speech suggesting that disputes over such issues as abortion might best be resolved at the state rather than at the federal level. W h o knows? Perhaps Miers once confided, over barbecue and a few too many beers (or iced teas, i f she is a teetotaling Southern Baptist), that she thought there ought to be an exception to allow abortion if it was needed to save the life o f the mother. In any event, Miers, ever loyal to her boss, w i t h d r e w from the fray, and Bush promptly nominated A l i t o , a devout and conservative R o m a n Catholic whose wife is an anti-abortion activist. T h e Protestant right responded to the nomina­ tion o f a papist w i t h overwhelming approval, as it had to Roberts's selection to replace William H . Rehnquist as chiefjustice the previous fall. Today, nominations o f conservative Catholics to high office carry an extra dividend: it is difficult for anyone to raise questions about conflicts o f loyalty between American law and church doctrine w i t h ­ out being accused o f anti-Catholicism. In fact, five out o f the nine current members o f the Supreme C o u r t are R o m a n Catholics: R o b e r t s , A l i t o , A n t o n i n Scalia, Clarence T h o m a s , and Anthony K e n n e d y . O f these, o n l y Kennedy, as evinced by his unpredictable votes on abortion cases, can be considered a mainstream Catholic in his attitudes toward church and state. K e n n e d y also voted to uphold Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, w h i l e Roberts, Scalia, and T h o m a s (Alito was not yet on the high court) abandoned their usual conservative support for states' rights and voted to strike d o w n a law ratified three times by O r e g o n voters. T h e church's position on assisted suicide and the "right to die," like its position on abortion, is a matter o f dogma. Scalia, a profoundly conservative Catholic as well as a profoundly conservative jurist, has said bluntly that Catholic officeholders should resign i f asked to uphold any public policies that contradict church doctrine—a position antithetical to the stance that helped elect J o h n K e n n e d y . It is certainly not "anti-Catholic" to raise the question o f whether anyone w h o owes his highest allegiance not to American law but to C a n o n law belongs on the Supreme C o u r t . This is not a ques­ tion o f a conflict between the law and personal belief, w h i c h judges

The New Old- Time Religion

199

must, however painfully, resolve in favor o f the law, but an issue o f allegiance to a church that, unlike most other church hierarchies, claims to be infallible in matters o f faith and morals. M a n y Catholics do not take papal infallibility literally, but Scalia has said that he does. His comments were made in the context o f his strong support for the death penalty, w h i c h contradicts the anti—death penalty position o f Pope J o h n Paul II and the U . S . Conference o f Catholic Bishops. B u t , as Scalia correctly noted, opposition to the death penalty is not a mat­ ter o f doctrine but merely the advisory opinion o f the church hierar­ chy. Thus Scalia considers himself free as a Catholic to follow his o w n judicial and political inclinations—which have led him to the conclu­ sion that the state has a right to execute even children and the m e n ­ tally retarded. Scalia's rationale for the death penalty merits close inspection because it comes directly from the Bible and is identical to the argu­ ments used by Protestant fundamentalists against secular government and secular values. In Scalia's v i e w , democracy itself is responsible for opposition to the death penalty, because secular democracy rests on the principle that governmental p o w e r comes not from the consent o f the governed but from G o d . " F e w doubted the morality o f the death penalty in the age that believed in the divine right o f kings," Scalia noted in a speech delivered at the University o f C h i c a g o D i v i n i t y School. T h e n he went on to observe that "the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition [of capital punishment]

has taken its firmest hold in

post—Christian Europe, and has least support in the church-going United States. I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing C h r i s ­ tian, death is no big d e a l . "

14

That death is no big deal for believing

Christians strikes m e as a dubious proposition; but even if it w e r e true, it w o u l d fall within the Jeffersonian category o f something that gives no offense to those w h o are less sanguine about dying. It is, however, a big deal for a justice o f the U n i t e d States Supreme C o u r t to base important legal decisions, affecting Americans o f all faiths and no faith, on his religious belief in an afterlife. Scalia's argument belongs properly to the realm o f theology, not to the worlds o f jurisprudence, domestic policy, or international affairs. It is more accurate to call such arguments anti-rational than anti-intellectual, because one o f the strengths o f the n e w r i g h t - w i n g

200

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

Protestant-Catholic alliance in America is its use o f intellectual tools, including logic, within a closed system—a system that begins by pos­ tulating the existence o f an all-powerful G o d and the inferiority o f human j u d g m e n t . T h e cloaking o f anti-rational premises in the lan­ guage o f either philosophy or science has proved useful to both Protestant and Catholic anti-rationalists and is one o f the hallmarks o f the n e w old-time religion.

YET EVEN AS the size and influence o f the right-wing religious minor­ ity has g r o w n since 1970, the secular American minority has also expanded. T h e number o f Americans w i t h no formal ties to any reli­ gion more than doubled, from 14.3 million to 29.4 million, between 1990 and 2001. Sixteen percent o f Americans describe their outlook on the w o r l d and public affairs as w h o l l y or predominantly secular.

15

This committed secular minority is small in comparison w i t h the nonreligious population in other developed nations, but its influence is greatest among scientists (especially top-level scientists), academics, journalists,

and

those

with

advanced

degrees—thus

providing

another round o f ammunition against the elites. A l t h o u g h the secular minority is fifteen to twenty times larger than any o f the smaller American religious minorities, including both J e w s and Muslims, sec­ ularists are routinely ignored on civic occasions thought to require an ecumenical presence.* A minister, priest, rabbi, and imam were all invited to participate in the quasi-religious ceremony following the terrorist attacks o f September 1 1 , 2001, in w h i c h the main address was delivered by B u s h from the pulpit o f the National Cathedral. N o spokesperson for secular values was included—a particularly striking omission in v i e w o f the religious fanaticism critical to the motivation o f the attackers. O f course, by then everyone was busy denying that "real" religion had anything to do w i t h terrorism: the Islamists w h o turned planes into weapons did not, could not, represent the "true" M u s l i m faith but were renegades. B e t w e e n the fundamentalists and the secularists lies a much larger group o f religious centrists or moderates, but it is not entirely clear

* Religious Jews, as distinct from Jews as an ethnic group, make up just 1.3 percent of Americans. Muslims make up less than one half of 1 percent.

The New Old- Time Religion

201

what it means to be a religious moderate in the U n i t e d States today. Forty-three percent o f Americans take the centrist religious position that the Bible is divinely inspired but not to be taken literally. A d d the centrists to the secularists, and 63 percent o f Americans believe that the will o f the people, not the Bible, should exert the greatest influ­ ence on American law and government. O n the other hand, w h e n the centrists are added to the fundamentalists, 75 percent o f Americans believe in a supernatural supreme being w h o guides the destiny o f individuals and nations—and most o f these people also believe that liberal secularists have gone too far in trying to remove religion from public life. T h e centrist believers approve o f religion in general, and of expressions o f religion in public life, but they disapprove o f extreme positions like Bush's imposition o f a religious veto on e m b r y ­ onic stem cell research. Y e t this g r o u p has generally been no political match for the True Believer mentality o f the fundamentalists, and religious moderates have frequently followed the path o f least resis­ tance and let the fundamentalists and anti-modernists have their w a y on public issues. T h e tendency o f religious centrists to accept compromise solu­ tions, w i t h no regard for consistency, is one explanation for the seem­ ing absurdity o f public support, by a t w o - t o - o n e majority, for the 16

teaching o f both creationism and evolution in public schools. F u n ­ damentalists are effective at getting their w a y because religion forms the absolute, immovable core o f their lives. U n l i k e religious m o d e r ­ ates w h o , like most human beings, want to have things both w a y s — G o d and science, belief in eternal life and the medical pursuit o f every means to prolong earthly life—fundamentalists have no doubts. A middle-class fundamentalist cannot be swayed, as someone o f m o r e fluid religious convictions might be, b y the argument that he ought to vote for secular liberal candidates because they are m o r e likely than Republicans to institute tax policies that help families making less than $100,000 a year. F o r Catholics in the Scalia mold, the prospect that embryonic stem cell research might help cure them o f Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's means nothing next to the belief that G o d , through their church, has said no. Cultural and moral issues tied to religion, such as abortion and gay marriage, trump selfinterest. There are, however, a few encouraging signs that the moderate

202

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

religious majority is finally losing patience w i t h anti-rationalist fun­ damentalist politics. In the 2006 midterm elections, opponents o f stem cell research, even in otherwise politically conservative congessional districts, took a drubbing from candidates w h o stood up and said that their faith required support for medical research aimed at alle­ viating human suffering. In Missouri, where Democratic candidate Claire M c C a s k i l l n a r r o w l y defeated the incumbent Republican sena­ tor J i m Talent, McCaskill's support for an initiative to overturn the state's ban on embryonic stem cell research was believed to be the decisive issue. Voters in many areas reacted w i t h disgust w h e n the right-wing radio talk show host R u s h Limbaugh used crude gestures to m o c k the actor Michael J . F o x , w h o suffers from Parkinson's and is a leading supporter o f stem cell research. Appearing in a television ad supporting stem cell initiatives around the country, F o x was unable to conceal the nervous gestures and twitches that are side effects o f the medication he takes. O n election day, Democrats defeated six conser­ vative incumbent representatives w h o had made opposition to stem cell research a major issue in their campaigns. Still, the hallmark o f these campaigns was not overt opposition to religious anti-rationalism but emphasis on the candidate's o w n , more moderate, science-friendly form o f faith. Here is where unapologetic secularists have a point w h e n it comes to the peculiarly American form o f religious tolerance that refuses to call religious fanaticism by its real name. In The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Rea­ son, Sam Harris argues that Americans "cannot say that fundamental­ ists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; w e cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their k n o w l e d g e o f scripture is generally unrivaled. A l l w e can say, as religious moderates, is that w e don't like the personal and social costs that full embrace o f scripture imposes on u s . "

17

THAT TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY Americans w o u l d remain so much more religious than people in the rest o f the economically developed w o r l d — a n d that Bible-based fundamentalism w o u l d expand its influ­ ence at the expense o f more moderate faiths—would have seemed implausible to American intellectuals and scientists even at the begin­ ning o f the twentieth century. In an essay on Galileo published in

The New Old- Time Religion

203

1902, m y great-uncle, Harold Jacoby, an astronomy professor at Columbia University, dismissed the idea that religion w o u l d ever again align itself against science as the Catholic C h u r c h had against Galileo's heliocentric

theory.

"When

w e consider

events

that

occurred three centuries a g o , " J a c o b y w r o t e , "it is easy to replace excited argument w i t h cool j u d g m e n t ; to remember that those w e r e days o f violence and cruelty; that public ignorance was o f a density difficult to imagine to-day; and that it was universally considered the duty o f the Church to assume an authoritative attitude upon many questions w i t h w h i c h she is not n o w required to concern herself in 18

the least." It is unlikely that m y great-uncle, a w e l l - k n o w n popularizer o f science w h o was regularly interviewed by newspapers about new discoveries until his death in 1932, anticipated that American reli­ gious denominations in the twenty-first century w o u l d continue to concern themselves w i t h the v e r y questions he thought had been set­ tled by the end o f the nineteenth century.* Scientists and intellectuals in the early 1900s certainly did not expect secularism to replace religion in mainstream America, but they did think that the more rationally inclined forms o f religion w o u l d replace not only biblically literal creeds but the many strange sects, offshoots o f Christianity but uniquely and eccentrically American (the most prominent being M o r m o n i s m , Christian Science, and the Jehovah's Witnesses), born in the nineteenth century. It was always unlikely that America w o u l d become as secular as w h a t has been called "post—Christian E u r o p e " ; the absence o f a state-established church from America's experience as a nation meant that A m e r i c a n s — unlike the French or the Italians, for e x a m p l e — w o u l d almost never be obliged to choose between faith and citizenship. Even w h e n there was strong social discrimination, and sometimes outright persecution, o f minority religions in the U n i t e d States, American law always came d o w n eventually on the side o f freedom o f conscience. O n only one occasion—when the C h u r c h o f Jesus Christ o f Latter-Day Saints agreed in 1896 to renounce p o l y g a m y as the price o f statehood for

* Uncle Harold, whose full name was Levi Harold, was the son of a Jewish immigrant from Breslau. He dropped the name Levi when he became one of the first full-time Jewish faculty members at Columbia, and converted to Episcopalianism when he met his future wife, a gentile.

204

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

heavily M o r m o n U t a h — d i d the government explicitly and perma­ nently require a religious denomination to compromise a central belief in deference to public consensus. Even so, the M o r m o n s ' polygamous past continues to surface unpredictably and mar the image o f middle-class probity that the church elders have worked unceasingly to foster. T h e feisty bands o f unrepentant polygamists are branded as—what else?—extremists and renegades by the official M o r m o n C h u r c h and the state o f Utah. F o r the most part, Americans throughout the nation's history have been content to v i e w themselves as a predominantly Christian people w i t h a secular government—a civic paradox and a delicate balance that seemed entirely natural for most o f the nation's history, as it did to m y parents and neighbors in the fifties. T h e reasons w h y that bal­ ance has been upset by the resurgence o f an intolerant fundamental­ ism during the past three decades are not altogether clear. T h e explanation cannot be found in the original American separation o f church and state and the existence o f a "free market" o f faiths, because the distant past offers f e w answers to the question o f w h y so many Americans today are attracted to forms o f religion that edu­ cated men and w o m e n w e r e beginning to reject a century ago. T h e rise o f feminism in the seventies, w i t h its challenge to funda­ mental assumptions about the roles o f w o m e n , men, and families, has often been seen as the major spur to the religious right. It is certainly true that the battle over abortion, w h i c h cannot be separated from late twentieth-century feminism, created a unifying cause for right-wing Protestants and right-wing Catholics. B u t it is often forgotten that a large majority o f Americans in 1973 actually favored liberalization o f state abortion l a w s — a n d that public opinion had changed dramati­ cally in a relatively brief period o f time. In 1968, a Gallup poll found that o n l y 15 percent o f Americans favored making abortion more accessible; by 1972, 64 percent d i d .

19

Because the Christian right opposed all relaxation o f strict antiabortion rules, it set out to portray Roe as a radical break w i t h contem­ porary standards. W h i l e the Supreme C o u r t decision may have been ahead o f public opinion in its broad scope, it was nevertheless in line w i t h a general trend favoring greater choice and compassion for w o m e n coping w i t h unwanted pregnancies. A t the heart o f Justice H a r r y A . Blackmun's majority opinion was the unequivocal assertion

The New Old- Time Religion

205

that "the w o r d 'person,' as used in the Fourteenth A m e n d m e n t , does not include the unborn.' "

2 0

That single sentence kindled a religious

conflagration that is still burning. A l t h o u g h Blackmun's opinion was delivered more than t w o decades before any member o f the general public had ever heard the phrase "embryonic stem cell research," the religious right's position has been consistent since that day: not only is the fetus entitled to full Fourteenth A m e n d m e n t rights, but so too is a six-day-old collection o f embryonic cells. T h e intricate thirty-five-year history o f the battle by the religious right to overturn Roe is beyond the scope o f this book, but it is a mis­ take to v i e w the issue o f abortion as distinct from all other "values issues" involving the position o f w o m e n , men, and families within society. T h e people w h o did and do want to recriminalize abortion are the same people w h o succeeded in defeating the Equal R i g h t s Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress in 1971 but never ratified by enough states. T h e old arguments endlessly trotted out in opposition to the amendment, including unisex toilets and w o m e n in combat, seem quaint today in a nation that has become accustomed to seeing female soldiers come h o m e in b o d y b a g s — o r rather, not seeing them under the administration policy o f shielding the public from the u g l y reality o f military coffins and funerals. T h e end o f the draft, and the attendant need to expand the p o o l o f v o l u n ­ teers for the armed services, accomplished what proposals to amend the Constitution could not d o : a de facto acceptance that w o m e n , too, could be called on to die for G o d and country. But the undeniability o f the vast changes in women's traditional social and economic roles, in spite o f fierce resistance from religious conservatives, has inflamed rather than dampened the anti-rational passions in American culture. "Wedge issues" such as abortion and gay marriage are often erroneously dismissed as "purely s y m b o l i c " because the majority o f voters are much more concerned about such matters as the w a r in Iraq, terrorism, and the economy. Symbolic issues are symbolic precisely because they stand for something deeper than the everyday problems and concerns that preoccupy most people most o f the time. T o speak about finding " c o m m o n g r o u n d " on the abortion issue, as secularists and religious moderates often do, is to speak about a rational, pragmatic compromise that can only be located in the natural w o r l d . B u t Americans w h o want to force

206

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

w o m e n to g o through w i t h unwanted pregnancies are adhering to a supernatural imperative: abortion is murder forbidden by the law o f G o d and must therefore be forbidden by the law o f man. T h e funda­ mental question is w h y these supposedly symbolic religious issues are so m u c h more potent in the United States than in the rest o f the developed w o r l d . Like America, Europe has experienced major social dislocations that began in the 1960s. Like Americans, Europeans have been affected by recent biomedical research that challenges, at a basic physiological and psychological level, our assumptions about what it means to be a human being and h o w m u c h control humans can and should exert over their o w n destinies. B u t Europeans have responded by becoming more rather than less skeptical about traditional religious dogma: homosexuality, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and the teaching o f evolution are simply not divisive political issues in most o f Europe today. O n the Continent and in the United K i n g d o m , reli­ gious fundamentalism is almost entirely the province o f M u s l i m s — a social reality that attests powerfully to the refusal o f many Muslim immigrants to identify w i t h and assimilate themselves to Western val­ ues. F o r the most part, secular Europe is utterly baffled by the antirational sector o f the American religious landscape. In 2003, a survey by The Economist concluded that "Europeans consider religion . . . the strangest and most disturbing feature o f American exceptionalism. T h e y w o r r y that fundamentalists are hijacking the country. T h e y find it extraordinary that three times as many Americans believe in the v i r ­ gin birth as in evolution. T h e y fear that America will g o on a 'crusade' . . . in the M u s l i m w o r l d or cut aid to poor countries lest it be used for birth c o n t r o l . "

21

S o m e absolutist secular antagonists o f religion, most notably the British evolutionary biologist R i c h a r d D a w k i n s , have argued in recent years that moderate religions—forms o f faith not based on lit­ eral interpretations o f h o l y books—are every bit as anti-rational as fundamentalism. D a w k i n s sees the American predisposition to hold all religion in high esteem as dangerous in itself. " I think moderate religion makes the w o r l d safe for extremists," he says, "because chil­ dren are trained from the cradle to think that faith itself is a good thing."

22

Dawkins's two-part anti-religious documentary, The Root of

All Evil?, was shown on television in England but was considered too

The New Old- Time Religion

207

hot to handle by media executives in the U n i t e d States—even those in charge o f small cable networks. T h e reluctance o f the media to give an airing to Dawkins's acidic brand o f atheism is understandable in commercial terms: nearly t w o thirds o f Americans, compared w i t h only one in five Europeans, say that religion plays a v e r y important role in their lives. In the United States, D a w k i n s has been attacked not o n l y for his general criticism o f religion but for his uncompromising defense o f Darwin's theory o f evolution. O n e conservative American writer describes D a w k i n s as a "poor public intellectual" because, in articulat­ ing his views on the randomness o f nature, he "appears to be utterly indifferent to the spiritual and emotional difficulties that his writings cause for many o f his readers."

23

It is hard to imagine exactly h o w

anyone might function as a public intellectual w h i l e taking care to avoid all issues that might trigger a spiritual, emotional, or intellectual crisis among his or her readers. It is not necessary, however, to be c o n ­ cerned about the emotional difficulties o f Dawkins's audience to con­ clude that he is somewhat off the mark in his assessment o f the compromise between faith and reason represented by w h a t is gener­ ally called "moderate" religion. W h i l e D a w k i n s is clearly right in his contention that religion—any religion—should be fair game for crit­ ics, his brand o f purist atheism is grounded more in philosophy than in a clear-eyed look at the real w o r l d or the w a y religion w o r k s in American society. T h e difference between moderate religion and fun­ damentalism, n o w as in the past, is that moderate faith attempts to accommodate itself to secular education and secular government: the American religious right rejects both. I f there w e r e o n l y minuscule numbers o f unreconstructed

fundamentalists

within the

United

States, American religious exceptionalism w o u l d not seem so peculiar or so threatening to so many Europeans. The Economist survey quoted Peter Berger, head o f the Institute o f R e l i g i o n and World Affairs at Boston University, to the effect that secular Europe, not religious America, is the real exception in the world. Berger, like many other prominent scholars o f religion, has argued that the rise o f militant Islam in the M i d d l e East and the Far East, as well as the appeal o f Catholicism and Protestant evangelical sects in Africa and South America, has refuted the old idea that coun­ tries inevitably become more secular as they modernize. H o w e v e r ,

208

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

the kind o f "modernization" taking place in the T h i r d World today has little in c o m m o n w i t h the modernization associated w i t h secular­ izing forces in the U n i t e d States and Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. T h e development o f modern industries in m u c h o f the M i d d l e East and Africa, for example, has profited a tiny and greedy elite, leaving the bulk o f the population in poverty, often subject to the w h i m s o f brutal dictatorships. In such circumstances, faith flourishes—as it always has—among those w h o have little or no hope o f a better life in this w o r l d . It is the absence o f broadly based economic and political modernization, not its presence, that has encouraged the most retrograde forms o f religion and religious v i o ­ lence in many areas o f the w o r l d . Even in nations like India, where modernization has reached a broader segment o f the population than it has in Africa, fanatical Hindu nationalism has flourished among those w h o have been largely bypassed by the global, Englishlanguage-oriented sector o f the economy. In Africa, the R o m a n Catholic C h u r c h has made many n e w converts in spite o f the fact that the church proposes to fight A I D S w i t h o u t distributing condoms; it is difficult to imagine equally successful proselytizing in areas o f the w o r l d where most people have a basic understanding o f h o w the disease is spread. It is also difficult to imagine that radical Islam's suppression o f w o m e n could flourish in regions w h e r e w o m e n have equal educational opportunities

and

political rights. T h e U n i t e d States is the only developed nation in w h i c h Pentecostals and Charismatic Christians—who practice reli­ gious rituals such as "speaking in tongues" and faith healing—are garnering n e w converts. It is astounding that the United States has almost as large a proportion o f citizens w h o call themselves Pente­ 24

costals or Charismatics (23 percent) as Nigeria (26 percent). Based on the prevalence o f anti-rational religion, a visitor from another planet w o u l d have to conclude that the United States must be a nation o f poor, hungry, and warring people w h o can only look to the super­ natural for a w a y out o f their miserable earthly existence. A m o n g countries that have experienced true modernization, characterized by broad educational opportunity and rising living standards for the entire population, America is the religious exception. A general attraction to the supernatural, extending beyond nar­ r o w l y defined fundamentalism, lies at the heart o f the profound

The New Old- Time Religion

209

divide not only between religious A m e r i c a and secular Europe but also between devout religious believers and secularists within the United States. "People are reaching out in all directions in their attempt to escape from the seen w o r l d to the unseen w o r l d , " G e o r g e Gallup, J r . , told a correspondent for U.S. News & World Report in 2002. " T h e r e is a deep desire for spiritual m o o r i n g s — a hunger for God."

2 5

T h e desire to escape from the seen to the unseen w o r l d is not

confined to Americans w h o profess an ultra-conservative form o f faith or, for that matter, any form o f orthodox faith. "Escape" is the key w o r d : the resurgence o f fundamentalism in the U n i t e d States has occurred within the context o f a pervasive nonreligious antirationalism that reinforces more extreme forms o f religion and also affects the broader public's views about science, education, and reality itself. A t the dawn o f the twentieth century, scientists like m y greatuncle made the entirely reasonable assumption that the expansion o f knowledge about every aspect o f the natural w o r l d w o u l d produce a less credulous American public. T h e y assumed that the g r o w i n g avail­ ability o f scientific, historical, and anthropological evidence w o u l d deter the spread o f both religious and nonreligious beliefs that not only lacked a basis in reality but frequently contradicted reality. That assumption, reasonable as it seemed at the time, was w r o n g .

CHAPTER NINE

JUNK

THOUGHT

'JUNK SCIENCE," w h i c h has become a fashionable pejorative in recent years, does not always mean w h a t a reasonable person w o u l d expect it to mean. T o scientists themselves, the phrase is generally synonymous w i t h pseudoscience, encompassing old and n e w systems o f thought, that, whether they attempt to explain the physical or the social uni­ verse, can neither be proved nor disproved. A l t h o u g h cloaked in sci­ entific language, as social D a r w i n i s m was in the nineteenth century and intelligent design is today, the leaden heart o f pseudoscience is its imperviousness to evidentiary challenge. A s the astronomer Carl Sagan notes, real science differs from pseudoscience in that the former "thrives on errors, cutting them away one by one," while the latter involves theories "often framed precisely so that they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect o f disproof, so even in prin­ ciple they cannot be invalidated." T h e n , w h e n real scientists refuse to accept a pseudoscientific premise, "conspiracies to suppress it are deduced."

1

B u t j u n k science also has a politicized meaning, diametrically opposed to w h a t genuine scientists mean by the phrase. It has been appropriated by right-wing politicians and journalists to describe any scientific consensus that contradicts their political, economic, or cul­ tural agenda. T h e Internet offers a boundless array o f right-wing Web sites that pin the label "junk science" on everything from climatological research on global w a r m i n g to studies indicating that condoms reduce the spread o f sexually transmitted diseases. Even D N A testing has been dubbed j u n k science by the right, because it has led to the reversal o f old convictions based on eyewitness identifications or cir-

210

Junk Thought

211

cumstantial evidence—and anything that releases prisoners, even i f they were wrongfully convicted in the first place, is tantamount to being soft on crime in the far right universe. T h e right-wing distortion and politicization o f j u n k science is nothing more than a branch o f a more pervasive phenomenon best described as j u n k thought. T h e defining characteristics o f j u n k thought, w h i c h manifests itself in the humanities and social sciences as well as the physical sciences, are anti-rationalism and contempt for countervailing facts and expert opinion. It cannot be stressed enough that j u n k thought emanates from both the left and the right, even though each g r o u p — i n academia, politics, and cultural institutions— thrives on accusing the other o f being the sole source o f irrationality. T h e right loves to pin the label o f political correctness (meaning just about anything opposed to right-wing values) on j u n k thought, while the left tends to concentrate on j u n k thought as a by-product o f religious fundamentalism and superstition. M o r e o v e r , the m u c h lion­ ized American centrists, sometimes k n o w n as moderates, are in no w a y immune to the overwhelming pull o f belief systems that treat evidence as a tiresome stumbling block to deeper, instinctive "ways o f k n o w i n g . " We are talking not about psychotics drinking poisoned K o o l - A i d at J o n e s t o w n or Scientologists w h o believe that babies w i l l be traumatized for life i f they hear anyone tell their mothers to "push" during labor. T h e real p o w e r o f j u n k thought lies in its status as a centrist phenomenon, fueled by the American credo o f tolerance that places all opinions on an equal footing and makes little effort to separate fact from opinion. In a stunning example o f the mainstreaming of j u n k thought coupled w i t h j u n k science, Supreme C o u r t A s s o ­ ciate Justice A n t h o n y Kennedy, writing the 5-to-4 majority opinion that upheld a ban on "partial birth abortion" in 2007, cited the "severe depression and loss o f esteem" that may follow an abortion as one rationale for the Court's decision. K e n n e d y even admitted that " w e find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon," but said, neverthe­ less, that "it seems unexceptionable to conclude that some w o m e n come to regret their choice to abort the infant they have created and sustained."

2

In fact, K e n n e d y was alluding to a j u n k science concept—"post­ abortion syndrome"—invented by anti-choice organizations and based entirely on anecdotal accounts gathered b y those groups. N o

212

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

randomized studies exist to prove the existence o f a "post-abortion s y n d r o m e " comparable to post-traumatic stress disorder, but a major randomized study o f more than five thousand w o m e n , conducted over an eight-year period by the American Psychological Associa­ tion, found

no significantly higher incidence o f depression or

stress-related illnesses in w o m e n w h o have had abortions.

3

Yet

the C o u r t majority chose to ignore real scientific studies and rely instead on anecdotal findings that are the essence o f j u n k science. O f course "some w o m e n " come to regret the choice to have an abortion. " S o m e w o m e n " also suffer from severe postpartum suicidal depres­ sion (which, unlike "post-abortion

syndrome," is a scientifically

documented condition), but w e do not pass laws preventing all w o m e n — o r even those w i t h a history o f postpartum psychosis— from bearing children. T h e difference between those w h o p u r v e y j u n k thought from the margins o f the ideological spectrum—the

conspiracy theory

bloggers—and those w h o reside near the center, even in the august halls o f the nation's highest court, is that the latter pick their poison both from C o l u m n A and C o l u m n B . H o w could it be otherwise? F o r ordinary Americans, including those not naturally disposed toward the irrational, the national menu o f j u n k thought is as broad and accessible as its offerings o f j u n k food. J u n k thought is a state o f mind that is hard to avoid. Press the remote, point and click the mouse, open the newspaper, and worlds o f anti-rationalism open up. • In entirely straight-faced fashion, Newsweek magazine began a 2005 cover story, titled " B o y Brains, Girl Brains," with the fol­ lowing paragraph: "Three years ago, Jeff Gray, the principal at Foust Elementary School in Owensboro, Ky., realized that his school needed help— and fast. . . . So Gray took a controversial course for educators on brain development, then revamped the first- and second-grade curriculum. The biggest change: he divided the classes by gender. Because males have less serotonin in their brains, which Gray was taught may cause them to fidget more, desks were removed from the boys' classrooms and they got short exercise periods through­ out the day. Because females may have more oxytocin, a hormone

Junk Thought

213

linked to bonding, girls were given a carpeted area where they sit and discuss their feelings. Because boys have higher levels of testosterone and are theoretically more competitive, they were given timed, multiple-choice tests. T h e girls were given multiplechoice tests, too, but got more time to complete them. . . . "

4

• In February 2006, in a dutiful attempt to add some culture to its marathon coverage of the winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, N B C sent Katie Couric on a whirlwind tour of R o m e , Florence, and Milan. Couric naturally made a visit to the chapel of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan, where the newly restored Leonardo da Vinci fresco of the Last Supper was attracting even more tourists than usual because of the brouhaha surrounding the movie The Da Vinci Code. Couric asked a bemused art historian to explain why, if there was no truth to Dan Brown's yarn, Leonardo had created an image of the apostle J o h n that looked so much like a girl. T h e art historian tried her best to explain that the depiction of J o h n as a beardless youth with long hair was standard Renaissance iconog­ raphy. N o matter. Couric grinned and shook her head, with a skeptical "hmmm" suggesting to the Today audience that it should not allow any facts of art history, coming from a pointy-headed professor, to interfere with a cryptological tale cooked up by a best-selling author. • A long-awaited study concerning the power of prayer to pro­ mote healing found that cardiac patients recovering from heart surgery derived absolutely no benefit from prayers offered by strangers—although the research did not cover prayers by friends 5

and relatives. The study, involving more than 1,800 patients over a ten-year period, cost $2.4 million, most of it donated by the J o h n Templeton Foundation, which finances research on spirituality. The U . S . government, not to be outdone in diligent attempts to link science and religion, has also allotted $2.3 million to prayer research since 2000. The patients in the Templeton Founda­ tion study were prayed for by communities o f R o m a n Catholic monks and nuns as well as a Protestant evangelical prayer min­ istry, and the group prayers proved equally and ecumenically inefficacious—recalling the line in Christopher Durang's play,

214

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, " G o d always answers our prayers. Sometimes the answer is no." Undaunted by the results, proponents o f the prayer study said that further study was needed and that regardless of what the research showed, they knew that prayer worked because they had personally experi­ enced its power. W h a t these three seemingly unrelated examples o f j u n k thought

have in c o m m o n is their tenuous or nonexistent relationship to evi­ dence. The Da Vinci Code is o f course pure fantasy. T h e prayer study was an unsuccessful attempt to find scientific evidence o f what the devoutly religious have always believed—that prayer can heal the sick. I f the findings had turned out otherwise, the headlines w o u l d have read, "Science Proves P o w e r o f Prayer." A s it was, believers sim­ p l y shrugged off the results. B o b Barth, spiritual director o f Silent U n i t y , the evangelical ministry involved in the prayer study, poohpoohed the results, declaring that " w e ' v e been praying a long time, w e ' v e seen prayer w o r k , w e k n o w it w o r k s , and research on prayer and spirituality is j u s t getting started."

6

T h e " b o y brain, girl brain" experiments are a more complicated case o f j u n k thought, because they are based on theories o f education that do have some relationship to facts, beginning w i t h obvious hor­ monal and anatomical differences between the sexes. B u t the exis­ tence o f certain culturally or biologically influenced differences in learning styles between boys and girls, to the extent that they do exist and can be substantiated, hardly justifies a transformation o f public education designed to emphasize the differences rather than the much greater similarities between the sexes. T h e Newsweek article, for example, never addressed the question o f what will happen to boys w h o have been allowed to run around classrooms w h e n they are required to w o r k in a normal office w i t h desks and cubicles and what w i l l happen to girls w h o have been allowed extra time to take tests w h e n they have to take an e x a m w i t h the same time limit as their male peers. J u n k thought may proclaim that men are from Mars and w o m e n from Venus, but the truth is that men are from Earth and w o m e n are from Earth. (The credit for this observation goes to Cathy Y o u n g , a contributing editor to Reason magazine.) Give j u n k thought practitioners enough sex-segregated public school classes for experi-

Junk Thought

215

mental purposes, however, and they w i l l undoubtedly be able to make a case for the benefits o f catering to whatever might be seen as innate differences between boys and girls. One o f the most maddening aspects o f j u n k thought is that it uses the language o f science and rationality to promote irrationality. T h e magic words for the "boy brain, girl brain" school experiments are oxytocin and serotonin; i f the principal had assigned girls to a sepa­ rate pink classroom because studies demonstrate that girls prefer pink, he w o u l d have been laughed out o f t o w n . O x y t o c i n is a magic w o r d that keeps popping up throughout the realms o f j u n k thought. D r . Eric Keroack, the Bush administration's choice to head the o n l y feder­ ally subsidized birth control and reproductive health program aimed at low-income teenagers (although he resigned abruptly in A p r i l 2007 amid a brewing Medicaid scandal involving his former clinics in Massachusetts), was actually an opponent o f contraceptives—at least 7

for unmarried w o m e n . Before m o v i n g on to Washington, K e r o a c k aggressively proselytized on behalf o f the pseudoscientific proposi­ tion that premarital sex damages any prospect o f a long-lasting rela­ tionship because the participants

"lose" o x y t o c i n — t h e

bonding

hormone that promotes intimacy—each time they engage in inter­ course. Keroack's o x y t o c i n theory, ostensibly derived from research on a small rodent called the prairie vole, also recalls the fear o f C o m ­ munists gaining control o f "precious bodily fluids" so m e m o r a b l y articulated by General J a c k D . R i p p e r in Dr. Strangelove. It is a true sign o f Keroack's membership in the j u n k thought c o m m u n i t y that he did not simply say, " B a d girls g o to hell," but found a scientificsounding rationale for his faith-based quackery. It is impossible to determine whether nonreligious anti-rational systems o f thought are more or less prevalent in the U n i t e d States than they were fifty years ago. We k n o w that the ranks o f fundamen­ talist Christians have g r o w n because public opinion pollsters have been asking the same questions about religious attitudes for decades and because churches keep membership records. We cannot, however, ascertain w i t h any degree o f accuracy h o w many Americans today, in comparison to the public at midcentury, believe in self-help m o v e ­ ments w h o s e results cannot be evaluated in any scientific w a y ; physi­ ological or psychological therapies o f u n k n o w n effectiveness; or, for that matter, in traditional purveyors o f j u n k thought such as

216

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

astrologers and psychics. O n e reason w h y it is difficult to quantify such phenomena is that they are simultaneously amorphous and per­ vasive, crossing boundaries that used to place limits on the number o f anti-rational philosophies people could encompass simultaneously. N e w A g e spirituality, a player in the universe o f j u n k thought since the eighties, is m u c h more

flexible

than traditional religion and

enables its adherents to hold logically incompatible beliefs w i t h mini­ mal psychological and intellectual discomfort. T h e absence o f rules and internally consistent theology constitutes a huge part o f the appeal o f N e w A g e philosophy; a practicing Catholic and most Protestants must believe in redemption through Jesus Christ, but N e w A g e creeds allow people to believe in any plan o f salvation, or no plan at all, w h i l e still deriving comfort from the idea o f a mystical, benevolent intelligence that somehow gives mean­ ing to earthly existence. A m o r p h o u s spirituality does not require people to choose a specific organized church, w i t h a defined set o f ethical principles and practical obligations that include the obliga­ tion to put m o n e y into the collection plate. A third o f Americans may believe that the Bible is literally true, but another third—the groups might even overlap—describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious."

8

W h a t can be said w i t h a fair degree o f certainty is that anti-rational j u n k thought has gained social respectability in the United States dur­ ing the past half century, that it interacts toxically w i t h the most cred­ ulous elements in both secular and religious ideologies, and that it has proved resistant to the vast expansion o f scientific knowledge that has taken place during the same period. Since the late sixties, there has been a g r o w i n g acceptance o f social and psychological theories in w h i c h great weight is accorded the passionate emotional convictions o f believers. In this realm o f emotion, absolute value is placed on per­ sonal testimony based on personal experience. I f a w o m a n believes that breast implants caused her ill health, for example, it is difficult for an attorney to introduce contradictory scientific evidence without looking heartless. A n d Justice K e n n e d y can conclude that amicus briefs filed by individual w o m e n w h o regret having had abortions are as persuasive as studies o f thousands o f w o m e n conducted by disintrested researchers. In a general sense, both the overtly anti-scientific and the emotion-

Junk Thought

217

ally based strains o f j u n k thought received a boost from the more paranoid phenomena o f the sixties—including the left's suspicion o f all research associated w i t h the military-industrial c o m p l e x and the right's equally strong distrust o f liberal intellectuals in the humanities and social sciences. H o w e v e r , the realm o f j u n k thought greatly expanded its reach during the seventies, as onetime social protesters retreated into narcissistic N e w A g e and self-help movements. B y the eighties, anti-rationalism had become a huge, multimedia, apolitical commodity, comparable to the y o u t h culture o f the sixties and mar­ keted by baby boomers w h o had been on both sides o f the barricades. It is easy to sell anti-rationalism, because j u n k thought always involves a shortcut—whether a diet requiring no reduction in calorie intake; a responsibility-evading bogus apology for bad behavior ("I'm sorry that y o u were hurt" instead o f " I ' m sorry that I hurt y o u " ) ; or a cure that depends largely on whether a sick patient has a positive attitude. Finally, the virulent outbreak o f anti-rationalism in late twentiethcentury America is also rooted in a m u c h older, nonpolitical tendency in American thought—a chronic suspicion o f experts that dovetails w i t h the folk belief in the superior w i s d o m o f ordinary people. Iron­ ically but perhaps predictably, the upsurge in mistrust o f expert authority followed several decades in w h i c h public deference to scien­ tific and technological authority, a deference so great that it was sometimes exaggerated and misplaced, stood at an all-time high.

THROUGHOUT MY CHILDHOOD in the 1950s, Americans regarded sci­ ence and medicine w i t h a respect bordering on reverence. American technology and science were given the lion's share o f the credit for the Allied v i c t o r y in the Second World War, and f e w ordinary Americans doubted either the w i s d o m or the morality o f the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that finally brought an end to the fighting in the Pacific. A s far as the public was concerned, American preeminence in science was a given until the Soviet U n i o n launched its Sputnik in 1957, but fear that the Russians might w i n the space race actually raised the prestige o f science by providing a rationale for large increases in government spending on basic scientific research and sci­ ence education. T h e m o o n landing in 1969 w o u l d probably never have happened without the b l o w to America's sense o f superiority

2l8

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

twelve years earlier. N e i l Armstrong's w a l k on the moon, however, represented more than a national and nationalistic achievement: it was a unique m o m e n t in w h i c h not only technological prowess but the imaginative possibilities o f science and exploration were illuminated for Americans and millions o f others around the globe. I happened to be in Florence on that J u l y day, and I watched the m o o n landing, along w i t h a crowd o f fellow tourists and Florentines, in a television store. We all caught our breaths at Armstrong's famous line, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." A n Italian aptly remarked that w e were especially privileged to be watching this event on ground hallowed by "the footsteps

of

G a l i l e o . " It seems that many people misheard the line on Armstrong's scratchy audio transmission from the m o o n and thought he had deliv­ ered a less poetic sentence that made no sense: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." T h e article "a"—underscoring the comparison between the individual and the human race—is o f course w h a t gave the astronaut's spontaneous exclamation its beauty and emotional p o w e r . Its omission is the equivalent o f the madden­ ingly c o m m o n declaration, " I could care l e s s " — w h e n what the speaker really means is " I couldn't care less." A l l o f us in the Florence television store heard Armstrong's line correctly, but o n l y in 2006, w h e n the original tape was digitally remastered, did the press finally get the quote right. (Armstrong com­ mented that he had always k n o w n he said "a man.") In 1969, it did not bother m e in the least that the military-industrial complex responsi­ ble for the V i e t n a m War was the same mihtary-industrial complex sending men into space; this inconsistency was part o f coming o f age in the sixties, and anyone w h o says that he or she was unmoved by Armstrong's w a l k on the m o o n is either lying or was stoned at the time. Weaponry and space exploration, integral as they had been to the national self-image, probably played a less important role than medi­ cine in fostering the average American's respect for science. In the fif­ teen years following the end o f the war, antibiotics and vaccines conquered the most c o m m o n , serious diseases that had killed or crip­ pled tens o f thousands o f children each year. Antibiotics also made it possible for children and adults to routinely survive conditions, such as pneumonia and complications from childbirth, that had frequently

Junk Thought

219

proved fatal in the past. In the mid-1930s, one out o f every one hun­ dred and fifty w o m e n died in childbirth; by the 1950s, that g r i m statis­ tic had fallen to just one in t w o thousand—partly because penicillin was available to treat postpartum infection. (Today the rate o f mater­ 9

nal death in childbirth is only one in ten thousand. ) A n d no one m y age can possibly forget summers shadowed by fear o f p o l i o — a fear communicated to us not only by our parents but by the c o m m o n sight of child polio victims wearing braces—before the Salk vaccine became available in 1954. M y mother, fearful o f adverse side effects from a procedure that had never been tried before on large numbers o f people, was unde­ cided about whether m y brother and I should be vaccinated. B u t like nearly everyone in those days she took the advice o f our pediatrician, w h o told her that there was no question about whether w e should be immunized. "This w o r k s , " he advised her. " Y o u r children are going to be part o f the greatest medical miracle o f our time." A n d so it was. T h e late forties and fifties were an age o f medical miracles, all the more impressive because, unlike more recent medical miracles such as organ transplants, the advances o f m y childhood addressed them­ selves to diseases that threatened e v e r y o n e — a n d not in the distant past, but within the recent m e m o r y o f every living person above the age o f reason. H a d anyone told me, in 1969, that an anti-vaccination movement—embodying

both j u n k science and j u n k

thought—

w o u l d emerge in the 1990s and be treated by the news media w i t h respectful attention, I w o u l d have considered the prediction sheer lunacy. T h e inseparability o f j u n k science from j u n k thought is evinced by the telltale marks o f endemic illogic coupled, in many instances, w i t h deliberate manipulativeness. T h e first and most fundamental w a r n ­ ing sign is an inability to distinguish between coincidence and causation—a basic requirement

for scientific literacy. T h e

anti-

vaccination movement is rife w i t h conspiracy theories tied both to the right wing's distrust o f government and the left's distrust o f tradi­ tional medicine—the latter a heritage o f the extreme w i n g s o f the holistic health and N e w A g e movements o f the late sixties and seven­ ties. D u r i n g the past twenty-five years, there appears to have been a significant increase in the incidence o f autism in children around the world. (I emphasize the w o r d "appears," because many epidemiolo-

220

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

gists question whether there really has been an increase in autism cases and attribute the phenomenon to an expanded diagnosis that applies the autistic label to children w i t h other neurological or behavior dis­ orders.) Whatever the reason for the rise in reported cases o f autism, it has coincided w i t h an increase in the number o f recommended child immunizations. Anti-vaccination groups have focused on a relatively n e w triple vaccine, introduced in 1987, that immunizes children against measles, mumps, and rubella (German measles). T h e first M M R immunizations are normally administered to toddlers between ages fifteen and seventeen months, around the age w h e n observant parents sometimes begin to notice the early signs o f autism, which include a lag in normal speech development and withdrawal from play activities. T h e anti-vaccine warriors have pounced on the M M R shot as a possible cause o f autism—either by itself or in conjunction w i t h other vaccines. That the early signs o f autistic behavior have always presented themselves around the end o f the second year o f life has not dissuaded the immunization opponents from pursuing their attempts to broaden legal exemptions and eventually make all i m m u ­ nizations voluntary. R i g o r o u s scientific research also has no effect on the purveyors o f j u n k thought. T h e most convincing study on the subject was released in 2002 in D e n m a r k , w h i c h , like nearly every other country, has recorded a marked increase in autism in recent years. With a small population and a national health system, the Danes are able to keep meticulous medical records, and they found that the reported increase in autism cases has occurred at an equal rate among immunized and nonimmunized children.

10

This important report is never cited in the

g r o w i n g number o f heartrending television interviews w i t h parents w h o first noticed the signs o f autism in their children several days, weeks, or months after childhood vaccinations. T h e emotional con­ victions o f the parents, w h o understandably want an explanation for the curse that has stricken their children, are given absolute weight. W h a t researchers have not yet been able to do is identify the real causes o f autism, a failure that reinforces the confusion between cau­ sation and coincidence that drives the anti-vaccine movement. A n t i vaccine crusaders dismiss public health concerns based on the severity and frequency o f measles outbreaks reported in communities, like the A m i s h , that receive religious exemptions from immunization. It is

Junk Thought

221

clear from these outbreaks that killer childhood diseases could easily make a comeback if enough people manage to evade state laws requir­ ing immunization before children can enter public schools. O p p o ­ nents o f compulsory immunization believe, w i t h a near-religious fervor, that no child should ever be subjected b y government fiat to the slightest risk—and all drugs, as is w e l l k n o w n , have some risk o f negative side effects. Furthermore, the anti-vaccine warriors k n o w that their children will, in effect, get a free ride as long as the vast majority o f their peers are immunized: ironically, unimmunized children w o u l d be in real danger only if the anti-vaccination movement succeeded in its cam­ paign against compulsory laws designed to protect the population against ancient scourges. J u n k science plays on the fears o f parents w h o understand little about risk-benefit equations or about the his­ tory o f the terrible diseases prevented b y immunizations. A typical example, on the Web site "Acupuncture T o d a y , " notes that the risk o f dying from pertussis (whooping cough) today is one in several m i l ­ lion, while the risk o f a serious adverse reaction to the vaccination that prevents w h o o p i n g cough, diphtheria, and tetanus is 1 in 1,750 and "deaths attributed to the vaccine outnumber deaths due to the ill­ ness."

11

O f course the risk o f dying o f w h o o p i n g cough in A m e r i c a

today is negligible, because vaccinations n o w protect millions o f chil­ dren from getting the disease at all. T h e purveyors o f j u n k thought are urging the public to abandon the v e r y immunizations that are responsible for cutting the death rate from infectious diseases. A second telltale sign o f j u n k thought is the appropriation o f scientific-50Htt deliberate attempt to mislead or confuse in, 229; difficulty of quantifying trends in, 215—16; expert-

Index

346

junk thought (continued) bashing in, 225—7; global warming and, 226-9; innumeracy and, 2 2 2 - 5 , 229—30; Justice Kennedy's abortion opinion and, 211—12; poor mathematical and scientific skills and, 229-30; repressed memory theory and, 224—5, 240; self-help movements and, 215, 217; supposedly innate sex differences in scientific and mathematical aptitude and, 232-4; tenuous or nonexistent relationship to evidence in, 2 1 1 - 1 5 ; vaccination controversy and, 219—22 Justice Department, U.S., 84

Kaiser Family Foundation, 249, 250 Kansas, teaching of evolution in, 309 Kaplan, Abraham, 152 Kazan, Elia, 100—1 Kazin, Alfred, xiv-xv, 122, 277, 283 Kazin, Michael, 79, 157, 289 Kelly, Henry, 2 5 3 - 4 Kennedy, Anthony, 198, 2 1 1 - 1 2 , 216 Kennedy, Jacqueline, 166 Kennedy, John F., xiv, 124, 143, 286, 313; assassination of, 127, 132, 279, 289; Catholicism of, 185, 194, 198; culturally sophisticated image of, xiii, 283-4; intellectuals in administration of, 123, 287, 288-9, 290, 294; nuclear test-ban treaty and, 132—3, 311 ; telegenic appearance of, 12 Kennedy, Robert F., 150, 279-80, 294, 313 Kent State University, 142 Keroack, Eric, 215 Kerry, John, 283, 284, 286 Khrushchev, Nikita, 133 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 132, 145, 165, 174; assassination of, 150, 274, 279—80 King, Stephen, 1 6 - 1 7 , 3 4> 315 "King's Chapel and the King's Court, The" (Niebuhr), 160 Kissinger, Henry, 290 Kitzmiller v. Dover, 312 Koran, taking oath of office on, 300-1 Kozinn, Allan, 171—2 Kristol, Irving, xviii-xix, 89, 90, 1 3 1 - 2 , J

136-7, 292-3, 297

Kristol, William, 293, 294 Kugler, Izzy, 89 Kurlansky, Mark, 173

LaHaye, Tim, 19 laissez-faire economics, 70—1 language development, videos' impact on, 250,316 Larger Aspects of Socialism, The (Walling), 77-8 Last Novel, The (Markson), 261 law, Bible vs. people's will as basis for, 190—1, 201 learning disabilities, 222, 223 ; autism, 2 1 9 - 2 1 , 222, 223-4 Leary, Timothy, 174, 175-6 lecture series: in Gilded Age, 65, 66-7; lyceum movement and, 55-7, 65, 103 Left Behind books (Jenkins), 19, 24 Lenin, V. I., 84, 96 Lennon, John, 164, 293 Leonardo da Vinci, 119, 120, 213 letter-writing, 274-8; epistolary friendships and, 276-8 Lewis, Judith Herman, 225 Liberace, 8—9 liberal intellectuals, 297; anti-communism among, 88-9; battles between conservative intellectuals and, 290-2; civic literacy and, 301-5 ; Communist leanings ascribed to, 82—3, 84; in Kennedy and Johnson administrations, 123, 287, 288-90, 294; un-American leanings suspected of, 82-4. See also intellectuals; New Left; Old Left liberalism, intellectualism associated with, xviii-xix, 80—1, 288, 290 Liberator, 5 m libraries: digital, 263—4, 267—8; public, 64—5, 7i. 105 Liddy, G. Gordon, 175 Life, 128, 129 Life Is Worth Living, 97 Limbaugh, Rush, 202 Lincoln, Abraham, 57—8, 108 Lindbergh, Charles, 3, 174 Lippmann, Walter, 283 literacy, xviii, 64, 65 literary blogs, 261

Index literary criticism, 259—62 Little, Brown, 265, 266 Little Blue Books, 1 1 3 - 1 4 Look, 129 Los Angeles Times, 260 Louis XVI, king of France, 47 Lovely Bones, The (Sebold), 267 lowbrow culture, 104, 107 Lowell, James Russell, 32, 34, 70 loyalty oaths, 96 Luce, Clare Boothe, 197 Luce, Henry, 123, 127, 128 Lutherans, 154 lyceum movement, 55-7, 65, 103 Lyell, Sir Charles, 39n Lynd, Staughton, 142—3 Lysenko, Trofim D., 82n

MacArthur, John D. and Catherine T., Foundation, 231, 253 Macdonald, Dwight, 1 1 4 - 1 5 , 116, 122, 123, 128, 129-30, 136,170, 258 Madison, James, 36, 47, 48, 49, 57 magazines and periodicals : article length reduced in, 257—9; decline in readership of, 242—3 ; in Gilded Age, 66; middlebrow culture and, 1 2 1 - 4 , 127, 128,129; social Darwinism promoted in, 62; women's, 258-9. See also specific titles Mailer, Norman, 118, 174 Making It (Podhoretz), 108-9 Making of Middlebrow Culture, The (Rubin), 109 Manchester, William, 97 Mandelstam, Osip, 168, 257 Mann, Horace, 32, 5 0 - 1 , 56 Manns, Adrienne, 177-8, 179 Mansfield, Harvey C , 169—70 "Man Thinking" ideal, 37-8, 59 March of the Penguins, 26 marketing. See mass marketing Markson, David, 261 marriage: gay, 201, 205 ; interfaith, 184-5 Marx, Karl, 82n, 96-7, 115 Marxism, 82, 87, 92, 291 Massachusetts: lyceum movement in, 5 5 - 6 ; public schools in, 50—1, 52, 53 Massachusetts Board of Education, 32, 50

347

"Masscult and Midcult" (Macdonald), 128, 129-30 mass marketing, 169; of anti-rational junk thought, 217; mainstreaming of the once subversive and, 164—5 ; middlebrow culture and, 109, 113 ; youth culture and, 163, 164-5, > 182 1 6 6

masturbation, 196, 259 mathematical illiteracy, 2 2 2 - 5 , 229-30, 299 Mather, Samuel, 40 McCabe, Edward, 247-8 McCafferty, Megan, 265, 266 McCain, John, 192, 287 McCarthy, Eugene, 151 McCarthy, Joseph R., n - 1 2 , 94, 96, 133 McCarthy, Mary, 91, 119, 122, 128, 267, 276 McCarthy era, xv, n - 1 2 , 90, 91, 94-102, 164, 165, 291, 302; arms race with Soviets and, 133 ; atheism linked to communism in, 97-8; higher education expanded in, 101—2; informing on others in, 90, 98—9, 100—1 ; Murrow's See It Now program on, 124—5 Î suspicion of intellectuals fostered by, 95-7; television coverage of hearings in, 11—12 McCaskill, Claire, 202 McClary, Susan, 231 McCloskey, Rev. John, 197 Mead, Sidney, 38 Mead, Walter Russell, 192-3, 194, 196 measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, 220 "Me Decade," 133 media, 1 0 - 1 7 ; celebrity culture and, 173-9, 243 ; fundamentalist religion and, 1 7 - 1 9 , 20; junk thought and, 241; misguided objectivity of, 20—1, 25; seeming variety of choices offered by, 1 0 - 1 1 . See also book publishing; magazines and periodicals; newspapers; television; video culture; specific titles "the media," misuse of singular in, 2 4 3 - 4 Medicare, 181, 292 medicine: anti-vaccine movement and, 2 1 9 - 2 2 ; respect for science resulting from advances in, 217, 218—19 Melville, Herman, 60 memory: erosion of, 299-300, 307, 309, 315; repressed, recovering of, 224—5, 240; video culture and, 17

Index

348

"men of science," Enlightenment thinkers' notion of, 35 Methodists, 45, 68, 186 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 129 Meyer, Adolphe, 49 Michelangelo, 119, 120 Michener, James, 119, 121 Michigan State University, 140, 148, 255, 270 Microsoft, 309—10 middlebrow culture, 102, 103-30, 139, 261, 264—5 5 as aspirational culture, 102, 103 ; BOMC and, 105, 106, 107, 114, 1 1 7 - 1 9 , 124; debasement of cultural standards and, 129—30; in early twentieth century, 108 ; in fifties, 103-7, 118-19, 121—3, 124; Great Books project and, 1 1 4 - 1 7 , 144; highbrow radical intellectuals blamed for decline of, 127—8; historical novels and, 119—21 ; magazine publishing and, 121—4, 127, 128, 129; mass marketing and, 109, 113; mingling of highbrow culture and, 106, 115, 121—4, 128—30; outlines of twenties and, no—14, 116; secularizing influence of, in—12; television's impact on, 124—7, ; transmitted by families and mentors, 105—9; variations in, 106—7 1 2 0

Middlebury College, 264 middle class, 130; lyceum movement and, 56—7; pseudoscience peddled to, 62 Middle East, 282; appeal of Catholicism and Protestant evangelical sects in, 207—8 ; Armageddon and, 158, 193 midterm elections: (1994), 83 ; (2006), xvii, 202 Miers, Harriet, 197-8 military: desegregation of, 178; universities' relationships with, 142—3, 178, 180; women in, 205 military-industrial complex, 217, 218 Millbury, Mass., lyceum movement in, 55 Miller, Arthur, 99—101, 118 Miller, Stephen, 268, 274 Million Little Pieces, A (Frey), 271 Milloy, Steven, 226-7 Mind of the South, The (Cash), 47 Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 262 miracles, belief in, 18 Mirror to America (Franklin), 147 modernism, 155; fear of, 29

modernization, secularism linked to, 207-8 Monroe, Stephanie, 235 moon landing (1969), 217—18 Morgan, J . P., 62 Mormonism, 44—5, 46, 203—4 Morrison, Toni, 146—7 Moscow Conversations (Jacoby), 263 Mott, Lucretia, 56 "Movement," right-wing commentators' use of term, 136—7 movies: art or foreign, 105; about nuclear warfare, 133 Moyers, Bill, 28-9, 294 multiculturalism, 3 0 1 - 2 ; curriculum reforms of sixties and, 143—8 Mundel, Luella Raab, 97-8, 101 Murrow, Edward R., 106, 124-5 Museum of Modern Art, 129 museums, 65, 105, 129 music: folk, depoliticization of, 164-5; jazz, J

163-4, 69; in public school curricula, 172—3; rock, 131, 169, 174, 262. See also classical music; pop music music criticism: classical music and, 259, 260, 262; pop music and, 170-2, 262 music players, personal, 256, 268 Muslims, 194, 200, 206; first elected to U.S. Congress, 300-1 ; radical Islam and, 207, 208 My Disillusionment in Russia (Goldman), 84

Nabrit, James M., Jr., 178-9 Nancy Drew series, 266 Nation, 91, 158, 294 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), 260 National Center for History in the Schools, 302 National Constitution Center, 299 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), xviii, 250-1 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), 3 0 1 - 2 National Geographic-Roper survey, 281-2, 285 National Review, 160 National Science Foundation, xvii National Vaccine Information Center, 221—2 nativism, 83 natural selection, xvii, 21, 23; emperor

Index penguin as example of, 26, 27; eugenics and, 68-9; inefficiencies of, 26, 27, 78; Marxism as appropriation of, 82n; social selection equated with, 70, 72, 73, 74, 79-80 (see also social Darwinism). See also evolution "Nature" (Emerson), 32 nature documentaries, 25—7 Nazism, 85, 88, 139, 310 Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939), 89 NBC, 213 neoconservatives, 89, 124, 137, 144-5, 158, 160, 196—7, 290—7. See also conservative intellectual establishment Neustadt, Richard, xiv New Age spirituality, 216, 217, 219 New Deal, 86, 87, 88, 161, 181, 255 New England, 47; church membership in, 40; education in, 52, 53; lyceum movement in, 55—7. See also Massachusetts New EnglandJournal of Medicine, 234 New Frontier, 123 New Left, 90,130,134, 141, 143; Old Left compared to, 1 3 1 - 2 New Orleans, public schools in, 189 New Republic, 294 Newsday, 237, 260

349

North: debate over biological evolution in, 67; public education in, 52 North Carolina, public education in, 53 Northwestern University, 178 nostalgia, 29—30 Notre Dame, 197 Notre Dame University, 300 Novak, Robert, 197 nuclear weapons, 217, 269; and Kennedy's speech calling for test-ban treaty, 132-3, 311

Obama, Barack, 287 obesity, diabetes and, 222, 225—6 objectivity, misguided notions of, 20—1, 25 O'Connor, Sandra Day, 299 Old Left, 164, 292; communism and, 82—102, 290-1 (see also anti-communism; communism); folk songs associated with, 164-5 ; sixties radicals compared to, 1 3 1 - 2 Old North Church, Boston, 42 Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy, 166 "On Faith," 272 On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 7 1 , 74 On the Waterfront, 100 Oppenheimer, J . Robert, 133 opposing viewpoints, lack of interest in,

newspapers, 127, 257, 298; arts coverage xix-xx reduced in, 259-62; celebrity culture Oprah, 2 j i and, 176-80, 243 ; decline in readership of, 242—3, 311. See also specific newspapers Opus Dei, 197 O'Reilly, Bill, 271 Newsweek, 1 5 1 - 2 , 2 1 2 - 1 3 , 214, 236, 272 New Yorker, 106, 1 1 4 - 1 5 , 122, 124, 258, 294 Organization of Economic Cooperation and New York Jew (Kazin), xiv-xv, 277 Development (OECD), 229 New York Public Library, 64-5 Outline of History, The (Wells), 110-13 New York Review of Books, 119, 2 5 7 - 8 , 261 oxytocin, 2 1 2 - 1 3 , 215, 236 New York Times, 25, 66, 67, 7 3 , 1 2 8 , 1 3 2 , 1 3 6 , 155, 1 7 1 - 2 , 234-5, 237, 238, 248-9, 260, 261, 266, 267, 281 packaging, in book publishing, 265, 266-7 New York Times Book Review, 147 Packard, Rev. Frederick A., 5 0 - 1 New York Times Magazine, 1 3 1 - 2 , 179-80, Packard, Vance, 129 2 2 1 - 2 , 223 New York Tribune, 65, 66—7 Nicaraguan contras, 293 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 160 Nixon, Richard, 12, 105, 137, 151, 160, 167, 288, 290, 294; inaugural of, 149-50, 165 No Child Left Behind Act, 310

Paine, Thomas, 41, 42, 43, 54, 84 Palestinian state, 193 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 85 papal infallibility, 195, 196, 197, 199 paperback publishing, 105, 114, 116, 117 paranoia, 19, 217 parochial schools, 67, 183 partial birth abortion, 2 1 1 - 1 2 , 216

350

Index

Partisan Review, 91, 122, 123, 128-30, 288 Passion of the Christ, The, 18 Patner, Andrew, 272 Patrick Henry College, 189, 190 Patterson, Orlando, 237 Paul VI, Pope, 195 Payne, Les, 237 penguins, emperor, 26, 27 Pentecostals, 208 periodicals. See magazines and periodicals Perle, Richard, 294 Perry, Bruce, 236 Person to Person, 124-5 pertussis (whooping cough), 221 Peter, Paul, and Mary, 165, 280 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2 2 - 3 , 190-1 philanthropy, 64, 71 Phillips, Wendell, 65 physician-assisted suicide, 198 Pius IX, Pope, 195 plagiarism, 264, 265—6 Plato, 113, 115, 273 Plot Against America, The (Roth), 3 Podhoretz, John, 293 Podhoretz, Norman, 108-9, 122, 123-4, 136-7, 293 Poland, 89 polar bears, 226-7 polarization, xvi-xvii, 104, 297, 298 polio, 219 political correctness, 211, 234, 302 politicians: degradation of standards for discourse of, 3—5, 280—7; elevated tone and language of, in past, 279—80 Polonsky, Abraham, 100 polygamy, 45n, 203-4 Pope, Alexander, 139 pop music, 163—5, 169—72, 262; mass marketing and, 164; respectful music criticism and, 170—2 popular culture: celebrity culture and, 173—6, 182; college courses in, 314—15; cultural life in Russia contrasted with, 167-9; mass marketing and, 163, 164-5, 169; middlebrow culture of effort and, 104-5; print coverage of, 260, 262; sixties youth culture and, 163—72 Popular Culture Association, 226 Popular Front, 88

Popular Science Monthly, 66 Population Bomb, The (Ehrlich), 227 Porter, Rev. Lee, 156 Portnoy's Complaint (Roth), 134 Postman, Neil, 1 3 - 1 4 , 246 Poussaint, Alvin F., 248-9 poverty, 160, 208 ; social Darwinism and, 72-3 Powell, Colin, 295 prayer: research on, 213—14; in schools, 183—4 predestination, 51 premarital sex, 195, 215 Presbyterians, 154, 186 presidential debates (i960), 12 presidential elections: (1932), 88; (1936), 88; (1952), xiii, 288; (i960), 12, 185, 283-4; (1964), 135; (1968), 137, 149-51 ; (1980), 186; (2000), xvii, 286; (2004), xvii, 190, 196, 283; (2008), 286-7, 3°8 presidential oratory, 3 - 5 , 2 8 1 - 7 ; Bush's debasement of, 3 - 4 , 281, 284-6; dumbing down of Americans and, 281—3 ; Kennedy's culturally sophisticated image and, xiii, 283-4; Roosevelt's fireside chats, 4—5,106, 255, 281 President's Council on Bioethics, 295-6 Presley, Elvis, 293 Princeton, 54 Principles of Geology (Lyell), 39n print culture, shift to video culture from, 14, 182, 242-3, 244 print media: article length reduced in, 257-9; coverage reduced in, 259-62, 305; culture of distraction and, 242—3, 244, 257—62; pandering to public ignorance ascribed to, 305-6. See book publishing; magazines and periodicals; newspapers a r t s

Progressive Era, 71, 74, 113 Protestants, 190,191, 195, 239; antievolutionism among, 67; conservative and secularized denominations of, 42, 45; Emerson's break with, 4 2 - 3 , 46; fundamentalist (see fundamentalist religion); mainstream and liberal, trend away from, 153-4, 185-6, 202; proliferation of religious sects and, 43—4, 46—7, 50; Third World converts and, 207-8. See also specif c denominations

Index pseudoscience, 61, 81, 225, 312, 315; defined, 210. See also communism; junk science; social Darwinism psychology, junk thought in, 224-5, 4 ° Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 2 6 - 7 , 294 2

publishing. See book publishing; magazines and periodicals; newspapers; print media "purges," use of term, 94 purge trials (1937-1938), 88 Puritans, xv, 31, 32, 40, 42, 47

Quakers, 45 quiz shows, 1 2 5 - 7

racial discrimination, 159, 160, 292; scientific justifications for, 68—9 radio, 124; talk shows on, 271 Radulovich, Milo, 124-5 Rafferty, Max, 1 7 2 - 3 Rand, Ayn, 80 rap music, 164 "rapture," fundamentalists' use of term, 19-20 rational Christians, 43-4, 46 rationalism: Enlightenment, 43, 190. See also anti-rationalism rationalists, distinction between intellectuals and, 44 Ravitch, Diane, 303, 304, 312, 313 reading: by or to children, 250, 253, 254, 256-7; cognitive rewards of, 2 5 1 - 2 ; decline of, 127, 238-9, 247, 2 5 0 - 1 , 252, 269, 274; encouragement of, at family level, 316-17; for information vs. pleasure, 17; Internet and, 16—17, 262-3, 267-8; middlebrow culture and, 105-24 Reagan, Ronald, 135, 137, 158, 181, 186, 276-7, 300, 304; conservative intellectual establishment and, 287, 290, 292, 293, 294-5 "reality-based community," Bush administration's views on, 10, 308 Reason, 214 recovered memory, 224-5 Red Scare, 83-5, 93, 96

351

Reflections of a Neoconservative (Kristol), xviii—xix Rehnquist, William H., 198 religion: accommodation of science and, 112; competition for American souls and, 44, 46; disruptions of Revolutionary War and, 39—40; freedom of, 2 1 , 28, 31, 41, 46, 47. 190, 203, 299, 3 0 0 - 1 ; freethought and, 39-43 ; public ignorance about, 25 ; in upbringing of baby boomers, 184—5. See also Catholics; fundamentalist religion; Protestants; Roman Catholic Church; specific denominations religious centrists or moderates, 200—2; Dawkins's views on, 206—7 Religious History of the American People, A (Ahlstrom), 1 6 1 - 2 religious teaching in schools, 4 9 - 5 1 , 183-4 religious values, traditional, decline in, 152 "remixing," 264, 265; book packaging and, 265, 266-7 Remnick, David, 259 "Reply to a Socialist" (Sinclair), 72 repressed memory theory, 2 2 4 - 5 , 240 Republican Party: and fundamentalist Protestants' alliance with right-wing Catholics, 160; Protestant fundamentalists and, 186 research: digital sources and, 263-4, 265; high school and college students' inadequate skills in, 264-5 Revelation, 18—20 revolutionary generation, 3 4 - 7 ; education of, 3 5 - 6 ; freethought among, 40, 41, 43 Ricks, Christopher, 170 Riesman, David, 91 Rights of Man, The (Paine), 54 Roberts, John G., 197, 198, 299 Robertson, Pat, 18,191 Robespierre, Maximilien, 48 Rockefeller, John D., 61, 70 rock music, 131, 169,174, 262. See also pop music Roev. Wade, 159, 161, 186, 195, 198, 204-5 "Roll Over Beethoven," 172 Roman Catholic Church, 27, 198, 203 ; anticommunism of, 97, 194; evolution opposed by, 67; John Paul II's theological conservatism and, 195-6;

Index

352

Roman Catholic Church (continued) reform movement of sixties in, 158-9, 195-6; Third World converts to, 207-8. See also Catholics Romanticism, 59 Romney, Mitt, 287 Roosevelt, Franklin D., xiii, 3, 4 - 5 , 88, 93, 106, 181, 255, 281, 310 Roosevelt, Theodore, 79—80 Root of All Evil?, The, 206-7 Rorem, Ned, 261 Rosenberg, Ethel, 95, 269 Rosenberg, Julius, 89, 95, 269 Rostow, Eugene, 290 Rostow, W. W., 143, 290 Rostropovich, Mstislav, 167—8 Roth, Philip, 3, 105-6, 131, 134, 267 Rovere, Richard, 283 Rowland, Ingrid, 119, 120 Rubin, Jerry, 1 7 3 - 4 Rubin, Joan Shelley, 109 Rudd, Mark, 143, 174, 179 rugged individualism, iconic notion of, 58, 74 Rush, Benjamin, 36, 48 Russert, Tim, 285 Rutgers University, 264

Sagan, Carl, 210 Saguy, Abigail C , 226 Salem, Mass. : lyceum movement in, 55—6; witch trials in, 99 Sand, George, 276 San Francisco Chronicle, 260 San Francisco State College, 152 Saturday Evening Post, 122 Saturday Review, 179, 257 Scalia, Antonin, 198-200 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., xiv, 180-1, 288, 289, 303, 304, 3 1 2 - 1 3 Schmidt, E. O., 281 school desegregation, 153, 154, 299 schools. See colleges and universities; education Schumann, Clara, 276 Schwecker, Ellen, 95 Schwerner, Michael, 145 science, xii—xiii, 116, 308; accommodation of religion and, 112; deference to, in mid-

twentieth century, 2 1 7 - 1 9 ; deficiencies in public education and, 23, 24—5; public ignorance about, xvii-xviii, 22—6, 229—30, 299, 312; supposedly innate differences between sexes and, 232—5 ; theory in everyday life vs., 23—4. See 0/50 junk science scientific method, 23-4, 230, 231, 253 scientists: in public debate and dissemination of knowledge, 312; in secular minority, 200 Scientists and Engineers for America, 312 Scopes, John T., 2 1 , 22 Scopes "monkey trial" (1925), 2 1 - 2 , 28, 78-9 Scott, A. O., 147 Scott, Rev. Robert, 155-6 Seattle Children's Hospital, 250 Sebold, Alice, 267 Second Great Awakening, 38—47, 186—7; circumstances leading to, 39-42; and emotional appeal of fundamentalism, 45-6; proliferation of religious sects in, 43—4, 46—7, 50; and religious teaching in schools, 50. See also fundamentalist religion Second Helpings (McCafferty), 265 Second Vatican Council (1962), 158-9, 195-6 Secret Survivors: Uncovering Incest and Its Aftereffects in Women (Blume), 224 secular government, 207; delicate balance between Christian people and, 204; freethought and, 41 secular humanism, 97 secularism, 202; education level and, 188-9; expectations for growth of, in early 1900s, 203 ; fundamentalists' hatred for, 29,189-90, 196, 199; modernization linked to, 207—8 ; as outlook of minority of Americans, 200; removal of religion from public life and, 201 ; right-wing Catholics' disdain for, 196-7 Seeger, Pete, 165 See It Now, 124-5 segregation, 52,108, 144—5, 151; of elementary and secondary schools, 153 ; of minority studies, 146-8; single-sex classes and schools, 212—13, 214—15, 2 3 5 - 4 1 , 315; in universities, 177-8. See also desegregation

Index self-education, 57-9, 104, 107-8, 238; closed off as route to various professions, 107-8; middlebrow culture and, 104-7, 1 1 3 , 1 2 7 ; relationship between formal, systematic learning and, 58-9; reverential images of, 58 self-help, 114, 215, 217 self-made man, ideal of, xv, xvi Senate, U.S., 302 separation of church and state, 44, 54, 204, 300 September n, 2001, attacks, 19, 20, 29, 200 Sesame Beginnings, 248—50 700 Club, 18 sex differences, supposedly innate, 232-41 ; "boy brain, girl brain" dichotomy and, 2 1 2 - 1 3 , 2 1 4 - 1 5 , 232, 234-41, 315; Summers controversy and, 232-4 sexual abuse of children, 224—5 sexual morality, 159, 195, 196,197 sexual revolution, 131, 152, 157 Shakespeare, William, 58, 113, 115, 147, 238 Shaw, George Bernard, in Shawn, William, 259 Sheen, Bishop Fulton J . , 97,197 silent majority, 149, 151, 152-3 Silent Unity, 214 Silliman, Benjamin, 55 Simon, Paul, 169, 170 Simon & Schuster, 113 Sinclair, Upton, 72 single-sex classes and schools, 212—13, 2 1 4 - 1 5 , 235-41, 315

353

1 6 3 - 5 , 1 6 9 - 7 2 ; right wing take on, 1 3 1 - 2 , 1 3 5 - 7 , !38-9, 141, 142,144-6, 293; youth culture of, 162, 163-72, 173, 182, 260. See also counterculture $64,000 Question, The, 125 slavery, 46, 47, 49, 5m, 52, 54, 67, 69, 186, 191, 301, 304 Sloppy Firsts (McCafferty), 265 social Darwinism, 6 1 - 3 , 66, 68-81, 85, 210, 288; anti-evolutionists' opposition to, 78—9, 80—1 ; as argument against social reform, 72—3, 79, 81 ; articles in masscirculation magazines on, 62; biblical mandate and, 72—3 ; class-based bias of proponents of, 69; Darwin's writings at odds with, 7 3 - 4 ; eugenics and, 68-9, 80; James's refutation of, 74-6; as nameless philosophy, 80; scientific authority ascribed to, 69-70, 71 ; social scientists' critiques of, 77—8 ; Spencer's laissez-faire economics and, 70—1 ; Sumner's advocacy of, 61, 62, 63, 69, 7 1 - 2 ; use of term, 6in; Veblen's critique of, 76—7 Social Darwinism in American Thought (Hofstadter), 61 n socialism, xii, 71, 73, 83, 86, 94, 97 social justice, 196 social pseudoscience: supposedly grounded in objective science, 69-70. See also communism; social Darwinism

social sciences, 146; elevation of public discourse in, 312, 315; junk thought in, 2 2 7 - 8 , 240; science-based, 7 7 - 8 sins, debate over relative gravity of, 5 m Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, 214 Social Security, 181, 292 sixties, 1 3 1 - 8 2 , 1 9 7 ; African-American Socrates, 273 student protests in, 177—9; attacks on solar system, history of, 2 4 - 5 , 1 1 1 - 1 2 rationality in, 1 3 4 - 5 ; campus upheavals Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 167 in, 131, 136, 137-49, !5 » 177-9» Sommers, Cristina Hoff, 236-7 304; Catholic reform movement in, Souls of Black Folk, The (DuBois), 147-8 158-60; celebrity-making role of media sound bites, 257 in, 173—80,182; debate over cultural South: anti-evolutionism in, 67-8; church legacy of, 180-2; drug culture of, 131, membership in, 40; colleges and 157,174, 175-6; fundamentalist universities in, 5 4 - 5 , 67-8; and cultural resurgence in, 1 3 5 , 1 5 3 - 8 , 161-2, 185, division between so-called red and blue 186; generation gap and, 140-1, 166, states, 52; demise of Enlightenment 177-9; hopeful cultural trends in first culture in, 57; fundamentalist religion half of, 132—3 ; Nixon's election and, in, 46, 47, 67-8, 189; lyceum movement 1 4 9 - 5 0 , 1 5 1 , 1 6 0 ; Other Sixties and, 135, in, 56-7; Nixon's support in, 151 ; 137, 149-62, 181,185,186; pop music of, public education in, 52-4, 189 2

354

Index

South America, appeal of Catholicism and Protestant evangelical sects in, 207—8 South Carolina College (now University of South Carolina), 54—5, 67 Southern Baptist Convention, 154, 155—6, 186 Southern Methodist University, 155, 189-90 Soviet Union, xii, 30, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 98, 99, 150, 172, 194, 258; author's sojourn in, 167—9, 263; Gorbachev's reforms in, 258, 290-1, 294—5 5 limited cultural influence of, in America, 92-3 ; nuclear weapons and, 133; Sputnik and, xii, 172, 217

Stone, Lucy, 65 Story of Civilization, The (Durant), 106—7, no, 113, 114 Story of Philosophy, The (Durant), 1 1 3 - 1 4 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 65 suburbanization, 184 Summers, Lawrence H., 232-4 Sumner, William Graham, 61, 62, 63, 69, 7 1 - 2 , 76, 79 Sunday, Billy, 18 supernatural: credulity regarding, 18—19; general attraction to, 208—9; given same respect as scientific facts subject to proof, 21

space race, xii, 2 1 7 - 1 8 Sparks, Jared, 70 specialization of knowledge, 107; Emerson's warning about, 37; middlebrow outlines of twenties and, no—14, 116

superstition, 211, 307 Supreme Court, U.S., 135, 184; Bush's nominations to, 197—8; Catholic jurists on, 197—200; partial birth abortion decision of, 2 1 1 - 1 2 , 216; public ignorance about, 298-9, 300; Roe v. Wademd, 159, 161, 186, 195, 198, 204-5

speech: debasement of, 3 - 9 , 279-81, 282-97; elevated tone and language of, in past, xiii, 279-80; "folks" and, 3 - 5 ; fuzzy thinking and, 6; lack of verbal inventiveness and, 7 - 8 ; mirroring process and, 8—9; "troop" vs. "soldier" and, 6. See also presidential oratory Spellings, Margaret, 235 Spencer, Herbert, 7 0 - 1 , 72, 78, 79, 80; James's refutation of, 74—6 spirituality, New Age, 216, 217, 219 Spock, Benjamin, 132, 248, 292 Sputnik, xii, 172, 217 Squires, James D., 242 Stalin, Joseph, 82n, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 168, 265 standards. See academic standards; cultural standards Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 65 State Department, U.S., 293 states' rights, 48, 198 Steele, Shelby, 237 Steinbeck, John, 93 Steinem, Gloria, 132, 180 stem cell research. See embryonic stem cell research Stempel, Herbert, 125-6 Stevens, Wallace, 170 Stevenson, Adlai, xiii, 4, 288 Stone, I. F., 2 7 2 - 4 Stone, Irving, 119—21

"survival of the fittest," coining of phrase, 70 Suskind, Ron, 10 System of Synthetic Philosophy (Spencer), 70

Talent, Jim, 202 tariffs, 71 taxation, 71 ; for schools, 49-50, 52 tax cuts, 298 Taylor, Justin, 261 teachers: denigration of, xv—xvi; homosexual, 195 ; scientific ignorance among, 25. See also colleges and universities; education technology, 308, 309-10; conversation avoidance devices and, 268, 269, 2 7 0 - 1 , 278. See also computers; Internet; video culture teenagers, books based on prepackaged plots and characters for, 266-7 television, 10—16, 242; celebrity culture and, 173-6, 177, 179, 180; children's exposure to, 13, 14—16, 247—50; decline of conversation and, 268; in fifties, 1 1 - 1 3 , 106;firstgeneration raised from infancy with, 13 ; hopes for, in early days of medium, 1 1 - 1 2 ; limiting watching of, 316-17; middlebrow

Index culture corrupted by, 124—7, 129; as news source, 298, 311 ; programs about supernatural on, 18-19; rigged quiz shows on, 125—7; seeming variety of choices on, 1 0 - n ; serious programming on, 124—5 5 sheer quantity of programming on, 1 3 - 1 4 ; sound bites on, 257; statistics on watching of, 245-6; talk shows on, 271. See also video culture temperance movement, 65 Templeton, John, Foundation, 2 1 3 - 1 4 terrorism, 205 ; apocalyptic thinking and, 19, 20; "folks" rhetoric and, 3—4; perceived safety of time before, 30 tests, standardized, 310 text messaging, 268, 269 Thatcher, Margaret, 276-7 theory, in science vs. everyday life, 23—4 Theory of the Earth, The (Hutton), 39n Theory of the Leisure Class, The (Veblen), 76—7 Third World, appeal of Catholicism and Protestant evangelical sects in, 207-8 "This Land Is Your Land," 165, 172 Thomas, Clarence, 198 Thoreau, Henry David, 32, 56, 60, 84 Tilton, Theodore, 73 Time, 20, 123, 288; 2006 Person of the Year issue, 305-6 Timebends (Miller), 99-100 Timothy Leary: A Biography (Greenfield), 175 Title IX, 235 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 34, 45, 308 Today, 213 tolerance, American credo of, 211 Tolstoy, Leo, 115, 238 torture of suspected terrorists, 192 transcendentalism, 43, 59 Trauma and Recovery (Lewis), 225 Tribune Company, 260 trickle-down economics, 71 Trilling, Diana, 92, 108, 123 Trilling, Lionel, xiv, 91, 122 "troop" and "troops," inappropriate use of words, 6 Truman, Harry S., xiii, 96, 178 TV-Turnoff Network, 317 Twain, Mark, 238 Twenty One, 1 2 5 - 7 Two Years Before the Mast (Dana), 32

355

uniformitarianism, 39n Unitarians, 39, 42, 43, 45, 46, 50, 51, 56, 154, 186 United Church of Christ, 186 Universalists, 39, 51 universities. See colleges and universities University of California, Berkeley, 142, 143, 148, 1 5 2 , 1 5 7 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 302-3 University of California, Santa Cruz, 277 University of Michigan, 68, 152 University of South Carolina (formerly South Carolina College), 54-5, 67 University of Texas, 25 University of Virginia, 54 University of Washington, 250, 316 "Unknowable," belief in, 70, 72 Updike, John, 267 Urban Institute, 237 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 199 U.S. News & World Report, 209

vaccinations, controversy over, 219—22 values issues, xvi-xvii Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 68 Vanderbilt University, 68 Van Doren, Charles, 1 2 5 - 6 , 127 Vanity Fair, 258n Vatican, 164; reform movement and, 158-9, 196-7 Veblen, Thorstein, 7 6 - 7 Vellacott, Philip, 276-8 Victoria, queen of England, 226 video culture, 260; and decline of reading and writing skills, 16—17; and decline of reading for pleasure, 238-9, 247, 250—1 ; fundamentalist religion and, 18; infants and small children and, 1 4 - 1 6 , 247-50, 256-7, 3 1 5 - 1 6 ; memory as victim of, 17; shift from print culture to, 14, 182, 2 4 2 - 3 , 244; supposed educational benefit of, 14—16. See also television video games, 267, 268, 269; cognitive rewards of, 251—3; educational, 253—5 Vietnam War, 6, 133-4, 151, 176, 218, 289, 290, 294, 313 ; antiwar movement and, 131, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138, 1 4 2 - 3 , 151,

3 5

6

In

Vietnam War (continued) 153, 159, 174; military-academic complex and, 142-3 Virginia, public education in, 49-50, 52 Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, 49—50 Virginia Tech University, 314 Viswanathan, Kaavya, 265-6, 267 Voting Rights Act (1965), 151, 153

Willard, Emma, 56 William Morris Agency, 265-6 Williams, Juan, 237 Wilson, Edmund, 9 1 , 1 2 2 , 1 2 8 Wilson, Woodrow, 194, 269 Winchell, Alexander, 68 Windham, Conn., post-revolutionary moral

Wakefield, Dan, 165 Wallace, George, 151, 153, 185 Walling, William English, 7 7 - 8 Wall Street Journal, 303 War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men, The (Sommers), 236-7 Washington, George, 36, 53, 57 Washington Post, 144, 149-50, 176-9, 191, 260, 272

Wolfe, Thomas (1900-1938), 118 Wolfe, Tom (1930- ), 290-1 Wolfowitz, Paul, 294, 296 Wolin, Sheldon S., 148 women, 239, 269, 272; changes in roles of, 204-6, 228; education of, 49, 55, 138-9, 140; innate deficiency in scientific and mathematical aptitude ascribed to, 232-4; legal rights of, 57; lyceum movement and, 56; as public speakers, 56, 65; radical Islam and, 208

Watergate, 175 Way We Were, The, 90 wealth, social Darwinist view on, 73, 7 6 - 7 Weavers, 165 Webster, Daniel, 56, 307-8 Webster, Noah, 48 "wedge issues," 205 Weekly Standard, 293 Welch, Joseph, n - 1 2 Wells, H. G., 110-13 West Virginia State Board of Education, 97-8 White, John K., 196 white supremacy, biological evolution and, 68 Whitman, Walt, 60, 84, 108 Whitney, Ruth, 258 Whole World Is Watching, The (Gitlin), 179-80 whooping cough (pertussis), 221 Wikipedia, 264 Wilde, Oscar, 113 Wilder, Thornton, 129 WildJustice: The Evolution of Revenge (Jacoby), 276 Wiley, Calvin Henderson, 53

chaos in, 39—40 Windows Vista, 309-10 Winfrey, Oprah, 271 Wired, 263-4

women's magazines, 258-9 women's movement. See feminism women's studies, 146 Woodward, Bob, 191 Woolf, Virginia, 103, 106, 115, 120-1 World Bank, 296 World War I, 69, 83, 84, no World War II, 6, 83, 89-90, 93, 106, 158, 217, 281 writing skills, decline of, 127 Wythe, George, 49

Yale, 42, 54, 62, 71, 76, 142-3, 161-2 Youmans, Edward Livingston, 66 Young, Cathy, 214 youth culture, 162, 163-72, 173, 182, 260; baby boom bulge and, 165-7; cultural life in Russia contrasted with, 167—9; dissident, in Soviet Union, 168; pop music and, 163-5, 169-72

Zionism, 193

A NOTE A B O U T T H E A U T H O R Susan Jacoby is the author of seven books, including Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism and WildJustice, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. A frequent con­ tributor to national magazines and newspapers, she is also a consultant on programming for the Center for Inquiry-New York City, a rationalist think tank. She lives in New York City.

A NOTE O N T H E TYPE This book was set in a version of the well-known Monotype face Bembo. This letter was cut for the celebrated Venetian printer Aldus Manutius by Francesco Griffo, and first used in Pietro Cardinal Bembo's De Aetna of 1495. The companion italic is an adaptation of the chancery script type designed by the calligrapher and printer Lodovico degli Arrighi.

C O M P O S E D BY C R E A T I V E G R A P H I C S , A L L E N T O W N , P E N N S Y L V A N I A P R I N T E D A N D B O U N D BY B E R R Y V I L L E G R A P H I C S , B E R R Y V I L L E , V I R G I N I A BOOK DESIGN BY R O B E R T C. OLSSON