NEVER TRUST A NATIONALIST:

 Hofstadter puts forth no definition of intellectual or anti-intellectual. Instead, he shows how the use of reason, differently understood, has competed with the demands of practice in American religion, politics, business and education. We know intellectuals when we see them! In politics, for Hofstadter, the United States was "founded by intellectuals" (i.e., smart, public-spirited men), though such intellectuals disappeared until the Progressive Era reformers and New Dealers arose. Anti-intellectuals like Andrew Jackson, in contrast, were hostile to "political specialization" or "trained leadership." Anti-intellectuals used "inborn, intuitive, folkish wisdom" or "native practical sense."

Intellectuals were internationalist and "cosmopolitan," while anti-intellectuals connected themselves to soil and blood or at least to what they took to be the special mission of the country. Intellectuals were believers in "genteel reform" such as civil service reform or regulating monopolies or income tax or the National Recovery Act, while anti-intellectuals liked the horse and buggy. At stake in this debate, for Hofstadter, was "the place of mind in American politics," not a conflict of two intelligent visions.

A couple of examples where intellectuals battled anti-intellectuals will reveal Hofstadter's method and what he ignores. Civil service reform may have been needed in the 1870s and 1880s, but what was at stake in it? Call me an anti-intellectual, but the issue might be this: a national executive cannot change out all federal personnel intelligently without it soaking up all the president's energy. Yet sparing his energy comes with a risk. Civil service reform could set up a caste within our government with an interest different from the rest of the people. For Hofstadter, in contrast, civil service reform was simply a battle between those who favored "competence, efficiency and economy in public service, open competition for jobs on the basis of merit, and security of tenure" against those who favored folk wisdom, party rotation, and witchcraft. It's an honest debate where both sides are sincere: some like sound science; others prefer reading the entrails of chickens.

This tension between the anti-intellectual public and the experts "seemed to be disappearing" in the progressive era; after a hiatus for a generation, "the rapprochement between intellectuals and the public was restored" during the New Deal. The intellectuals including reformist presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and writers like Herbert Croly and John Dewey merely wanted to "humanize and moralize" great corporate power with expert administrative agencies, while anti-intellectuals invoked the good old days. Tensions between intellectuals and anti-intellectuals rose after World War I when "the public turned on the intellectuals as the prophets of false and needless reforms" while the intellectuals turned on the public as "boobs, Babbitts, and fanatics." The same pattern emerges from the New Deal.

The idea that anti-intellectuals outside the academy or the administrative state are deplorables, clinging to God and guns, is the central trope of Anti-Intellectualism.

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