When I was growing up, people HATED that I liked learning. They always celebrated the supposed superiority of heartfelt emotion, no matter how bigoted or absurd, and demonized knowledge and expertise. Hofstadter, in his magisterial Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, quoted extensively from a leader of a similar social movement, Hiram Evans, writing in the 1920s -
“We are a movement,” Imperial Wizard Evans wrote, "of the plain people, very weak in the matter of culture, intellectual support, and trained leadership. We are demanding, and we expect to win, a return of power into the hands of the everyday, not highly cultured, not overly intellectualized, but entirely unspoiled and not de-Americanized, average citizen of the old stock. Our members and leaders are all of this class—the opposition of the intellectuals and liberals who hold the leadership, betrayed Americanism, and from whom we expect to wrest control, is almost automatic.
This is undoubtedly a weakness. It lays us open to the charge of being “hicks” and “rubes” and “drivers of second-hand Fords.” We admit it. Far worse, it makes it hard for us to state our case and advocate our crusade in the most effective way, for most of us lack skill in language...
Every popular movement has suffered from just this handicap...
The Klan does not believe that the fact that it is emotional and instinctive, rather than coldly intellectual, is a weakness. All action comes from emotion, rather than from ratiocination. Our emotions and the instincts on which they are based have been bred into us for thousands of years; far longer than reason has had a place in the human brain.... They are the foundations of our American civilization, even more than our great historic documents; they can be trusted where the fine-haired reasoning of the denatured intellectuals cannot."
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