As to Bloom unquestionably he was a flaming homosexual, though in Closing of the American Mind he discreetly made no mention of this. One can respect Bloom’s contribution to American thought without approving his tendency to homosexual behavior.

Also, according to A.E. Taylor, one of the classic Plato scholars, homosexual behavior was confined to a few among the elite of the Greeks and that such behavior was illegal and abhorred by Greek public opinion. There is no clear evidence that Socrates was a homosexual; in fact Plato’s Symposium has him clearly staving off Alcibiaes’ advances.

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And you wonder why the media and universities are so leftist?

They’ve been infiltrated and never cleaned out.

That’s why “educated” people tend to vote leftist.

So it’s likely that “anti-intellectual” is a pejorative calculated to instill disdain for those who haven’t been, ahem, “properly educated”, so that their viewpoints can be dismissed as “ignorant”.

Arcadia, you are obviously ignorant of the Bible’s book of Proverbs, which espouses the virtues of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.

“Ignorance is bliss” is not a Bible verse, but rather, “My people perish for lack of knowledge.”

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Yes, but what’s wanted today is the former, not the latter. The balance has gone and it took the light with it.

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It does seem that what we seek at the best for our leaders are individuals who have a sense of context regarding the past (that’s where history and the classics come in), and about the current situation. They need to be something of a generalist, more fox than hedgehog, so the very focused do not do especially well in politics, as the act of intellectual focus can rob one of breadth (a reason why you see few PhDs or MDs in Congress).

While HSK brings up the shallowness of so many on the political left, there is also a similar quality on the right, a lack of curiosity about the world, say; or the contentment with what are parochial views.

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There is an anti-intellectual strain in both religion and right-wing politics about which I am always suspicious.

This is a great example of bigotry. Communist atheistic regimes had systematic anti-intellectual policies and practices that make the examples you cite look like a picnic. Millions of people died, some simply because they had books. But you are upset about Kansans who simply want to teach more than the state curriculum.

There is plenty of anti-intellectualism to go around, even in our ostensibly most intellectual places. But your admitted suspicions betray a closed-minded and bigoted attitude.

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Anti-intellectualism in America is guided not only by a refusal to accept reason over faith but a refusal to learn from history — history is a dangerous knowledge and its missing in a country that always looks forward and forgets the past refusing to learn from mistakes.

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