Bash your own country (was RE: Vive la France?)

Steven McGraw stmcgraw at vt.edu
Tue Feb 11 08:50:15 PST 2003


At 11:48 AM 2/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>It does not take much intelligence to bash other countries - in fact
>every idiot does that just fine. A more intellectually challengign task
>is to provide focused critique of a country, starting with one's own,
>and list specific features that are either praiseworthy or
>reprehensible. With that in mind, what do people on this list
>particularly like or dislike about US as compared to other countries?
>

<snip>


>anti-intellectualism

I often wonder what exactly the charge of anti-intellectualism refers to. I have been called anti-intellectual for saying that dockworkers should make more than English lit profs, and that colleges shouldn't have the right to force a liberal arts curriculum on people who want an engineering degree. Is that anti-intellectual? How would you define anti-intellectualism? To avoid the anti-intellectual label, do I have to eagerly defend every privilege and perogative that self-identifying intellectuals claim they deserve?

My short list of things I like about america that aren't likely to be included in other lists:

1-free refills 2-populism



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