Guest guest Posted November 18, 2008 Report Share Posted November 18, 2008 Separation of church & state. Religion is the problem; not the answer The degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist? Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage. There have been exceptions over the past century - Franklin Roosevelt, JF Kennedy and Bill Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived - but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan's response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said: " There you go again. " His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves round the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD. But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so stupid, and so suspicious of intelligence? The answer is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing. The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest denomination in the US, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the south stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state's state school biology teachers believed humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time. Besides fundamentalist religion, perhaps the most potent reason intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism has been equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism a long time ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists. Almost every day men such as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly rage against the " liberal elites " destroying America. Any attempt to challenge the ideas of the rightwing elite has been successfully branded as elitism. Obama has a lot to offer the US, but none of this will stop with his win. Until the great failures of the US education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers, there will be political opportunities for people, like Bush and Palin, who flaunt their ignorance. George Monbiot Tuesday October 28 2008 The Guardian Guardian News & Media Limited A member of Guardian Media Group PLC Registered Office Number 1 Scott Place, Manchester M3 3GG Registered in England Number 908396 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 18, 2008 Report Share Posted November 18, 2008 I can't say he's wrong. LOL Most folks on this side of the Atlantic (Americans) don't really understand American politics either. The only thing I'd take exception with is the claim that religion is responsible for all ignorance. There is a huge "godless" population in the US. Few of them show many symptoms of intelligence either. There has been a general degradation of US educational systems over the last 60 years and I'm afraid it's not over. Not to say I know what to do about it. - yarrow Tuesday, November 18, 2008 10:34 AM Monbiot on American politics Separation of church & state.Religion is the problem; not the answer .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 21, 2008 Report Share Posted November 21, 2008 No, what he said was " religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid, " and he's absolutely correct. I've seen it. What to do about it: reinstate the separation of church and state. More and more school boards in the so-called bible belt (and elsewhere, too) are being taken over by people from activist churches who have a strong anti-intellectual bias and a focus on one or two issues. An awful lot of people listen (only) to what their religious leaders tell them at weekly services. A lot of the republican " base " was people who trust what they're told in weekly religious services, and don't trust anything else because they're told the media are liberal and therefore not to be trusted. So they hear, and believe, only lies. I've had acquaintances who went to these kinds of " trust us, trust no one else " types of churches, so I've been to a couple of different ones and heard the " political " sermons, and it's scary. Cultlike mind control on a large scale. And it affects other people in their communities, particularly in small towns, because people talk about what they've heard, and if they hear it again and again, they tend to believe what they hear repeatedly from people they know rather than from the so-called liberal media, especially if they also listen to right-wing talk radio and its fear/lies/hate campaign. When I've (briefly) talked to people at these churches, they were proudly anti-intellectual, at least partly because they're told that intellectuals will try to manipulate them (and/or are satan!). So any " outsiders " are mistrusted and not listened to. I was never able to persuade these acquaintances to question any political/cultural stances their religious leaders had told them, and I don't know how to get through to them if the only input they will consider is what they hear from those religious leaders. And that includes a freelancer, all of whose clients happened to be gay, who agreed with that week's sermon saying gay people were taking over the classrooms and were dangerous for children to be around! A friend with relatives in the rust belt says they claim all the talk about foreclosures and economic trouble is fiction created by the " liberal " media. At 12:28 PM -0800 11/18/08, <nina92116 wrote: I can't say he's wrong. LOL Most folks on this side of the Atlantic (Americans) don't really understand American politics either. The only thing I'd take exception with is the claim that religion is responsible for all ignorance. There is a huge " godless " population in the US. Few of them show many symptoms of intelligence either. There has been a general degradation of US educational systems over the last 60 years and I'm afraid it's not over. Not to say I know what to do about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 21, 2008 Report Share Posted November 21, 2008 No, what he said was "religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid," and he's absolutely correct. I've seen it. O.K. I've seen that too. And that particular kind of chosen ignorance really comes out in the open during national elections. But certianly isn't the only font of anti-intellectual bias in this country. Sadly. .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 21, 2008 Report Share Posted November 21, 2008 Maybe the horse is before the cart here - Maybe the stupidity comes first. Jo , <nina92116 wrote: > > > > > > No, what he said was " religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid, " and he's absolutely correct. I've seen it. > > O.K. I've seen that too. And that particular kind of chosen ignorance really comes out in the open during national elections. But certianly isn't the only font of anti-intellectual bias in this country. Sadly. > . > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 26, 2009 Report Share Posted March 26, 2009 Nina I take it you are not Amreican, lol Jerrold--- On Tue, 11/18/08, nina92116 <nina92116 wrote: nina92116 <nina92116Re: Monbiot on American politics Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 3:28 PM I can't say he's wrong. LOL Most folks on this side of the Atlantic (Americans) don't really understand American politics either. The only thing I'd take exception with is the claim that religion is responsible for all ignorance. There is a huge "godless" population in the US. Few of them show many symptoms of intelligence either. There has been a general degradation of US educational systems over the last 60 years and I'm afraid it's not over. Not to say I know what to do about it. - yarrow @gro ups.com Tuesday, November 18, 2008 10:34 AM Monbiot on American politics Separation of church & state.Religion is the problem; not the answer .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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