to my comment These two were also at the forefront of education, then they stagnated for various reasons. The US should NOT allow the same to happen to itself. -- let me add this, they stagnated as they created a fixed class system where intellectuals remained intellectuals and didn't interact and also where people stated that "the best is already reached, we can't improve on that"
I don't see the US falling into that ditch, but into another ditch -- we mock smart people. "Big bang theory" is an exception, but in every other show watched by kids and young adults, to be smart is to be a loser.
The anti-intellectualism has hit the black community the most, but is also hitting the rest of America.
and, sorry to say, but this election showed that -- both candidates had to simplify their stands
3 years, eh? Time flies when you're FReeping.
I don't see the US falling into that ditch, but into another ditch -- we mock smart people. "Big bang theory" is an exception, but in every other show watched by kids and young adults, to be smart is to be a loser.
I'll see you and raise you one -- not only do we mock smart people (at least, in the larger culture); but we are substituting (through Bill Maher, John Stewart, David Letterman, and Jay Carney) snark and posturing as a substitute for intelligence: "Well, you can't challenge ME. I went to HARVARD." (That is, borrowing prestige from where you went to school, regardless of your major, GPA, or how well you learned; and regardless of the faddishness or PC content of the courses. Recall that in the mid-1840's, one had to be able to read Latin at the level of Cicero to be *admitted* to Harvard.)
That, coupled with the disdain for "Dead White Males" (who conceived, designed, tested, built, and maintained almost anything of value in the wider world today) in favor of gender feminism, together with the solipsistic regard for single motherhood, bodes ill for the United States and the West.
My FR vanity on dumbing down:
(Vanity) Getting the Point on Ayers, or, An Act of War
And the inimitable Dr. Paul Rahe of Hillsdale College, from a piece at Ricochet on the decline of the US:
The Deepest Source of Our Troubles.
NO cheers, unfortunately.