A Defense Of Anti-Intellectualism?

Hmmm... interesting links over at Instapundit lead first to this and then to this interesting quote from noted (and excellent) author Neil Stephenson:

The twentieth century was one in which limits on state power were removed in order to let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. . . . We Americans are the only ones who didn’t get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and value systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals.

I have to ask though- it seems like both these arguments, if they're not essentially Libertarian in nature tend to be more Conservative in nature- and yes, nothing in either the link or the quotation is wrong. President Wilson would be, I suppose, what you would consider an intellectual. He was terrible at foreign policy. He couldn't even get the Treaty of Versailles approved. The Nazis didn't have brutes with limited brainpower doing their dirty work- no, it was Doctors, Scientists and Bean-Counters galore- all educated, 'intellectual' people were at the frontlines of evil or just plain incompetence. (Not that I want to put Wilson in the same boat as the Nazis- just wanted to float an American example and a well, evil example.)

So they're not wrong. But what I have issues with is the constant drumbeat coming from Conservatives that education is somehow bad. Whether that's just my impression or if there's actually some basis in fact to it, I don't know, but there always seems to be a sneer permanently engrained on the faces of many Conservatives when they talk about education. Fancy education. Soft education. Liberal education for weeny, girly-men that don't know the value of a hard day's work.

Now, no doubt: education in this country is a mess. But I think both sides of the debate confuses education and 'intellectualism.' I want to be a life-long learner- that's the value of the education I've gotten, such as it is- I want to keep learning. But I don't want to be an 'intellectual' of any kind. I believe in ideas and the power of ideas and I'd like to get together and talk to people about ideas- but only if those ideas and debates actually go somewhere and can be translated into real solutions. Navel-gazing and drooling on yourself or going around and around and around over the same tired debates are indeed the hallmarks of intellectualism in this country- or they seem to be, from where I'm sitting.

But 'intellectualism' and 'education' need a little bit of separation if we're to fix education at all levels in this country. I work hard and I'm pretty damn educated. That doesn't mean I'm a sad, pathetic loser to be sneered at- which is the sense I think a lot of people get from certain corners of the Conservative end of things- and I'm certainly no intellectual 'pursuing the life of the mind' or anything like that.

So sure, criticize intellectualism. But don't use that as a cover to devalue education, which is critically important for every American to get, in some form or another.