16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism
State of the American Mind
Details and Description
Description
In 1987, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind was published; a wildly popular book that drew attention to the shift in American culture away from the tenets that made America—and Americans—unique. Bloom focused on a breakdown in the American curriculum, but many sensed that the issue affected more than education. The very essence of what it meant to be an American was disappearing.
That was over twenty years ago. Since then, the United States has experienced unprecedented wealth, more youth enrolling in higher education than ever before, and technology advancements far beyond what many in the 1980s dreamed possible. And yet, the state of the American mind seems to have deteriorated further. Benjamin Franklin’s “self-made man” has become a man dependent on the state. Independence has turned into self-absorption. Liberty has been curtailed in the defense of multiculturalism.
In order to fully grasp the underpinnings of this shift away from the self-reliant, well-informed American, editors Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow have brought together a group of cultural and educational experts to discuss the root causes of the decline of the American mind. The writers of these fifteen original essays include E. D. Hirsch, Nicholas Eberstadt, and Dennis Prager, as well as Daniel Dreisbach, Gerald Graff, Richard Arum, Robert Whitaker, David T. Z. Mindich, Maggie Jackson, Jean Twenge, Jonathan Kay, Ilya Somin, Steve Wasserman, Greg Lukianoff, and R. R. Reno. Their essays are compiled into three main categories:
- States of Mind: Indicators of Intellectual and Cognitive Decline
These essays broach specific mental deficiencies among the population, including lagging cultural IQ, low Biblical literacy, poor writing skills, and over-medication.
- Personal and Cognitive Habits/Interests
These essays turn to specific mental behaviors and interests, including avoidance of the news, short attention spans, narcissism, and conspiracy obsessions.
- National Consequences
These essays examine broader trends affecting populations and institutions, including rates of entitlement claims, voting habits, and a low-performing higher education system.
The State of the American Mind is both an assessment of our current state as well as a warning, foretelling what we may yet become. For anyone interested in the intellectual fate of America, The State of the American Mind offers an accessible and critical look at life in America and how our collective mind is faring.
Check out the new The State of the American Mind website: stateoftheamericanmind.com
Table of Contents
Foreword—America: Are We Losing Our Mind?
Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow / vii
Introduction—The Knowledge Requirement: What Every American Needs to Know
E. D. Hirsch Jr. / 1
Part One—States of Mind: Indicators of Intellectual and Cognitive Decline
1 The Troubling Trend of Cultural IQ / 19
Mark Bauerlein
2 Biblical Literacy Matters / 33
Daniel L. Dreisbach
3 Why Johnny and Joanie Can’t Write, Revisited / 49
Gerald Graff
4 College Graduates: Satisfied, but Adrift / 65
Richard Arum
5 Anatomy of an Epidemic / 77
Robert Whitaker
Part Two—Personal and Cognitive Habits/Interests
6 A Wired Nation Tunes Out the News / 97
David T. Z. Mindich
7 Catching Our Eye: The Alluring Fallacy of Knowing at a Glance / 111
Maggie Jackson
8 The Rise of the Self and the Decline of Intellectual and Civic Interest / 123
Jean M. Twenge
9 Has Internet-Fueled Conspiracy-Mongering Crested? / 137
Jonathan Kay
Part Three—National Consequences
10 Dependency in America: American Exceptionalism and the Entitlement State / 153
Nicholas Eberstadt
11 Political Ignorance in America / 163
Ilya Somin
12 In Defense of Difficulty: How the Decline of the Ideal of Seriousness Has Dulled Democracy in the Name of a Phony Populism ‘ 175
Steve Wasserman
13 We Live in the Age of Feelings / 189
Dennis Prager
14 How Colleges Create the “Expectation of Confirmation” / 205
Greg Lukianoff
15 The New Antinomian Attitude / 217
R. R. Reno
Afterword
Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow / 231
Contributors / 243
Index / 247
Endorsements
Endorsements
“This rich and powerful set of essays, from a team of distinguished contributors, fearlessly trains a searchlight on the whole range of our national failings in ways that should undermine any shred of complacency in its readers and convince them of the urgent need for reform. As such, it is a quintessential act of tough love, for a country that stands badly in need of it.”
“The truth hurts, but the passion and conviction that the contributors bring to their truth-telling can also inspire. This is must-read for anyone trying to make sense of the American mind circa 2015.”
“Laments against the decay and corruption of the times are at least as old as Juvenal’s 3rd Satire. But the impulse to contrast a disordered and adrift present with a nostalgically invoked past is a perennial one, and its revival in this volume is particular bracing and salutary, given the prominence and sharp-eyed acuity of the assembled authors. It is always a melancholy pleasure to find eminent cultural observers confirming the belief of all old-timers (and I am certainly one of those) that we’re going to hell in a hand-basket.”
“This book exposes the cultural underpinnings of our political polarization. American exceptionalism is at war with a new cultural ethos, and the battlefield is money, sex, God, knowledge, and more. An indispensable report on the struggle.”
Reviews
The Midwest Book Review (January 2016)
“Enhanced with the inclusion of an engaging Foreword (America: Are We Losing Our Mind?); an informative Introduction (The Knowledge Requirement: What Every American Needs to Know); and a concluding Afterword by the editorial team of Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow, The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism is an inherently fascinating read that is exceptionally well organized and presented throughout. Very highly recommended.”
Foreword Review (August 19, 2015)
“In The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism, editors Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow assemble an outstanding collection of essays that discuss the decline in knowledge, political awareness, self-reliance, and civic engagement among American citizens and the consequences this dearth portends for the American system of self-government, which depends on an informed and involved citizenry. Comprehensive and convincing, the collection offers both diagnostic and prognostic analysis from a variety of voices, including intellectuals, academics, social thinkers, writers, and commentators. The causes and conclusions are distressing—all is not well in the state of the American Mind—yet the collection offers an optimistic view that improvement is possible.”
“Written in straightforward prose and eschewing divisive ideology and histrionics, the essays inform and inspire contemplation.”
National Review Online (July 6, 2015)
“Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow have edited a superb collection of essays on different aspects of American culture and life that extends, deepens, and updates Hofstadter’s critique of the naïve and feckless naturalism of John Dewey that now pervades and eviscerates our culture.”
Weekly Standard (June 29, 2015)
“Now, under the title The State of the American Mind, Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow have collected 16 essays that, with a little fudging, might have been called The Closing: A Generation On. Most of the contributors would agree with Bloom’s paradox: that Americans have closed off avenues for their minds—no striving after eternal truths for them—because of anti-foundational philosophers’ insistence that, absent eternal truths, it’s better to keep an ‘open mind’ on all subjects, especially moral and artistic ones.”
Publisher's Weekly (May 13, 2015)
“This anthology will be a distressing but worthwhile read for those who believe traditional American values are endangered and must be preserved.”
The National Interest (June 9, 2015)
“A provocative new book, The State of the American Mind, edited by Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow, offers an updated look at American culture, or what often passes for it.”
Conservative Review (May 28, 2015)
“In their new book titled The State of the American Mind, Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow, through a compendium of essays written by experts, have outlined using empirical detail and ironclad analysis what exactly has happened to the American mind and what the “new anti-intellectualism” has done to put it in such a pitiful state. What does this deconstruction of thought look like at a systematic level? The State of the American Mind, by providing a prismatic analysis of the dereliction of education, psychiatry and public discourse, gives the reader a roadmap to destruction and a trail of breadcrumbs back.”
“The State of the American Mind, while far from being light enough to read on an airplane or at the beach, is a 2015 summertime must-read for any conservative who finds him or herself at odds with the state of public discourse in the United States.”
“While we may be intellectually lazy, clouded, unmotivated and driven by unbridled emotion devoid of right reason, Bellow and Bauerlein provide thin spaces of light and hope. From start to finish, the carefully curated selection of experts keeps the reader engaged, informed and constantly stimulated. Finally, and most hopefully, among the flotsam and jetsam of a discarded intellectual tradition, one can discern what steps need to be taken to save us from destruction by our own hand…or perhaps by our own mindset.”
Washington Post (July 13, 2015)
“I think many of the essays in this book are well-done, and raise genuinely serious problems. For example, Greg Lukianoff’s chapter covers the growing prevalence of speech codes and intellectual intolerance on campus, and Nicholas Eberstadt’s chapter presents extensive alarming data on growing dependency on a variety of welfare programs (not a trend in public opinion in itself, but one that has significant cultural effects, many of them troubling). Other strong chapters consider the poor state of writing skills among recent high school and college graduates, and low levels of cultural literacy and religious knowledge.”
First Things (September 1, 2015)
“The subtitle of this thought-provoking—and alarming—collection pulls off a clever rhetorical trick. Liberal commentators often express fear of the anti-intellectual wing of the GOP, which (so the story goes) ignores nuance and doubts experts. Conservatives sometimes even stick the anti-intellectual label on their own chests.”
“But this book’s editors are two well-known conservatives: Bauerlein is a professor at Emory University and a senior editor for this journal, Bellow an executive at Harper-Collins. Some of its contributors are familiar conservative commentators, and many of the essays present distinctively traditional arguments. Subtly, then, the editors at once challenge the assumption that anti-intellectualism is a conservative political habit and encourage other conservatives to recognize it as a serious cultural problem.”
What Would the Founders Think? (July 20, 2015)
“The essays in this book cover a great deal of territory and all are essential reading for anyone struggling to understand what has happened to America….”
“These essays need to be widely circulated. How they make us feel, after all, isn’t relevant. Think of it as purchasing an alarm clock.”
Network Review (Autumn 2015)
“Overall, the book paints a depressing picture of the state of the American mind but it also provides suggestions for recapturing the qualities that defined the American character, albeit from a basically conservative stance.”
The John William Pope Center (July 8, 2015)
“Each of the sixteen essays included is worthwhile. I am going to focus in particular on one that dovetails especially with the work of the Pope Center—Greg Lukianoff’s ‘How Colleges Create the ‘Expectation of Confirmation.’’”
“We hear again and again from college leaders that they want students to learn ‘critical thinking skills,’ but evidence keeps mounting that the exact opposite is happening—that many students are learning how to make life miserable for those who dare to disagree with them. Leaders who really care about the intellectual development of the students who come to their schools ought to pay attention to the alarm Greg Lukianoff is sounding.”
Wichita Eagle (August 2, 2015)
“An assembly of intellectuals, journalists and social scientists who all agree that something in the American mind has gone awry—from biblical illiteracy to political ignorance to the inherent narcissism of the Internet age. Together they paint a disturbing portrait of an America in which the welfare of individuals, the economy, and the political health of the nation is at risk.”
The Motley Monk (May 21, 2015)
“The State of the American Mind, is a ‘must read,’ especially the chapter written by the political economist and Wall Street Journal columnist, Nicholas Eberstadt.”
The Male Defender (October 17, 2015)
The State of the American Mind is a worthy work and I recommend it to readers of Male Defender.