The intellectuals are worried that the peasants are revolting, and they smell bad too.

In the June 2016 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine, The Long Hill Institute provided some small research in order to discern if there is a problem with anti-intellectualism in the nation.  You can read about the article below and decide whether or not it is something else you need to be worried about.

Sire, The Intellectuals are Revolting!

Last month saw a review of The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government by Mike Lofgren in these pages. It was an uneven book, but valuable in that the author exhaustively documented all the players in the body politic who wield excessive power.

One aspect of the book we, on Long Hill, thought overdone was his discussion of anti-intellectual trends in our nation. They scare Lofgren no end. The people who run the Creation Museum and the Intelligent Design folks make him nervous. This in spite of the fact that they have absolutely no hope of getting anywhere near the levers of power. Sure, both parties are happy to take their money, but then they do what they want. The fringe agenda for the most part gets short shrift. A John Hagee may want to nuke Iran, but there are not a few secularists who sing that tune.

So are we going down the tubes intellectually? We referred the question to our offical think tank, The Long Hill Institute for the Study of the Intellect in America or TLHIftSotIiA for short. After some tiring investigation that led to a well needed nap, they concluded, “Oh Please.”

Our exceptional nation has a long and stellar intellectual tradition, not. The man who wrote the book on American Democracy, called Democracy in America was a true great intellect. Alexis de Tocqueville, came over from France to observe our society. Here is what he had to say about the life of the mind in the US,

I do not know a country where there is in general less intellectual independence and less freedom of discussion than in America...In America the majority builds an impregnable wall around the process of thinking.

The inquisition was never able to prevent the circulation in Spain of books opposed to the religion of the majority. The majestic rule of the majority does better in the United States; it has removed even the thought of publishing them.

So circa 1835 we were an incurious lot. That did not mean we did not have a class of intellectuals. They resided in cloisters known as colleges. Occasionally, they were unleashed on the nation and it did not always go well.

Woodrow Wilson was as deep a thinker as you could get in this country. Before he became our president he was president of Princeton University.

What did his powers of cognition tell him to do as head of state. After some hemming and hawing about keeping us out of war, he soon found himself a crusader not long after his reelection as a peace guy. Ignoring all of human history, he made the absurd statements that we would fight in World War I to “Make the world safe for democracy” and it would be “The war to end all wars.”

Also from the same era, Herbert Croly, though dropping out of Harvard three times, is considered one of the great intellects of the day. He was co-founder of The New Republic. When Facebook's Chris Hughes purchased the magazine, He claimed to have been inspired by Croly.

So how did he stack up as a smart guy. It would seem he liked big ideas more than people. Herb supported American intervention and unlike Wilson, was never mealy mouthed about it. To quote the man, “The American nation needs the tonic of a serious moral adventure.”

Now, if one thinks about it, it is not qualitatively different from the words of Mussolini speaking of the Spanish Civil War, “The war in Spain, Il Duce said, would give the Italian middle class “a sound kick in the shins....and when that’s done, I’ll invent something else so that the character of the Italians forms itself through war.””

Neither Mr. Wilson nor Mr. Croly lost as much as a fingernail in moral struggle. Unfortunately, over 100,000 Americans would die in the glorious cause. None of Wilson's high minded agenda was accepted by the allies other than the League of Nations talking shop. Britain and France squeezed a prostrate Germany, and we all know the end result of that.

It is inconceivable that Adolph Hitler could have ever come to power without American intervention. No matter, the president is revered for his role with an institute named after him at Princeton. Croly, though he later took to mysticism, is still esteemed in the liberal pantheon.

Fast forward to our own era. There are still so many who claim to be savants that is hard to pick one as representative of the species. Still, let us choose.

Max Boot is considered a brilliant military historian. He was as hard a hawk on Iraq as any neocon. Have his views changed on that conflict? Well, he admits if we had known then what we know now we might not have invaded, but he wrote a 2013 article in Commentary titled, “No Need to Repent for Support of Iraq War.” Certainly, that is so for him as he never faced any real danger to life and limb and has failed upward. His current sinecure is as the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

So has the man learned anything? Probably not. He was all for supporting intervention in Libya, a non-success if there ever was one.

He has decided to support Hilary instead of Trump because The Donald is less for war than Clinton.

Boot writes a lot and not badly, but most of his screed is the torture of logic to advance an agenda. He should heed the motto of The Long Hill Institute, Never Overthink.

So should Mike Lofgren and other like members of the great washed fear a nation of troglodytes. Probably not. Considering the deprivations suffered by the lower orders due to all the machinations of the über* class that he shined a light on, it is the other way around.

Anyway, as de Tocqueville noted, we are not a nation of thinkers, but more a country of doers. Look around the house you live in. We have a rough environment here in New England that is seasonally harsh. Yet we have heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. Food is easily cooked, in seconds if you want it. Dishes are done at the touch of a button. Life is not bad.

No Ph.D in Political Science, Sociology or the Post Modern Novel came up with any of it.

*Not the ride sharing service.