It’s hard to know exactly when the Republican Party assumed the mantle of the “stupid party.” Stupidity is not an accusation that could be hurled against such prominent early Republicans as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes. But by the 1950s, it had become an established shibboleth that the “eggheads” were for Adlai Stevenson and the “boobs” for Dwight D. Eisenhower — a view endorsed by Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 book “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” which contrasted Stevenson, “a politician of uncommon mind and style, whose appeal to intellectuals overshadowed anything in recent history,” with Eisenhower — “conventional in mind, relatively inarticulate.” The John F. Kennedy presidency, with …show more content…
Buckley Jr. famously said, “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University.” More recently, George W. Bush joked at a Yale commencement: “To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students I say, you, too, can be president of the United States.” Many Democrats took all this at face value and congratulated themselves for being smarter than the benighted Republicans. Here’s the thing, though: The Republican embrace of anti-intellectualism was, to a large extent, a put-on. At least until now. Eisenhower may have played the part of an amiable duffer, but he may have been the best prepared president we have ever had — a five-star general with an unparalleled knowledge of national security affairs. When he resorted to gobbledygook in public, it was in order to preserve his political room to maneuver. Reagan may have come across as a dumb thespian, but he spent decades honing his views on public policy and writing his own speeches. Nixon may have burned with resentment of “Harvard men,” but he turned over foreign policy and domestic policy to two Harvard professors, Henry A. Kissinger and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, while his own knowledge of foreign affairs was second only to Ike’s. There is no evidence that Republican leaders have been
The 1964 American election between Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater has strong similarities with the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. In both cases, the democrat candidates focused more on their counterpart’s rhetoric rather than uphold their own ideas in an attempt to persuade voters to support them. This essay will argue that the Democrat candidates of the 1964 and 2016 elections, in many instances, instead of focusing on their political proposals, focused on anti-intellectualism by emphasizing their opponent’s extremist right-winger rhetoric. This comparison shows the enduring trends of right-wing extremism, racial conflicts, and republican divisiveness. To prove this argument, this text will analyze Democrat campaign advertisements in both campaigns, Nelson A Rockefeller speech at the 1964 National Republican convention and Jeb Bush interview to NBC.
In any successful work of non-fiction, authors employ the use of rhetorical analysis to articulate their main points and ideas. Mike Rose’s essay, “Blue Collar Brilliance,” focuses on the fact that looking down on blue-collar workers is a common occurrence in America and people fail to understand how a person can be intelligent if they had dropped out of school. Throughout the essay, he refutes this notion and explains why blue-collar intelligence may be different from the intelligence gained by years of schooling but it is of the equal stature, since it helps them in their occupation. Rose uses pathos and other rhetorical devices to inform the audience of his belief: blue-collar workers are under appreciated and overlooked as many people fail to see the difficulties and cognitive demands involved in their daily routines at work.
“The cult of ignorance in the United States: Anti-intellectualism and the "dumbing down" of America” is a editorial about the decrease importance in intellectuals. Anti-intellectualism is defined as a person who believes that intellect and reason are less important. This editorial was written by Ray Williams.
There are many things that a speech must contain to make it a well written and spoken speech. John F. Kennedy 's speech he gave on September 12th 1962, titled “Address at Rice University on the Nation 's Space Efforts”, better known as “We Choose to go to the Moon” contains many of the important factors of a successful speech. Kennedy used rhetorical strategies and skills to help him influence the American people to help accomplish the major goal of reaching the moon. Kennedy did not only want to reach the moon, but he wanted to be the first country to do so. President Kennedy effectively told the objective he found important by using ethos, pathos and kairos throughout his speech to help get the support of the people. By using these three rhetorical strategies Kennedy gave a moving speech.
In 1962 President John F. Kennedy gave a speech about the rising steel prices. Throughout his speech he uses many kinds of rhetorical strategies; some include, anaphora , alliteration, and rhetorical appeals. By using these three rhetorical strategies Kennedy's speech was able to be connected to the audience very well.
their judgment became clouded. In the first chapter of The Assault On Reason by Al Gore, Gore
(SIP-A) By limiting a person’s knowledge, they won’t be able to be the most intelligent that they can be. (STEWE-1) Most of the society doesn’t even know about the things that are really important like electing who will be president. The president will be the leader and if you don’t know about them you won’t be able to know if you’re making the right choice. The way that the people in their society talk about politics is terrible, they don’t know anything about the people being elected, “‘I voted last election, same as everyone, and I laid it on the line for President Noble. I think he's one of the nicest looking men ever became president!’” (93). Nobody cares if the president is actually qualified to do the job, they care more about how he looks. It’s clear that the government has set up this election because of the characters name (Noble) and his opponents (Hoag), but what if they hadn’t. Then, because the people had no knowledge about who the people were, their country might end up going crazy because this person who is now president doesn’t know what he is doing. (STEWE-2) With little intelligence, it can even affect the way a person speaks. They can not have a real conversation if you don’t know anything. In the novel, we can see that the way Mildred and her friends speak is just a bunch of
As Commander-In-Chief of a nation emerging from a recession, President John F. Kennedy addresses the hike in steel prices to the American public and steel companies to stigmatize the nation’s leading steel companies for their unnecessary decision to increase steel prices. Within his speech, Kennedy’s use of rhetorical strategies to enhance his purpose is dominated by his dichotomous diction to separate himself from the affluent and align with the suffering American people, parallelism and anaphora to emphasize the equal magnitude of previous American crises to the rise of steel prices, and cause and effect organizational mode to highlight the numerous detrimental effects on the American public caused by the steel companies’ hike in steel prices.
On April 11, 1962, President John F. Kennedy held a news conference to discuss the 3.5% increase on steel prices across the country. With the country at war, and struggling to emerge from a recession, increasing the price of steel would have a negative impact. After his administration had taken steps to aid the steel companies to reach a non-inflationary steel workers union contract, the decision to increase steel prices was deemed to be a betrayal of the President and the American people. The speech was directed towards the “common man” in opposition to big steel companies. He speaks for the purpose of not only persuading the companies to lower their prices, but also to convince the public that he is looking out for their best interest. Kennedy employs a disapproving tone and strong diction in an effort to clearly achieve his goal in influencing the steel
On January 20, 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the youngest man to possess presidency in the United States of America. As a young, wealthy man Kennedy rapidly climbed the political ladder by initially representing a working class Boston district in the United States Congress, then continuing on to the House of Representatives, followed by the United States Senate, and ending with the victorious defeat of his presidential opponent, to become the 35th president of the United States. According to theatlantic.com, Kennedy was so admired by the public, that “in the eyes of the world, this reticent man became a charismatic leader who, in his life and in his death, served as a symbol of purpose and hope.” As a result of John F. Kennedy’s
In his article, Penrod first starts out talking about how a football team won an Arizona state championship the previous year. Penrod then goes on to talk about how no one paid any attention to the Science bowl team since everyone was focused on the athletes. Furthermore, Penrod points out how there is “disdain for the educated harbored in much of society,” and also speaks about stereotypes associated with intelligent kids and how uneducated celebrities are not setting a good example for future kids to get an education.
If the party was like that over seventy-five years ago, and many would consider such thoughts corrupt, the Republican Party surely must have changed over such a long time. The success of the Democrats during the Great Depression and World War II led many to believe that the Republican Party was the cause of the Great Depression. Its policies certainly would direct themselves toward the contrary yet still the blame rested on them. The blame still rested
“You are Not So Smart” is a book about the fallacies, false judgments, and the ideas that we believe to be true about ourselves but are in-fact fictitious beliefs we have. It was written by journalist David McRaney who won two William Randolph Hearst awards. McRaney’s book was originally a blog that he created then later converted into a book. He uses different imagery, vocabulary, and studies to bring his ideas across in this book, and is showing various amounts of evidence from examples and his own experience of these concepts first hand.
Jaded from seeing humanities uprisings first hand, he knows that they are nothing more than symptoms of an underlying disease. Because of his experience, he is able to see more deeply into the truth of American ideology, but he is unable to do much about it. As he says, “Once you figure out what a joke everything is, being the Comedian's the only thing that makes sense” (Moore and Gibson, Part 2, Pg. 13).
What is Anti-Intellectualism? According to Dictionary.com, Anti-Intellectualism is defined as being hostile toward intellectuals and the modern academic, artistic, social, religious worlds as well as other theories that are associated with them. Although Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize, it is now almost fifty-fives out of date. Not to mention the ideas within the book are seen as suggesting a type of self-defensive justification rather than an actual deep investigation. Hoftstader used the aftermath of McCarthyism and how there were wide range witch hunts among the academics and progressives and how that is influenced by the reform, socialists and communist movements between the World Wars. Applying McCarthyism, Hoftstader looks at the tension from four different perspectives: religion, politics, business, self-help culture, and education. Taking into consideration the year the book was written, each angle is explored from the colonial period up until the 1950s. Throughout the introduction, Hofstadter makes it clear that the purpose of the book is to shed a little light on our cultural problems. Focusing on the social and political phenomenon of “anti-intellectualism” Hofstadter applies broad abstractions to social issues. He explains how applications of the abstracts presented by intellectuals can ultimately pose a threat to the social and political ambitions of certain and specific individuals. Because of this,