Well, There's Dumbing and Then There's Dumbing

From Digby, some comments on the reaction from the right to Obama's call for Americans to learn foreign languages. Remember, this comes from the party of nativist, racist, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-education (as Digby points out, they don't think American children should learn science, either), pretty much anti-everything Bush fans -- the ones who think Bush is dong a heckuva job.

There was a time when Obama's comment was considered completely mainstream. It's true that Americans have never learned new languages easily, but they respected the idea that kids should learn as much as possible so they could better themselves. Clearly Obama didn't get the memo that we have embraced cretinism and that all knowledge is suspect.

I don't really have anything to add, except to note while Digby ascribes it to the "dumbing of America," I think it goes back much farther: it's an extreme example of our long tradition of anti-intellectualism in this country, which has come, on the right, to favor authority rather than free inquiry and evidence. On the upside, that anti-intellectualism has sustained a tradition of scepticism and pragmatism in American thought. On the downside, we have the the Bush White House.