Intelligence: The Virtue That's MIA

By Dan Hagen

The four central virtues for the Stoics were intelligence, bravery, justice and self-control.

Note that Christianity simply ignores the first, and doesn't pay too much attention to the other three, either.

And that, I’m afraid, is the problem with the fundamentalists who form the so-called “Tea Party.”

These people are not developmentally disabled in intelligence. They are emotionally and intellectually self-blinded because they have surrounded themselves with a plutocratically puppeteered culture that devalues and even sneers at education, and because they surrender to puerile fears that encourage them to refuse to accept the adult responsibility of critical thinking.

During the 2008 election, for example, thanks to a relentless GOP propaganda campaign aimed at know-nothings, craven and wretched reporting and the general willful, thundering stupidity of the American public, what we were offered as "issues" were such topics as Hillary Clinton's capacity to sob, Barack Obama's middle name, the fear of his "secret Muslim religion," whether he and his wife indulge in "terrorist fist bumps," and his bowling score.

According to the corrupt corporate media and the clueless Tea Party, THIS was what the cretin voters in this country wanted to discuss while deregulated financial fraud collapsed the world economy.

If ignorance is slavery, then Fox News is a whole damn antebellum plantation.

"The mess in Washington!" "More bang for the buck!" Those are among the empty slogans screenwriter Budd Schulberg suggested could be used to easily fool ignorant Americans into voting for people who intended to harm them.

In 1957.

Self-destructive, willful ignorance is a venerable American tradition. A culture that despises education and intelligence has to relearn by the hard knocks of bloody conflict what it could have remembered by reading.

Americans don't reinvent the wheel, but their determined ignorance forces them to reinvent the revolution.
And yes, Texas Republicans have actually come out in opposition to critical thinking skills.