How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America
Written on August 15th, 2008Though a successful political and electoral strategy, the Right’s stand against intelligence has steered them far off course, leaving them — and us — unable to deal successfully with the complex and dynamic circumstances we face as a nation and a society.
American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 countries in math literacy, and their parents are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution; roughly 30 to 40 percent believe in each. Their president believes “the jury is still out” on evolution.
Steve Colbert interviewed Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland on “The Colbert Report.” Westmoreland co-sponsored a bill that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but, when asked, couldn’t actually list the commandments.
This stuff would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.
In the 2004 election, nearly 70 percent of Bush supporters believed the United States had “clear evidence” that Saddam Hussein was working closely with al Qaeda; a third believed weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq; and more than a third that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion, according to the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. The political right and allied culture warriors actively ignore evidence and encourage misinformation. To motivate their followers, they label intelligent and informed as “elite,” implying that ignorance is somehow both valuable and under attack. Susan Jacoby confronts our “know-nothingism” — current and historical — in her new book, The Age of American Unreason.
A former reporter for the Washington Post and program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, Jacoby is the author of five books, including Wild Justice, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. Her political blog, The Secularist’s Corner, is on the Web site of the Washington Post.
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Can the U.S. Thrive as Other Powers Rise?
Written on June 18th, 2008Author Nina Hachigian shows that some of the biggest threats to our security don’t come from rival nations. They come from us.
A new book, The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise by Nina Hachigian and Mona Sutphen, argues that it’s good for us that other pivotal nations grow wealthier and stronger. We need them on our side so that together we can solve global problems of peace, climate, health, and justice.
Nina Hachigian is a Senior Vice President at the Center for American Progress and a Visiting Scholar of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Earlier, she was the Director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy and a Senior Political Scientist at RAND. From 1998 to 1999, she was on the staff of the National Security Council.
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How Many Earth Days Do We Have Left?
Written on April 22nd, 2008April 22, 2008 | Of all the resources needed to build an economy that will sustain economic progress, none is more scarce than time. That is one of the key messages of PLAN-B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, the newest book by Lester Brown — available as a free download at earthpolicy.org.
Plan A — the western fossil-fuel-based, auto-centered, throwaway economic model — is not going to work for China, India, or the 3 billion other people in developing countries, and it will not continue to work for the industrial countries either.
It’s time for Plan B — an all-out response at wartime speed proportionate to the magnitude of threats facing civilization.
The four overriding goals of PLAN B 3.0 are to stabilize climate and population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth’s damaged ecosystems. Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.
“We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize,” says Brown. “These deadlines are set by nature. Nature is the timekeeper, but we cannot see the clock.”
Lester Brown has been described by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers.” After working with the Department of Agriculture in international agricultural development, Brown helped establish the Overseas Development Council, then founded Worldwatch Institute, publishers of annual State of the World and Vital Signs reports. In 2001, he left Worldwatch, founded Earth Policy Institute, and published Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth.
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Pollan: Nutrition ‘Science’ Has Hijacked Our Meals — and Our Health
Written on April 3rd, 2008Much of what lines supermarket aisles is not food. It’s merely foodlike, and it’s making us sick.
According to Michael Pollan, most of what Americans consume isn’t food. He calls it “edible foodlike substances.” He also says that the way we consume it is not really eating. It’s something we do pretty unconsciously as we work or drive or watch TV.
We all know about the U.S. epidemic of obesity and diabetes over the past 25 years, on top of the steady rise of chronic diseases over the past hundred. Paradoxically, this happens just as Americans and the food industry are ever more aware of nutrition. What’s going on here?
Pollan claims that in the Western diet, good old food has been replaced by nutrients, mom’s good advice by nutritional experts, common sense by confusion, and for most, a relatively good diet by a bad and dangerous one. The book in which he makes all these claims and advises us simply to “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” has topped the New York Times bestseller list.
Michael Pollan’s previous books include The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post, and The Botany of Desire. Pollan is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and a Knight Professor of Journalism at U.C. Berkeley.
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Consuming Our Way to Unhappiness
Written on January 10th, 2008Our excessive consumption is trashing more than just the planet. An interview with Annie Leonard.
Over the last few weeks I’ve received a number of emails encouraging me to watch The Story of Stuff, an online video that asks and answers that question. With amusing graphics and plenty of humor, host Annie Leonard delivers a complex analysis in an audience-friendly tone. It’s produced by Free Range Studios, creators of The Meatrix, the wildly popular animated short about factory farming.
An expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, Annie Leonard has spent many years investigating factories and dumps around the world. She has worked with Health Care Without Harm, Essential Information and Greenpeace International, and is currently coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption.
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