Two of the last three Republican presidents could be charitably characterized as "intellectually incurious," and George Will spoke for millions when he said of the third, "Bush [41] skitters like a waterbug on the surface of things, strewing fragments of thoughts, moving fast lest he linger so long that he is expected to show mastery of, or even real interest, in anything."

Conservatives decrying the dumbing down of America is like the French decrying incivility.

When the world's "intellectual" elite have George Bush pegged as the primary threat to world peace you realize that the word "intellectual" doesn't reall carry much weight anymore - much as the thinning aluminum can.

Strawman. You can't cite any credible source that shows that pegging. Has anyone explained to you that using strawmen renders your comments laughable? (It's also intellectually dishonest, if that's of any import to you.)

The word "intellectual" doesn't carry much weight anymore in part because of the denigration of intelligence and rational thought by conservatives. Reagan said, "I
am not an intellectual," and conservatives apparently considered that a good thing. Why worry about Reagan's ability to think, learn and reason when his astrologist is
only a phone call away?

When Gingrich called Reagan "a breath-taking new thinker" and Dennis Miller said Bush [43] is "a genius," they debased the understanding of what those words represent. If Bush is a genius, what was Einstein?

Today's intellectual is usually nothing of the kind. It merely means they are an oft-repeated voice which echoes through the media outlets and is treated as sage wisdom based upon the quantity of those who may parrot it.

Dittoheadism is hardly a new phenomenon. And it doesn't mean real intellectuals don't exist. We're fortunate to have an intellectual elitist like youself handy to diagnose the problem.

This generation, like each generation from here on which will follow it, will recall their youthful days of reality television and who wants to be a millionaire as the "good ol' days" of intellectual curiousity!





“(A) generation, numbering in the millions, has gone so far in decay that it acts without thought of social responsibility,” historians George Leighton and Richard Hellman proclaimed in a much-quoted Harper's Monthly article in 1936. “High school kids are armed, out for what they can get... The Lost Generation is even now rotting before our eyes.”

“Day by day the newspapers report one grave crime after another, one moral delinquency after another, and one dereliction of duty after another,” Columbia University president Nicholas Butler summed up the grave "youth problem" of 1935. Journalist Maxine Johnson traveled 10,000 miles studying the new “Lost Generation,” the title of her 1936 book. Everywhere she found teenagers “confused, disillusioned, disenchanted,” in a state “rapidly approaching a psychosis.”

“British tea and King George's taxes would be unloaded today without protest” by 1930s youth, she lamented. “... Today's younger generation accepts whatever happens to it with sheep-like apathy.”

Each generation's disparaging of the next has become a cliche. The "Lost Generation" earned Brokaw's accolade as "The Greatest Generation." Future generations will be fine. The wisdom of the American people will save Jeffersonian democracy from Republican plunders and blunders.