. . .by cynically conspiring to devalue the “power of the individual human mind to think” (as Spencer Tracy’s Clarence Darrow-esque character put it in Inherit the Wind.) Daryl puts his own good mind to use in this rant against ignorance as a potent political weapon.
What say we start now to repurpose academic “accountability” laws, use that concept to hold the conspiracy of know-nothings accountable to the people for all they’ve done to sabotage intelligent human consciousness and collaboration, thereby interfering with our ability to understand and address our real common problems, to progress (survive?) as a species!
Henry Drummond: Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!
Judge: I hope counsel does not mean to imply that this court is bigoted.
Henry Drummond: Well, your honor has the right to hope.
Judge: I have the right to do more than that.
Henry Drummond: You have the POWER to do more than that.
[The Judge holds Drummond in contempt of court]
Cocking A Snook! 
I blogged the Celebrity Conspiracy of Anti-Intellectualism as Academics being played out in Florida public education here.
Then today comes a NYT feature following up on how it’s affecting the science classroom with real high school kids here in my state whose lives and choices affect mine, you know, fully sentient citizens ready to get driver’s licenses, guns, voter registration cards, scholarships and head off for “higher education” — as heavily armed from birth AGAINST enlightened human learning, thinking and intellectual development as the Know-Nothings could manage.
The NYT article that JJ references is just so terribly sad.
That was a good article. Thanks for linking it.
If they were intentionally poisoning public wells and drinking water, it would be a monstrous crime, right? Certainly not constitutionally protected speech!
Plotting to spread willful ignorance to sicken and poison domestic society, is unethical and inexcusable at best, and quickly rises to treason-terrorism at worst. I have HAD it with politely pretending this is just freedom and normal politics at work.
Of course thirsty young minds have to drink what’s available, and hope it’s healthy. I was thinking back to this, my own irrational childhood indoctrination, timely as football season opens at colleges across the country:
A smart Chronicle of Higher Education blog I like, here argues that our revolutionary digital technology makes our kids into Know-Nothings. The blogger’s book is titled, “The Dumbest Generation:”
I see Know-Nothingism quite differently from Mark Bauerlein, as you’ll know if you’ve been Snooking with us here, and/or reading the sparkling cultural commentary of digital-AND-discursive Favorite Daughter, but at least his is an intelligent argument inviting educated human discourse from other engaged intellects — as opposed to purposefully ignorant god-botting that dumbs down kids’ natural curiosity and higher order thinking skills. [check out a recent example from The Meming of Life.]
It is Know-Nothing to swallow political identity smears and then regurgitate them all over the blogosphere, much less to teach them to your own kids as “truth.” I stumbled into an unfortunate Christian homeschool conversation where the Honorable Barack Obama was being smeared as a baby-killer, literally.
Unbelievable? Sure. Untrue? Yep.
But did they believe it was true anyway? You’d better believe it. . .and we’d all better work hard to debunk that kind of useful-idiot ignorance as homeschooling’s god-given identity, if we don’t want all home education equated with Know-Nothingism and then justifiably restricted, or even banned, as child abuse and neglect.
From “Homeschool Hegemony”:
[…] budget right now, in a public middle school classroom near Baltimore televised for all the people who still are able to believe in promoting, protecting […]