The June 26, 2008 issue of The Nation has a brilliant, ringing address by E. L. Doctorow to a joint meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society on the theme of “The Public Good: Knowledge as the Foundation for a Democratic Society.” The address was titled “The White Whale.” Anyone and everyone who values the a competent democracy should read this article, preferably several times.

Doctorow’s remarks are incredibly important, because they lay out in general, though articulate terms how not just our nation but civilization at large is under siege by forces of unreason. He draws particular attention to the phenomenon of the “knowledge denier” whether the subject at hand is the Holocaust or global climate change and then makes one of the best points I’ve seen in some time:

“Two things must be said about knowledge deniers. Their rationale is always political. And more often than not, they hold in their hand a sacred text for certification.”

I would only add to the line about the scared text “…that they probably haven’t read carefully and almost certainly don’t understand”, but that’s just me injecting one of my pet peeves.

Doctorow further points out that the misdeeds of the current President and his enablers constitutes a trend that can only lead to the abandonment of the Constitution and its supporting ideals as the foundation of the United States. In other words, that this distrust of reason and the embrace of non-empirical authoritarianism constitutes an existential threat.

If you are in any way a thinking person, enamored of the proposition that knowledge of facts is a good thing, read this article.

This is not to say that American ignorance and stupidity is new; this excellent article by Rick Shenkman “How Ignorant Are We?” shows that Americans have maintained a pretty constant level of stupidity for a long time.  But what seems to have changed is that parties who do not have our collective interests at heart have managed to harness the power of stupidity and ignorance into something militant and dangerous.  The Internet, contrary to its perceived purpose to bring about the Information Age, has become a conduit for much of this toxic work.  And we have not seen in the past this ignorance and blind intolerance aimed so deliberately at unmaking our best laws and political institutions.