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natural home of those who held dear the life of the mind. The arrival of
these emigres was then followed after the war by the arrival of New
York intellectuals in the rapidly expanding universities and other main–
stream institutions like the press and the foundations. Even the late Irving
Howe, who scolded his fellow intellectuals for their "conformism" in
the fifties, spent four years during this period writing for the mass-market
Time.
In fact, there had been a slow rapprochement between "our coun–
try" and "our culture" since the thirties, Hofstadter insisted, despite the
superficial effects of McCarthyism. Historically considered, America in the
postwar decades had been remarkably open to the lives of intellect and
art, and to the cultural distinctions and standards they implied. "Anti-in–
tellectualism in various forms continues to pervade American life," he
concluded, "but at the same time intellect has taken on a new and more
positive meaning and intellectuals have come to enjoy more acceptance
and, in some ways, a more satisfactory position."
Neoconservative nostalgia for this postwar period of high intellectual
seriousness may be exaggerated, but it is perfectly understandable. What
passes for literary criticism, art criticism, and historical writing in America
today simply cannot be compared - certainly in style and sensibility -
to
what was written during those years. But if one looks back at that pe–
riod with the perspective Hofstadter himself employs, and in light of
what has happened since, one begins to see what an exception it was in
American history. What we are experiencing in the name of multicul–
turalism and PC today is alien to the highbrow spirit of the fifties, of
that there is not doubt. But it is perfectly consistent with the anti-intel–
lectualism that preceded it. What we face today is not a European-in–
spired or elite-driven cultural deviation from American democratic prac–
tice; what we face is the traditional cultural expression of Americans'
understanding of democracy.
Were we to add a chapter to Hofstadter's book on the anti-intellec–
tualism of our time, we would surely have to remark important differ–
ences. While religion and business were once the most important sources
of American hostility to high culture, today we would have to explain
how the institutions nominally charged with propagating that culture,
and especially the university, have in many ways abdicated their responsi–
bilities. But even here we would have to remark a more profound con–
tinuity in American attitudes toward democratic education. A reader to–
day cannot but be struck by the evidence Hofstadter accumulates
to
document Americans' enduring hostility to the discipline of learning and
to its potential for producing social distinction. Every American believes
in education for self-improvement; few Americans believe that those im–
proved through education are in any sense superior to those without it.
