Tea bag parties part of new anti-intellectualism

Super intelligent column by Stuart Whatley on HuffingtonPost about the latest wave of anti-intellectualism, typified by tax protesters. Here's an excerpt:

A prudent question [about Glenn Beck video]: just how serious are these resurgent anti-intellectuals? Hardly anyone in the video even flinched when the woman seriously called for books to be burned. One wonders if there's anything you couldn't say in these settings. "Kill all puppies?" "Grab your guns?" "Let's burn this mother fucker down?"

Anti-intellectualism is defined by, inter alia [latin: among other things], abject paranoia of the perceived educated elite -- which, in the US, is a group that's been growing for decades alongside steady economic growth, fueled by innovation. Granted, this is all very simplified, few would deny that the driving force for America's economic growth now is educated innovators. This, sure enough, will drive any future economic growth as well. Manufacturing has moved across seas, and regrettably much of American brainpower in the past few decades has been directed towards the financial sector. But that may be set to change, and the alternative is not retrogression towards willful ignorance or a widespread, intentional drop in college enrollment -- it is simply a shift in focus towards science, math and technology, whereby education remains as important as ever.
. . .
The sad fact is that there is simply no place for this type of wretched anti-intellectualism in America anymore. It can be expected from the margins, but it's troubling to see it embraced and validated by more mainstream entities. This movement represents the lost and left-behind. And, pitifully, it's a one-way street. It is not as though there are educated or "intellectual" people who crave ignorance and despise knowledge. Anti-intellectualism is a purely circumstantial outlook, whereas education or knowledge acquisition is indisputably a normative societal goal. Thus, it is no surprise that anti-intellectualism is promptly defenestrated [thrown out the window] as soon as alternative options become available. It is, in short, a last resort, knee-jerk reaction to abject desperation.

ADDENDUM

My friend Stessa sent this post from DailyKos - these two pictures tell the story.