pgpillitteri

Brains in their Heads:

How we got our name (Thanks, Nicholas D. Kristos)

During the Bush years, the country adopted anti-intellectualism as administration policy. Thoughtfulness was portrayed as wimpishness, and careful deliberation is for sissies. Yet times may be changing. How else do we explain the election of an Ivy League-educated law professor who has favorite philosophers and poets?

An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals read the classics, even when no one is looking, because they appreciate the lessons of Sophocles and Shakespeare that the world abounds in uncertainties and contradictions.

Maybe someday soon our leaders no longer will have to shuffle in shame when they’re caught with brains in their heads.