A Folksy Review

Christine and I had a "nerd date" this week. That's where we go to Borders and each pick out a book and a comfy chair. We read for about 10 minutes and then discuss what we read. Do we know how to party or what?

Anyway, this time I picked a book called The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby. The jacket said Americans are dumber than ever before and I have watched enough Jay Walking to think that might be true. But, it turns out, that's not Jacoby's point. Her point, as far as I could tell, is that we must be dumb because we elected a Republican president.

Admittedly, I only read the book for 10 minutes but I got a pretty good idea of Jacoby's thesis - enough to make me want to write a negative review. So here is a poorly-researched, yet passionately-delivered pan of The Age of American Unreason...

I started in Chapter 1 (why not?) where Jacoby laments about the "dumbing down" of public discourse. She uses the example of the word "folks" and points out how "folks" is used by news anchors and politicians and presidents with regularity and impunity. Jacoby thinks our society's use of colloquial language is proof of its ignorance. She asks us to image Abe Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson using a word like "folks."

I think Jacoby is absolutely right that American discourse has gotten considerably more informal and redundant in the past century. I don't think, for instance, that anyone among the current crop of presidential candidates really has anything new to say or says it with particularly powerful prose. But I don't think that's proof of an Ignorant America. Poor standardized test scores - falling American wages - these may be evidence of Americans becoming less educated. "Folks" is evidence of Americans becoming less formal.

So I skipped ahead to about the middle of the book to see if Jacoby would warm up to a more salient point. She didn't. Instead, she spent a few pages railing on Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia (hmm, a conservative. whadya know?) and his position on the law (did I mention he's on the Supreme Court?) and God (he's also a Christian).

Jacoby disagreed with Scalia's idea that the authority to govern, while of course must involve at least tacit approval from those governed, ultimately comes from God. Then Jacoby attacks Scalia's comments about capital punishment. She quotes a speech in which Scalia said that the more Christian a society is, the less problem it has with the death penalty because, to Christians, death is "no big deal." Jacoby found this appalling on the grounds that it would, indeed, be a big deal for those in such a society who aren't Christian. But wait - didn't Jacoby just argue that authority to govern arises solely from those governed? And in an imaginary country where the majority of those governed are Christians who support the death penalty, aren't they entitled to establish government in whatever manner they see fit? By arguing in the negative, isn't Jacoby appealing to some higher law than majority vote and therefore shooting her previous argument in the foot?

Those are the only two points I read and then it was time to hear about Christine's travel book (we've gotta check out Kilimanjaro!) Bottom line: I doubt that folks who think critically will enjoy reading Susan Jacoby.