Modern democracy’s delicate balance of freedom, equality, prosperity, and security is humanity’s greatest collective achievement. That balance is now at risk from fear, ignorance, and authoritarianism. But the root cause of these threats is a blindness — sometimes willing, sometimes unknowing — to the fundamental value of an open mind, reason, facts, critical thinking, and the scientific method.
America’s political crisis stems not from insurmountable policy differences but from three key problems:
- fear that other people misunderstand and endanger us,
- ignorance about the incredible complexity of today’s problems, and
- a willingness by some to embrace concentrated executive power with the hope that it will reduce government paralysis and failure.
In turn, anti-intellectualism fuels each of these difficulties.
If we close our minds, we don’t learn how people with different backgrounds share the same core hopes and dreams; we turn unknown fellow citizens into strangers, and strangers into enemies.
If we oversimplify complicated challenges and fail to test our hypotheses, chances for progress are slim; the world is an exceedingly complex place, whether we like it that way or not.
Given human foibles, government is far better than anarchy, and democracy is an amazing invention that has made our modern egalitarian society possible. The American experiment has been wildly successful overall, but it depends upon decentralized power, checks and balances, and shared civil behavior necessary to protect the integrity of key institutions.
The recent appeal of authoritarianism is anti-intellectual. It willfully ignores the rich history of American exceptionalism, and it would replace robust debate with unfettered decision-making. But superficial solutions are not correct simply because they may be relatively easy to implement.
Join us to help achieve Prime Thinking’s goals:
- to foster lifelong learning and progress in society through the recognition of the power of ideas;
- to encourage critical thinking and promote serious inquiry into complex social, cultural, political, technical, and scientific issues;
- to educate people of all ages about the importance of history, philosophy, science, the humanities, open-minded debate, analytical reasoning, and evidence-based public policy choices;
- to reduce and discredit anti-intellectualism;
- to challenge implicit and unexamined assumptions in public discourse and institutions;
- to increase civility in public debate, encourage compromise, and build trust and respect among persons of differing beliefs and backgrounds;
- to sponsor special events and training, create teaching materials for people of all ages, and provide an online forum to further the objectives and purposes above; and
- to engage in other activities related to educating the public about the importance of ideas.
David Kolker is the founder and president of Prime Thinking.
He has had a long career as a public interest lawyer, including his work supporting campaign finance laws in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
He is the author of the forthcoming book Challenging Ideas.
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