The contempt for art and culture are deeply rooted in the American psyche

“(In the early days of the Republic) Americans would create a common-school system, but would balk at giving it adequate support. They would stand close to the vanguard among the countries of the world in the attempt to diffuse knowledge among the people, and then engage drifters and misfits as teachers and offer them the wages of draymen.” Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963)

Sunday leaving a meeting at the White House with President Warren G. Harding (1923)

“I heard a definition of an intellectual that I thought was very interesting: a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.” President Dwight David Eisenhower, repeating a view by a trade-union leader (1954)

“The art of the isms, the weapon of the Russian Revolution, is the art which has been transplanted to America, and today, having infiltrated and saturated many of our art centers, threatens to overawe, override and overpower the fine art of our tradition and inheritance. So-called modern or contemporary art in our own beloved country contains all the isms of depravity, decadence, and destruction.…” Congressman George Dondero of Michigan, long a vigilant crusader against Communism in the schools and against cubism, expressionism, surrealism, dadaism, futurism, and other movements in art

“ I know of no other country where the love of money occupies as great a place in the hearts of men...”  Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

“When the word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go to hell!” Billy Sunday

In 1914 the readers of American Magazine, named Billy Sunday “the eighth greatest man in America”—tied with Andrew Carnegie.

Sunday was the most celebrated and influential American evangelist in the early 20th century.

Sunday’s disdain for intellectual “elites” dated back to the earliest attacks on Thomas Jefferson by the clergy of New England. 

“Moral warfare makes a man hard. Superficial peace makes a man mushy. I have no interest in a God who does not smite.”

Sunday’s was a worldview that brooked no dissent. Self-refection was a moral weakness.  You were either on the side of the Lord, or side of the Devil.  

“The New Dealers have all left Washington to make way for the car dealers”. Adlai Stevenson II, Eisenhower’s Democratic presidential rival

San Francisco is Dead

Front row: unknown man (left), Shig Murao, Lew Welch and Peter Orlovsk. Middle row: Donald Schenker (left), Michael Grieg, unknown man, Mike Gibbons, David Miltger, Michael McClure, Allan Ginsberg, Dan Langton, Steve Brostan, Gary Goodraw and son Homer, and Richard Brautigan (in back of Goodrow). Back row: Stella Levy (left) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. City Lights Bookstore (December 1965)