We live in the era of content moderation and fact-checking. On any topic of importance, the opinions of politically-favored, Ivy League-credentialed experts are sacrosanct. All other opinions (and even objectively verifiable facts) are considered - by the authorities, mass media, academia, and online social platforms - to be either worthless drivel or dangerous misinformation.
But it wasn’t always this way.
It can be hard to imagine, but there was a time when regular people were officially encouraged to express diverse opinions about subjects in which they had no formal training. Consider the Lincoln-Douglas debates - a series of seven, three-hour-long discussions between the 1860 Presidential candidates. Both Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas assumed that an audience of largely uneducated farmers and tradesmen would be able to understand and vigorously engage with the complex policy arguments presented to them.
This respect for the intelligence of the average citizen was one of the foundational principles of the American experiment. It’s why we’re able to vote in general elections, have the right to be judged by a jury of our peers, and are not required to possess any specific credentials in order to run for Congress or President. It’s why Thomas Jefferson, the prototypical advocate of small government, supported public education, and why Benjamin Franklin, the prototypical serial entrepreneur, established the first public library. The idea was, always and forever, that citizens could only be free if they had a seat at the table where decisions were made about their government, community, and society.
The Origin of Engagement
The reason for the Founding Fathers’ adamant (and, for its time, quite extreme) position on free discourse was simple: prior to the Age of Enlightenment, knowledge had been the exclusive province of kings and clergy. In England, for example, only two colleges (Oxford and Cambridge) were allowed by law to exist. This ensured that any heretical thought was stamped out before it spread. By restricting the flow of information, tyrants of both the crown and the cloth were able to maintain absolute control over what their subjects thought, and by extension what they did.
This started to change in the mid-to-late 1600s, when courageous philosophers like Baruch Spinoza, Algernon Sidney, and John Locke argued that people should be free to think for themselves and make their own decisions, rather than unquestioningly obeying religious and political leaders. Once ignited, the spark of human liberty was impossible to extinguish. Over the next two centuries, the principles of personal sovereignty, natural rights, and civic engagement evolved into the classical liberal tradition that formed the bedrock of Western civilization.
So what changed, and when?
A Monopoly on Knowledge
When the modern university system emerged in the 19th century, knowledge became separated into silos. Instead of aiming to develop polymaths like Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Emanuel Swedenborg - “Renaissance men” who knew all there was to know about a variety of fields - colleges focused on churning out specialists. This new class of intellectual was an expert in only one subject, and had little interest in engaging with anyone other than fellow experts of the same persuasion.
Soon, universities produced virtually all the experts in most fields. They also established an incestuous system of peer-reviewed publications that rigidly controlled what information would be shared with the world. By the turn of the 20th century, universities had gained so much institutional power that they were influencing public policy. Unsurprisingly, they used this position to promote the self-interested notion that academic credentials and a track record of published work were essential for credibility in any field of endeavor.
The Anti-Intellectual Revolt
The first half of the 20th century was a grim time for America. The horrors of World War I were followed by a brief period of exuberance - the “Roaring Twenties” - and then by the Depression and World War II. To survive, universities promoted the idea that a college degree was the key to a good job and a better life. This was a potent strategy, creating widespread demand for schooling among the growing middle class. When the post-war economic boom started, the higher education industry seized the opportunity to expand the number, power, and influence of universities and the ivory tower academics who inhabited them.
But not everyone was on board with this new assumption that a diploma equalled intelligence. In response to the arrogance and elitism of this newly-minted credentialed class, a widespread “anti-intellectualist” movement emerged among the general public. The most significant effect of this movement was the electoral victory of down-to-earth war hero Dwight Eisenhower over Ivy League-educated “egghead” Adlai Stevenson II in the 1952 and 1956 elections.
“The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
-President Eisenhower, January 17, 1961
By the time Eisenhower completed his second term (using his farewell address to issue a grim warning to the American people about the threat of institutional corruption), the credentialed class was ready to fight back and win.
The End of Enlightenment
By the 1980s, the university system had firmly established a stranglehold on the levers of power in both the public and private sectors. It became a de facto assumption that only people with advanced degrees - preferably from Ivy League universities - were qualified to hold high-ranking positions in major corporations and government bureaucracy. Even more insidiously, it started to be assumed that they were also the only people qualified to hold and express opinions worth listening to.
By the beginning of the 21st century, only senior citizens remembered a time before every powerful institution was controlled by credentialed members of the upper echelon of society running schools, media, and corporations for their own benefit. To everyone else, this seems normal. In fact, when college dropouts like Bill Gates make it to the ruling class, it’s considered highly unusual: the exception that proves the rule.
“There’s a reason that education sucks. And it’s the same reason that it will never be fixed. BECAUSE THE OWNERS OF THIS COUNTRY DON’T WANT THAT. I’m talking about the real owners now. The big, wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians… they’re irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. YOU DON’T. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. YOU HAVE OWNERS. THEY OWN YOU. THEY OWN *EVERYTHING*! They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, and city halls. They got the judges in their back pocket. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear!”
-George Carlin, Life is Worth Losing
In 2005, septuagenarian comedian George Carlin brilliantly explained the status quo, telling his audience that they and the country were owned by wealthy elites: “it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” His monologue is well worth listening to in its entirety.
When confronted with accusations that he was peddling conspiracy theories, Carlin countered, “You don’t need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities and fraternities, they’re on the same boards of directors, they’re in the same country clubs, they have like interests. They don’t need to call a meeting. They know what’s good for them, and they’re getting it.”
Carlin died in 2008, but recent events have proven him correct. Society has come full circle. We have returned to the pre-Enlightenment paradigm. Once again, a small group of authorities decree what ideas are permissible, while the rest of the population is considered too stupid and unqualified to have a meaningful opinion.
Spinoza was excommunicated and ostracized by his community for deviating from the approved orthodoxy. Today, anyone who objects to the ideology espoused by the credentialed class is cancelled and smeared on social media.
Algernon Sidney was prosecuted and executed by a corrupt legal system in thrall to King Charles II. Today’s political dissidents are hunted down and imprisoned by government agencies using “selective enforcement” to target only those whose activities conflict with the interests of the elite.
But it’s not just the Great Unwashed who are kept in check. As the events of 2020 and 2021 proved, the credentialed class strictly enforces orthodoxy among its own. Even highly-qualified scientists who objected to COVID policies (that were allegedly based on science) were dismissed as “grifters” and “conspiracy theorists” - terms that are nothing more than modern euphemisms for the old-fashioned word “heretic.”
Even more telling, during 2020 and 2021, the general public was utterly excluded from any kind of meaningful policy discussion. Celebrities, influencers, and everyday people who endorsed and supported the official position on masks, social distancing, quarantine, and COVID shots had their voices amplified and celebrated by the authorities, legacy media, and online platforms; but anyone who disagreed with the “new normal” was shamed, disparaged, and either bullied into silence or shadow-banned into oblivion.
These techniques of control, having been developed and perfected during COVID, are now being used to “content moderate” - i.e., censor - objections to the war in Ukraine, skepticism about the wisdom of provoking conflict with China, and, of course, any mention of the naked corruption and obvious institutional capture that has grown exponentially since it first disgusted Eisenhower six decades ago.
What Comes Next?
Our new Dark Age is enforced by an ideologically homogenous legion of bureaucrats, business leaders, and media personalities who use increasingly powerful technology to control the spread of what they call “misinformation” - that is, any heretical thoughts or ideas that are contrary to their interests. The quieter we are, the more they can ensure that their voices are the only ones heard.
Along the same lines, it benefits the credentialed elite to make every aspect of reality as confusing as possible. Today, even a simple question like “what is a woman” is so fraught with controversy that most people would be reluctant to answer it publicly. It has become a foregone conclusion that only someone with a PhD is qualified to discuss what previous generations took to be self-evident truth. And if what these esteemed experts say makes absolutely no sense to you, it’s only because you’re too ignorant to understand.
As Carlin pointed out, this activity is not necessarily the result of any secret conspiracy, it’s just common sense. Looking at if from their point of view, it would be irrational of them not to use every advantage at their disposal to advance their own interests. It just so happens that, as with the European aristocrats of the 17th century, the interests of today’s credentialed class are antithetical to the interests of the general public. The scientific-technological elite that Eisenhower warned our grandparents about profits from war, benefits from price inflation, and enjoys the best of everything while we work longer, pay more, and have less.
Will this current dark age be deeper and longer than the last, or will it give way to a new Age of Enlightenment, in which people once again demand - and seize - the right to think, speak, and live as they see fit?
There is reason for optimism, and it comes down to one simple word: faith. Not necessarily in the religious sense, but in the sense of trust and confidence. As the monarchs and religious leaders of the 17th and 18th centuries discovered, you can only use brute force to keep people in line for so long. If they’ve lost faith in you and your qualifications to dictate their lives, it’s only a matter of time before you lose your throne (and maybe more than that).
Today, it’s clear that the credentialed class has overplayed their hand. Over the last decade, and especially during COVID, they pushed too hard, too fast. They have lost the faith of the people. Now, with the war drums beating, and platforms like Substack and Telegram providing viable alternatives to establishment media outlets, heresy and discontent are spreading rapidly among the masses, no matter how viciously the elitist Inquisitors try to stamp it out.
In school, we are taught to have faith in our leaders. On our screens, we are told to have faith in the experts. In a thousand different ways, we are expected to have faith in the systems that govern our lives. Now, it’s become obvious that the systems are dysfunctional, the experts have lied to us, and our leaders are hopelessly corrupt.
Perhaps, just like the Enlightenment philosophers and the Founding Fathers before us, it’s time to have faith in ourselves instead.