Simone's Thought For October

If I have to be anti anything, I am anti anti-intellectualism. Can we please stop dumbing down America? I want to live in a country where being smart is cool and curiosity is a good thing. Where thinking deeply and asking thoughtful questions is not mocked or derided. Where complex issues are not reduced to black and white simplicities. Where knowledge and education are not sneered at, as if they are somehow dirty and suspect. Where ideology and dogmatism do not beat down critical thinking and reason like a bellicose bully.


"An American will tinker with anything he can put his hands on. But how rarely can he be persuaded to tinker with an abstract idea."

- Leland Stowe


Leland Stowe (November 10, 1899 - January 16, 1994) was an American journalist noted for being one of the first to recognize the expansionist character of the German Nazi regime.


In the summer of 1933, Stowe visited Nazi Germany. Shocked by its militarism, he wrote a series of critical articles that was not published as the articles were seen as too alarmist. Stowe published the articles in a book, Nazi Germany Means War; it was, however, not a success.