Posted by
Gary Fisher on Saturday, December 06, 2008 9:27:36 AM
An article, titled "America the Illiterate," widely circulated on the internet, sets two Americas in contrast, one print-based and literate, the other image-oriented and unable to function above the level of slogans and caricatures. The article argues persuasively that the overall level of literacy in America has declined steadily, citing standardized reading levels revealed in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which qualify at a 12th-grade reading level, compared to more recent debates including those between George Bush and Al Gore in 2000, which met a 6th to 7th grade reading level.
Ignoring for the moment the changes a century has wrought upon the language, changes which would make much of today's vocabulary as unintelligible to those of the Civil War era as much of their common vocabulary would be to many Americans today, and which alone might explain a great deal of the apparent reading-level difference, it is interesting to examine where the writer places the blame for this decline. As the article moves toward its conclusion, we read the following:
"Huge segments of our population, especially those who live in the embrace of the Christian right and the consumer culture, are completely unmoored from reality. They lack the capacity to search for truth and cope rationally with our mounting social and economic ills. They seek clarity, entertainment and order. They are willing to use force to impose this clarity on others, especially those who do not speak as they speak and think as they think. All the traditional tools of democracies, including dispassionate scientific and historical truth, facts, news and rational debate, are useless instruments in a world that lacks the capacity to use them."
Further we read that Americans "will be led toward glittering and self-destructive illusions by our modern Pied Pipers," notably by (Christian) Preachers.
Christianity, in the writer's opinion, bears the bulk of the responsibility for American illiteracy.
The premise is absurd, as is the argument -- the fact is that Christianity is built upon the written word, that public literacy in America began as the means to make the Christian Bible accessible to everyone, and that Christian churches still teach the written language to millions in America and around the world. Literacy and Christianity are virtual traveling companions throughout history and to this day. So what could cause the writer of this article to so thoroughly misplace the blame?
A little further research reveals that the author is Chris Hedges, who posted the original article at a website called Truthdig though (like so much on the internet) it's been widely copied, usually without attribution, since. Hedges is a journalist, for fifteen years a reporter at the New York Times as well as a commentator for National Public Radio, the son of a Presbyterian Minister and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. Although Hedges was one of the first and most virulent critics of the War on Terror, to the extent he was booed off the stage for his antiwar and anti-Bush comments in a commencement address he gave in 2005, Hedges asserts he is not a pacifist, something his books and articles seem to bear out -- Hedges is an outspoken supporter of any battle or war, however large or small, in which Muslims are winning or Christians are losing; whether he has a preference is unclear, but it seems his support for Muslims is based primarily on antipathy toward Christians.
The origins of his vociferous attitude can probably be found in a 2004 article which links Christianity to German Nazism. This comes to fruition in his 2007 book "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America," which explicitly argues that Christianity in America resembles German and Italian Fascism in the 1930s and presents a clear threat to the US. Apparently embarrassed by charges that he is an atheist, Hedges followed in 2008 with a book titled "I Don't Believe in Atheists" which argues that those who oppose non-Christian religion, particularly Islam, are thinking like American Christians and thus wrong.
There's been quite a bit of discussion about Hedges' "America the Illiterate" article, such as [this] one in the UK which questions, to the point of refuting, several of Hedges' assumptions.
The anti-Christian left has depended for years on what has been called "symbolism over substance," on slogans instead of reason. Hedges, like others of his ilk, projects the worst aspects of his own philosophy on those he perceives as his enemies. While his article contains shreds of truth and glimpses of what might have been a fine mind, Hedges' dismal spiritual illiteracy blinds him to the truth.