With Republican-controlled legislatures in several states poised to ban the teaching of history in their public schools, and replace it with a requirement that students read Reagan speeches, we are reminded that, “Conservative contempt for academia has long been established” and “a hallmark of the modern conservative movement … is that science and knowledge is only valuable to the extent to which it can shore up conservative beliefs.”
It’s perhaps emblematic of our times that Scott Walker is shooting up in Republican polls. If he wins the GOP nomination and White House, he will be only the second president* since Grover Cleveland who didn’t graduate from college, which in retrogression terms beats George W. Bush’s “gentleman’s Cs” from Yale by a country mile.
Let’s suppose he makes it. Not to be outdone, the next generation of Republican presidents will be people who dropped out of homeschooling in sixth grade.
(* Harry Truman attended business college and law school, but didn’t receive degrees from either.)
Image: What a Walker presidency would look like.