I consider myself an intellectual - conservatives (of which there are many here) lack intellectuals (I could probably count the number of conservatives intellectuals on one hand, and, aside from perhaps Victor Davis Hanson, who has interesting new takes on stuff in his particular field (history,) none of them are intellectual innovators, just conservative apologists,) for the simple reason that conservatism tends to equate intellectualism with liberalism.

This was a diasastrous choice for Conservatism, and more or less spelled the death knell of the old American system back in the 1930s.

Someone mentioned the school system. Here is a short history of how our schools got to be this way.

It all starts with Plato, but none of you guys want me to go back that far. So lets fast forward to Immanuel Kant. Back when this great country was first founded, a philosopher in Germany (pay attention, Germany - it'll become clear why in a moment,) waged a systematic attack on all of the things that The Enlightenment was based on. Reality, reason, individual rights - all of these were the subject of long, confused and boring attacks. However, America did not have any first-rate philosophers to counter such an attack - the founders held "these truths to be self evident" - they felt that the implicit philosophical foundation (reality as an absolute, reason as man's means to tame reality, individual rights as the only thing the government should be involved in,) of their system was obvious. Unfortunately, it wasn't, and Kant tore the (very poor) intellectual defenses of each apart in his books.

Kant got into ethics, in which he enshrined 'duty' so much that he declared that even enjoying the carrying out of your duty is a moral black mark; but, rather, the height of morality is a scoundrel, who desires in his heart to do evil, instead carrying out his 'duty' in contradiction to all his desires. But he never got into politics. One of his disciples, Hegel (another German,) had to do that. Hegel, if you'll recall, was the primary intellectual influence on Marx. What most people don't know is that his ideas (and his own disciples) were also the primary influence that helped disarm Germany intellectually against the Nazis.

Hegel preached collectivism. His was a religious collectivism (where rulers get authority from "The Whole," something like God.) But his followers took the essence and preached all kinds of collectivism - the most intellectually fashionable one was to combine a smattering of the infant science of biology with Hegel's collectivism and declare that men owe all their allegeance to das volk. Everyone is already familiar what happens when a culture accepts those ideas, I hope.

But as this was happening, Hegel's ideas crossed the Atlantic. The man to look at in America is John Dewey. An early disciple of Hegel, he came up with the distinctly American philosophy of pragmatism, which in fact is not very pragmatic, but thats for another time. The important part here is that Dewey was one of the major leaders of the progressive teaching movement. The remnants of this movement are what guides the schools today - not because of their fierce devotion to ideas (they have demonstrably failed, and miserably at that,) but because no new ideas have risen to challenge them.

Progressive education was "child-centered" rather than "subject-centered." What this meant is that the child's whims, fancies and moods took precidence over learning. Progessive educators were against "system-building" - so if you look back to your school days and remember only a jumble of unconnected, unexplained facts, with no rhyme or reason to remember them, do not wonder. Dewey felt - and imposed on the public school system - that schools are not really for learning stale, intellectual subject matter, but for conditioning the child to adapt to the social attitudes of his or her time - in short, in teaching children to conform to and obey the collective.

Such schools produce, in large parts, illiterates, brutes, and morons. A person who goes through many years of public school and comes out with a genuine respect for ideas is often only that way due to attentive, encouraging parents - the school system itself being very little, if any help there.

The Conservative movement, for the most part agreeing with the premises of the "liberals" (sacrifice is noble, duty to the group is moral, the individual owes his life, to a greater or lesser extent, to the interests of the group, etc.,) had no real argument against the progressive education movement. The result is the recent history of America.

Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough - 'duty to others' as a moral ideal is what allows a bankrupt Democratic party to continue to gain victory at the polls. A Republican party that also clamors about 'duty to others' can and never will bring about any fundamental change in the country. The Democrats are the more consistent advocates of that ideal, and any honest person can see that. If you want to really save America, it is that ideal - and all the intellectual underpinnings that hold it aloft - that you need to fight.