| An Effete Corps of Impudent Snobs Houston, Texas, 22 May 1970 by Vice President Spiro Agnew “Sometimes it appears that we’re reaching a period when our senses and our minds will no longer respond to moderate stimulation. We seem to be approaching an Age of The Gross. Persuasion through speeches and books is too often discarded for disruptive demonstrations aimed at bludgeoning the unconvinced into action. The young – and by this I don’t mean by any stretch of the imagination all the young, but I’m talking about those who claim to speak for the young – at the zenith of physical power and sensitivity, overwhelm themselves with drugs and artificial stimulants. Subtly is lost and fine distinctions based on acute reasoning are carelessly ignored in a headlong jump to a predetermined conclusion. Life is visceral, rather than intellectual. And the most visceral practitioners of life are those who characterise themselves as “intellectuals”. Truth to them is “revealed” rather than logically proved. And the principal infatuations of today revolve around the “Social Sciences”, those subjects which can accommodate any opinion and about which the most reckless conjecture cannot be discredited. Education is being redefined at the demand of the uneducated to suit the ideas of the uneducated. The student now goes to college to proclaim, rather than to learn. The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated in a contemporary antagonism known as the “generation gap.” A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as “intellectuals”. Biography Spiro Agnew, was elected Vice-President of the United States in 1968 and 1972 on the Republican ticket alongside President Richard M. Nixon. Born in 1918, the son of a Greek immigrant who had shortened his name from Anagnostopoulos, Spiro Agnew was drafted in 1941 and served in France, winning a Bronze Star. After the war, he studied law at the University of Baltimore and in 1947 began practicing law in a Baltimore suburb. In 1962 he was elected Baltimore county executive. Elected governor of Maryland in 1967, he secured a graduated income tax, a strong antipollution law, the first open-housing law south of the Mason and Dixon Line, and repeal of the state's 306-year-old antimiscegenation law. As Vice President, Agnew was one of the nation's most outspoken critics of the antiwar and counterculture movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1970, midway through his first term, he campaigned vigorously in the congressional campaigns against liberals and antiwar candidates in both parties. He became the second person to resign the Vice Presidency, after pleading guilty to failing to declare an amount on his income-tax return received while governor of Maryland. Agnew's autobiography “Go Quietly . . . or Else” (1980) is a defense of his political career and an attack on officials of the Nixon administration. |