Daily Inspiration Quote by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

A barb like this works because it deliberately cross-wires two moral registers: a genteel disdain for “eggheads” and a historically lethal form of scapegoating. Schlesinger isn’t claiming anti-intellectualism is identical to anti-Semitism in scale or violence; he’s indicting the social function. Both are prejudices that let a group explain away discomfort without interrogating itself. If the market hero feels judged, confused, or out-argued, “the intellectual” becomes a convenient villain - not because of what they do, but because of what they represent: scrutiny, complexity, standards not set by the bottom line.

The phrase “of the businessman” is the tell. It targets a particular American mythology in which commerce is cast as practical virtue and thinking is cast as parasitic commentary. In that story, expertise threatens autonomy; history and theory look like constraints. Anti-intellectualism, then, becomes a protective reflex: delegitimize the people whose job is to name trade-offs, puncture slogans, and ask who pays.

Schlesinger’s context matters. Writing in the mid-20th century, he watched mass politics professionalize, advertising colonize public language, and Cold War rhetoric paint dissent as effete or disloyal. He also knew how quickly “outsider” stereotypes can be mobilized to police belonging. By invoking anti-Semitism, he’s warning that contempt can harden into a worldview: once you decide a class of people is inherently suspect, you stop listening to them - and start blaming them. The sting isn’t just moral; it’s diagnostic. Democracies rot when critique is treated as treachery and education as an insult.