“Szasz opposed any involuntary psychiatric intervention and, along with the Cuckoo’s Nest portrayal, paved the way for the disastrous dismantling of U.S. mental health facilities. But more generally they helped make popular and respectable the idea that much of science… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“Since the turn of the century, American fundamentalists had reveled in their sense of persecution by an infidel elite, but in the 1960s the… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“If I think it’s true, no matter why or how I think it’s true, then it’s true, and nobody can tell me otherwise.” — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“Libertarianism used to have a robust left wing as well. Both disliked government. Both were driven by a fantastically nostalgic conviction that a country… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“But what other place on Earth has been more congenial to believers and promoters of mad dreams and schemes of so many kinds? California… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“The antisharia movement lobbied states to pass statutes and constitutional amendments banning the use of sharia in their courts and legal systems, a fantasy… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
I'm comparing Americans to international peers in terms of GDP, educational system - the sort of benchmarks we used to designate a so-called developed… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
TED was simply wonderful, an intellectual spa, a 21st-century Chataqua, superb and singular. — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“The early advocates of universal literacy and a free press…did not foresee…the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“EVEN PAUL GOODMAN, beloved by young leftists in the 1960s, was flabbergasted by his students in 1969. “There was no knowledge,” he wrote, “only… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“IN ADDITION TO having become a distinctly Christian party, the GOP is more than ever America’s self-consciously white party. The nationalization of its Southern… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“Sixteen hundred years ago Saint Augustine instructed, basically, Don’t be stupid. “Shall we say, then,” he wrote about Genesis, “there was such a sense… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“After more than three decades and many hundreds of studies, the overwhelming scientific consensus is that GMO foods are safe to eat. The National… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“P. T. Barnum was the great early American merchandiser of exciting secular fantasies and half-truths. His extremely successful precircus career derived from and fed… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
I am proud to be American. We wouldn't have our big dreams without this quality, but if we can't agree on the shape of… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share
“In 1848 the Homeopathic Medical College was founded in Philadelphia, eventually becoming the Drexel University College of Medicine. Homeopathic M.D. degrees were issued by… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share