Conservatives vs. Reformers?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine

They are simply too genteel to deal with the evil in society. But when chaos envelopes their pristine little world, they are the first to want some burly cop from Staten Island with a bad attitude; or some kid from the Midwest who enlisted in the military , to restore order to their world. Like any other unpleasantness, they think this drudgery can be outsourced to others.. 

Of course, far be it for the commoners to actually aspire to leadership. Can;t have that, you know. Don't the proles know their place?

Einstein isn't considered anti-intellectual because his religion was closer to Thomas Jefferson's than Billy Graham's:

In a 1930 New York Times article, Einstein distinguished three styles which are usually intermixed in
actual religion. The first is motivated by fear and poor understanding
of causality, and hence invents supernatural beings. The second is
social and moral, motivated by desire for love and support. Einstein
noted that both have an anthropomorphic concept of God. The third
style, which Einstein deemed most mature, is motivated by a deep sense
of awe and mystery. He said, "The individual feels ... the sublimity
and marvelous order which reveal themselves in nature ... and he wants
to experience the universe as a single significant whole." Einstein saw
science as an antagonist of the first two styles of religion, but as a
partner of the third style.

"Intellectual" doesn't mean "I read a bunch of books and now I can provide footnotes to prove anything I want". It is fundamentally anti-intellectual to start from your conclusion--deregulation is good, state-run anything is bad, the earth was created 6000 years ago, all Democrats are soft on crime, all Republicans are gun-toting Bible-thumpers--and work backwards to establish your reasoning. Einstein was an intellectual because he started from the facts and followed them, as openly as possible, to their conclusion, whatever it turned out to be, not whatever he wanted it to be. To a couple of your specific points:

• Yes, using faith to "fill in gaps in our understanding" is anti-intellectual when there's no reason to think those gaps can't be filled in by other means. We didn't used to understand the mechanics of lightning, cancer, procreation, steel, ice, how trees grow, why toast turns brown. Pushing God into the gaps in our knowledge creates a very small God, circumscribed by human experience. The gift we have in religion is not "How does the world function?" but "How should I live my life? How should I treat other people?".
• Government isn't some gigantic evil monster lurking out there somewhere. It's an expression of a human attempt to come together and create a formal framework for making society better. There's a huge list of useful things that have been accomplished by government that could not have been done otherwise (as evidenced, if by nothing else, than by the fact that for the decades prior to government intervention, they weren't done): community colleges, building standards, tenant protections, pensions and health care for the elderly, poor and disabled, municipal sanitation, widespread firefighting services, national defense, food safety standards, workplace safety standards, anti-fraud laws, car safety laws. Government is a human endeavor, so it's imperfect and sometimes it fails miserably. But to claim government, as a generic entity, is bad, is the source of all our problems, was a nice catchline for Reagan, but turns out not to be true, now or ever in the past. The world is a lot more complex than that.
• Would you elaborate on your conception of a "nanny state"? I'm not sure what that covers for you.