Election Question: How Can We Tell the Stupid People From the Smart Ones?
How smart do you have to be to tell if someone else is smart? Hopefully not very smart, because a lot of life — and especially politics — involves asking people to separate the bright from the dimwitted. We can’t figure out or do everything ourselves, so we need to know who the smart people are so we know whom to listen to and entrust with important jobs. But if we incorrectly think morons are smart and listen to them and put them in charge, that would be a disaster.
You could also call it election year 2008.
For some reason, many people thought certain other people — who we can now clearly see are idiots — were smart and should be in charge. So how do we prevent such an error from happening again?
It was probably a lot easier back in ancient times to figure out who the stupid people were. They were the ones who did things like taunt the mammoths. And they were pretty easy to identify because their heads had been crushed by mammoths. No one ever even contemplated putting them in charge. Then again, back in that time, there wasn’t really any need for Stephen Hawking-level intelligence either, since there was no such thing as theoretical mammoth hunting studies.
Eventually civilization arose, and intelligence became more treasured. Ironically, this created opportunities for morons to thrive. No longer threatened by mammoth crushings, idiots survived and eventually evolved, developing a form of camouflage. Basically, they learned to appear to be smart while in fact being completely useless to society. We know these idiots today as intellectuals.
Now, some people think that the problem many Americans have with intellectuals is that they hate smart people. This is not a correct understanding of the objections (and not correctly understanding things is the sine qua non of stupid people). The problem is that these people just think they’re really smart but are in fact less than useless — less than useless in that they can’t do anything useful themselves. They become things like politicians and get in the way of actual smart people. In fact, they’ve developed a complex network of morons — the media, journalists, academics, NPR — to prop up each other as smart and call everyone who actually does useful things dumb. And if you try to explain how they’re actually just getting in the way, they get angry, since dumb people get angry when you explain things to them that they can’t understand.
So how do we tell the smart people from the faux-smart people? This is a smart question. Some may suggest we use Science! to answer this question and just give everyone IQ tests, but having high intelligence doesn’t make someone smart and can even lead to great stupidity. Think of a dog. A dog doesn’t have much intelligence, and if it’s walking down a path and sees a tree in front of it, it would never contemplate any other course of action than walking around the tree. If instead, a human with high enough intelligence came upon a tree in his way, he could use his considerable brainpower to come up with a convincing philosophical argument that the tree isn’t actually there and walk right into it.
Though that’s quite an intellectual feat, it’s not exactly… smart. Similarly, there are pundits out there who make complex esoteric arguments that President Obama has done an awesome job. Again, not an easy thing to do, but a pretty silly thing to devote one’s brainpower to. Yet we have entire universities full of people working on similar walking-into-a-tree feats of intelligence.
Think of intelligence as a tool. Just because someone owns a nice hammer doesn’t mean he could build a house. In fact, he could instead just take that hammer and swing it around wildly and smash holes in everything (remind you of any current presidential administrations?). Also, there could be someone who has a hammer so fancy that he doesn’t want to tarnish it by doing anything practical with it.
So if intelligence isn’t enough of a marker to identify smart people, what do we look for? Well, what is the whole point of being smart in the first place? Is the reason humans thrived so much better than any other animal because we can write complicated theses? No, it’s because humans can build tools and figure out better ways to hunt, i.e., do useful things. As Forrest Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Similarly, smart is as smart does. If someone is actually smart, then he should be able to do useful things.
For instance, look at Obama. People said he was smart because he sounded smart. That’s stupid. If you actually looked at his past, though, you would notice the lack of accomplishments that would show he knew how to do anything other than pretend to be smart. He was a community organizer — which I’m pretty sure is a made-up job — and then a mediocre legislator. There wasn’t a single useful thing he did, as his only ability seems to be convincing stupid people he’s smart — something he’s gotten a lot worse at since he’s actually tried to do things for the first time in his life.
So, in the future, instead of thinking someone is smart because he has a very interesting-sounding argument that two plus two equals five, look into the person’s background to see if he’s ever actually done anything useful, like run a business or at least once have an actual job that doesn’t have the word “community” in it. Using that method, it doesn’t seem too hard to find the actual smart people; you probably don’t even have to be that smart to do it. But if it is too hard, maybe we can task scientists to resurrect the mammoths so they can hunt down the stupid people and crush their heads again.
We will call that Plan B.
Smart from stupid? Easy. Read below.
Now look up at comment number one. Isn’t he a stupid commentator!
Aw poor baby, you’re going to be so depressed when Republicans regain control of Congress.
Gee, nonsensei, couldn’t you come up with something more intelligent, like FIRST!!! Look in the mirror boy.
Quite right. Below — smart. Right at the top — stupid. Weapons-grade stupid in fact. Even WMD-grade stupid, except WMD’s don’t exist, do they, they’re one of Bad Ol’ Bush’s fairy tales.
The stupid ones are the ones who say that the earth is 5000 years old and that the entire concept of evolution is a myth because they’ve never seen a half-human-half-monkey walking around.
“The stupid ones are the ones who say that the earth is 5000 years old and that the entire concept of evolution is a myth because they’ve never seen a half-human-half-monkey walking around.”
Coincidentally, no evolutionist has found evidence of the mythological monkey-people, but people like you insist it’s true now doncha. Funny, same thing with anthropological global warming.
And where’s that evidence that god exists? ARGO.
Anyone who believes everything that we see, taste, smell, touch and hear emanated spontaneously from a pit of ooze has to have much more faith to believe that utter nonsense than the faith one requires to believe in the Almighty Creator.
Nonsensei (I like that one),
Its 6000 years. We’ve been saying this for a while. Do try to keep up.
I believe it was Saint Darwin of the Church of Exterminating Lesser Breeds *NOT a true hardcore* who said that there should be innumerable variations in the fossil record. When the rockmen of his day said ‘nope’, he said ‘bad rockem, dig more, its there.’ Well, its not. The rocks tell tales of stable genetics, of sudden appearances and extinctions.
Science hates Evos.
Proof of God: 1)In the Beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth 2)Cosmological Arguement aka the Kalam Arguement.
A. All things (Cars, trees, Nonsenseis) that have a beginning have a cause (factory, acorn, a red rose).
B. The Universe has a beginning. (And if you disagree, I can slice you up here as well.)
C. Thus the Universe has a Maker. We call this Maker God.
At this point we’ve proven to reasonable men the existence of God. Not very hard to do, either. What we haven’t proven is that the Creator is Christ Jesus the Lord. That takes some more arguement, and can be researched by the student.
Tennwriter: Just because you do not understand the science, does not mean the evidence for evolution is not present. See my link to a genetic history of algae http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cfg/2008/284508.fig9.html. The proof is in the pudding as they say. There are plenty of fossil records. Also absences of proof is not proof of absence.
Wow, that was easier than I thought. Like hiring some desperate beaners to rake my yard.
Aw the tolerance of a weak minded liberal.
Ah. Beaners. Typical racism from the left.
Gee, I’m so envious. I wish that I was as smart as Sensel and other 52%ers are.
Why, I could be collecting welfare, food stamps and unemployment, while lounging around my mommy’s basement in my genuine, authentic, Winnie The Poo jammies, thinking about the hot date that I’m going to have on Saturday night, curled up on my sofa bed with a Playboy Magazine in my mailorder, genuine, authentic, faux silk, Hugh Hefner jammies, fantasizing that I could have the centerfold if she’s into having kinky, make-believe sex with a toothless goober.
Your white belt intellectual state hardly qualifies you as anyone’s sensei.
Sorry – that was mean. Please don’t tell your mommie on me.
Frank; Good piece! But on top of your excellent advice for the population ‘judging’ smart, we also need a bi-annual voter intelligence/smart test – to verify we are indeed smart enough to vote.
But I’m now in a mix… With all the good effort, I know it’d be just a short duration before illegal aliens could buy black market ‘voter smart certificates’, just as the do with SSN cards and driver’s licenses. $5 can get you a long ways with forged documents if your not a legal citizen or resident.
Neal Boortz has a great solution for dividing the smart from the dumb at the voting booth. When a potential voter gets to the voting booth they are given a choice before voting. You can vote or you can receive 5 lottery tickets.
I like you Plan B also!
Stupid is as stupid does. When Charlie Crist loses in Florida today, that weasel’s career in politics will be finished. He has been so sleazy that, hereafter, he will be shunned by Democrats and Republicans, alike. He will never hold another political office, elected or appointed …, and what’s more, he knows it, which explains his desperation.
slime has never been a disqualification for political office. remember marion barry? convicted on drug charges while in office and still got re-elected. stupid has a very strong political machine and even better press.
And then you have your Charley Wrangel (Wrangle?) for whom his constituents will continue to vote. Is he dumb? No. Are they? Let’s just say it is a good thing there are no mammoths in their wards.
Yeah, yeah! And Senator Ensign and Vitter and Governor Sanford, we need more stand-up guys like them. If they ever did anything wrong, you can bet conservatives would toss them out on their ear.
> And Senator Ensign and Vitter and Governor Sanford,
Yea, I was disappointed that nobody stood up to challenge Vitter in the primary. Would really have liked to replace him. Can’t say I object to any of his positions or votes cast; because he has demonstrated a lack of moral fiber such that the odds of his ‘going native’ is unacceptably high if given another six year term.
I know this is a difficult idea for you progs to understand, us cons going on about morality all the time instead of your more enlightened ‘personal behavior is private and doesn’t matter unless a con is caught’ but I’m just an idiot who believes if a weasel politician is lying to his wife and consorting with whores that he probably doesn’t have a problem lying to me and/or trying to screw me eventually.
As for Sanford, he leaves office soon and hopefully doesn’t get a second life on the reality TV circuit but our team doesn’t control that part of society so we get no vote on the matter.
You have completely forgotten inside-the-beltway-republicans. Never say something stupid can’t be done.
Ol’ Charlie Crist dumped his wife of many years and he then married a babe who is young enough to be his granddaughter. I suspect that explains his miscalculations and his incredibly bad judgment and his panic and his compulsion to prove that he still has what it takes to be somebody other than an old has been.
But one never knows. He could be fulfilling his life-long dream to play the role of Daffy Duck.
Only one of the great things about Marco Rubio’s win is his beating that idiot Crist! And then maybe kicking out another RINO self appointed “expert” Chris Ingram. BayNews9′s political analyist. Ingram has tried everything to get himself into an important position, including convincing the gullible, leaping to the left Tampa Tribune they should bring up the credit card thing again, never mind that stuff had been resolved long ago. Ingram and Crist should ride off into the Gulf sunset and try their luck elsewhere. All this because his “expertise” was rejected by Rubio’s campaign. What a pair of weasels!
I am still on needles and pins all the same!
the stupid ones still have their obumma bumper sticker on their cars; guess no one told them about “cash for clunkers”
It’s not so much being able to tell who is smart and who is not but also being able to judge who is honest and has integrity enough to be entrusted with our expectations.
Smart from easy….
Smart = The major media despise them, loathe them and ridicule them.
Stupid = The major media love, adore and want them as POTUS.
Is Fox News major? Cuz they want Sarah to be Prez. Do you want Sarah to be Prez? Here’s the challenge. It’s twofold: You have to think first before you answer. And you have to be honest. Good luck with that.
Uh, speaking of thinking…how many did that prior to voting for Obongo?
No. Jim DeMint or Mitch Daniels would be my choices.
Sarah Palin is at her best just doing what she does now – being a lightning rod.
There was a perfect example of this last night in the Northeast. Eleven Democrat campaign offices launched “robocall” deluges onto Comcast at about 2000 hours EDT, and the system crashed, knocking them all off the air, so to speak. They immediately blamed “nefarious forces” who had gotten in first and overloaded the system to “silence” them.
According to Comcast, what actually happened was that they told the Dems exactly how many calls their system could handle every minute while not interrupting regular service to their other subscribers. The eleven campaign HQs apparently assumed that that number was the amount each HQ could launch, instead of the total for all. As such, at the appointed time, they launched eleven times the volume the system could handle, overloading it by 1100%, and knocking themselves out plus screwing up the system for everybody else.
The trouble with progressives, as seen here, is not just that they’re dumb (I’m talking bone-stick-stone stupid, as Harlan Ellison would say), but that they are professional mystics. Their relationship to reality, especially technology, is approximately that of a South Seas islander in 1946 who has joined a “cargo cult” (look them up).
They believe that everything is magical, and can do whatever they want if they just use the right incantations (or press the right buttons, which to them amounts to the same thing). And even if they want the systems they are working with to do something that is flatly impossible for them to do, the progressives believe they should get away with it anyway, because they deserve to do so on account of their “superiority”, “enlightenment”, and general wonderfulness.
And when it (inevitably) doesn’t work, like mystics from time immemorial, they don’t say “OK, we goofed- maybe we should have read the instructions first”. No, they just look for someone else to blame- because the only way they can lose (in their minds) is if they are sabotaged by evil people (defined as “anyone who disagrees with progressives, in any way, for whatever reason including facts”). And yes, throughout history, most of the bloodier-minded tyrants have been mystics, going back to the likes of Nero, Caligula, and (even earlier) Plato. (Look up what he got up to on the island of Rhodes sometime.) And let’s not even talk about the Persians under Darius and Xerxes. (Look up “Thermopylae” and “Leonidas of Sparta”- or just watch the movie “300″.)
The problem facing us today is that civilization, which has sheltered such mystics from the consequences of their own actions from the founding of Sumeria on, has become sufficiently complex that mysticism is no longer a viable method of decision-making. Neither is a law degree, which amounts to being qualified to argue that rain isn’t wet to get your client off.
It does take smart people to run a civilization like ours. People who understand business, and medicine, and engineering, and a lot of other things. Exactly none of which you will find in the academic lounge of a liberal-arts college. Nor, apparently, in any other place “progressives” congregate to tell each other how incredibly “smart” they are.
clear ether
eon
Excellent! So, rather than ‘taunting’ mammoths, they feel they can become ‘one’ with the beast and, like GrizzlyBoy in Alaska, succeed to such an extent that they pass through it’s digestive system. (I’m reluctant to make such a comparison to Islamic temples near Ground Zero, because I’m not familiar with high-rise biology).
If someone has to tell you how smart they are, they are certainly not as smart as they think they are. A truly intelligent person has no need to advertise their brain-power. It is quite evident.
I work in education and I am surrounded by “smart” people all day. As smart as they are, if they are presented with a problem such as a broken water pipe, car that won’t start, or a printer that will not print, they are like so many chimps around a monolith.
Chimps who look down on someone who knows how to save them from their ignorance because everyone knows only people who aren’t smart enough to go to grad-school end up as plumbers or mechanics.
It was said to me many, many years ago: The ONLY difference between a good doctor and a good mechanic is that the doctor washes his hands AFTER he goes to the toilet!
Exactly so. Complex civilizations such as ours typically don’t respond well to the ideas of the Wishful Thinkers and Coercive Utopians who comprise the bulk of the modern American Left. Real trouble begins when the former two sort enable the Lord of the Flies types. Then civilization collapses in a “spread of ruin and slaughter” as Ayn Rand once put it.
We forget. We forget that the Western civilization we currently enjoy came to usat great cost, and that most of human history has been one of conflict and misery for all but an elite few.
Durant’s quote applies to us, and to America in particular. We need to recognize the enemies of civilization for who and what they are. Our failure to do so and to act accordingly presents the greatest danger to all that we hold dear. Our latter day barbarians – Islam from without and the anti-intellectual, cruel and sadistic will-to-power driven monsters from within – are the enemies of Western civilization. And neither peace nor copmpromise can ever be made with them – that’s precisely the point of Lee Harris’ Civilization and Its Enemies. This is a ‘must read’ for anyone who cars about the fate of the West. Harris concludes his work with this:
Unfortunately, I do believe that we will see it again. In this last century – and now, in this one – socialism, communism and all of the various totalitarian ‘isms’ provide nothing more than the framework for the exercise of power – absolute power. Absolute, murderous power, as history has so clearly shown. So, no – they don’t work, and they were never intended to ‘work’ – outside of the minds of fairy-dust wishful thinkers and coercive utopians. The ideologies represented by the totalist ‘isms’ are nothing more than the horse that these will-to-power driven monsters choose to ride on their way to dominus terra firma. We must recall that the will to power as exercised within those totalitarian frameworks is responsible for the slaughter of over 200 million people over the last 100 years or so – and the impoverishment and enslavement of hundreds of millions more.
Those driven by the will to power have never given up and the very bad ideas that have animated them have never gone away. And they’er not going to shrug their shoulders and quietly walk away once a few of them are removed from positions of power.
How do you tell smart from stupid people? Stupid people keep doing the same thing over and over again even though they have been shown that what they are doing is bad for them.
You know, like Democrats believing that spending a lot of money will get them out of debt and that bankrupting the treasury is actually good for the United States. But, you see, these same Democrats consider themselves to be oh so smart. They are the elites, don’t ch’ya know, and they went to the best schools, associated with only the best people, attended only the best parties, and drank only the best wine. And here we are, America, with all of these “smart” people bringing us to the edge of unbelievable poverty. But the rest of the country, the ones loaded with a lot of common sense, really know just how stupid these elites really are.
Obama’s notion that spending wildly is good for the nation may seem idiotic until you consider that it is his version of the nation that it fits with. His background and teaching is that only government can solve our problems. But voters won’t allow government to have that much power.
So he intends to groom voters so they will. He does this by making them dependent on big government for survival. If he can destroy our financial system, our industrial base, and more of our jobs, then we will become dependent on big government for survival. The nanny state already had a large minority in that position. All that remains is to make say 50% more without the means to live comfortably, and he’s got it in the bag. Desperate voters will continue to reelect big government candidates (socialists).
But he didn’t count on the Tea Party organizations, which will be Obama’s downfall this year or in 2012.
0bama’s a delusional, narcissistic, sick-fantasy Utopianist who serves will-to-power driven monsters – killers without conscience.
They’ll dispose of him in a manner calculated to deliver maximum value to their agenda the minute his utility as a Marxist sock puppet is surpassed by his value as a martyr.
“But the rest of the country, the ones loaded with a lot of common sense, really know just how stupid these elites really are.” But, they did end up with a lot of our money, and are trying to fill our kids’ heads with lots of their stupid ideas now that they have control of the schools. We need to get smart enough to stop the latter..
I think your points are very well made, but don’t answer the main question I have; why is it that *intelligent* people vote for the stupid ones?
Sure, community organizing is a made up job and Obama’s a failure at everything, but I think we all know liberals who don’t fit the description – people who’re very good at what they do (whether it’s practice medecine or flip burgers at McDonald’s) and seem perfectly intelligent in normal times. I know I do. And yet, all that intelligence seems to go away the minute they step into a voting booth!
Why? This is my question. Stupid will always be stupid, but the question is, to borrow from a liberal author, What’s the matter with some smart people?
There are a lot of smart people who want to use government to regulate and guide the people who they think are stupid. They think that will make things better for all of us.
Problem is, that’s a stupid idea, as any reading of history will attest.
Hope is the reason. Obama’s message tapped right into the very heart of foolishness. Hope. Hope for Change. They engage in wishful thinking. They embrace some theoretical ideal, rather than practical realities. The fact that this Utopia which they embrace is completely impractical with humans involved does not enter their minds. Their Hope trumps Reality.
This can be a very useful attribute, to dream of the impossible. It is a key to success, “The facts simply do not count.” This is great for overcoming an individual’s obstacles, to get him to stretch himself and not just surrender to hopelessness. It is coupled with a period of intense effort. It is utterly stupid to rely on all of society to do this on a daily basis to make a Utopia work.
Could some Utopian ideal work? Sure… in theory. In practice? Not a chance in Hades.
You have to be pretty friggin’ dumb to think Marxism “works”. Or just evil and power hungry.
Killers Without Conscience and Their Enablers
So how do the worst get on top? How do these killers, these monsters, acquire what they should never in a million years get their hands on – the apparatus of the state? They’ve got help, and lots of it. Specifically, Antonio Gramsci’s heirs and disciples. The Left’s “useful idiots”. Here’s a little bit of their background:
1. Wishful thinkers – don’t these people just wish that the world was a nicer, fairer place? If only everyone were just as smart, just as clever, just as enlightened as they think they are, it certainly would be, wouldn’t it? Wishful thinkers and those like them aren’t really up to doing the heavy lifting to achieve their utopia, but they surely do vote and applaud into power those whom they believe will usher in the New Age. The trouble is, those they empower typically have an agenda that doesn’t quite match that of our dreamers. And no one is more surprised than they are when it all goes bad and the body count mounts up.
2. Coercive utopians – they have a lot in common with our Wishful Thinkers, but they just know that no one is going to do what it takes to usher in the new millennium, the New Man or that immanent eschaton. But there’s a problem: put the sort of totalitarian regime necessary to achieve those goals – that is, socialism / communism and its imperatives and consequences – right out on the table in front of everyone, and no sane individual would buy it. Who would actively and openly cheer for the impoverishment and enslavement of humankind and mass murder of those who won’t go along with it? The hard Left, that’s who, and they’ve said as much.
Hence, Antonio Gramsci’s doctrine of the ‘long march through the instituitions.’ The hallmark of coercive types is that they tend to be fairly bloody-minded. For example, Billy Ayers and his wrecking crew thought that once they achieved power would have to slaughter over 25 million Americans too stubborn to toe their utopian socialist line – that was back in the 1970’s so we’re actually giving him a bit of a discount on that 25 million figure. But what’s a few million here and there? Eric Hobsbawm, Marxist historian (now there’s an oxymoron) has also said as much in a BBC interview where he allowed as to how the ’sacrifice’ of millions would have been worth it in order to achieve socialism. So – is a little slaughter and a ‘re-education camp’ or two not too much a price to pay for heaven on Earth? Not for the coercive utopians.
3. Lord of the flies – now we’re at the top of the pyramid of power, and those driven by that insatiable will to power. These are the ones who, once they achieve absolute power, really make things happen. And we’ve got over 260 million dead – that’s 260 million unarmed, non-combatant civilians – in this century and the last one to prove it. Now, let’s say that again – that’s 260 million unarmed civilian non-combatants killed by their own governments. They were murdered by those exercising the power of the state. They were starved, gassed, tortured, shot, impaled, burned alive, drowned, frozen to death, worked to death, hacked apart with hoes, axes and machetes – a litany of brutality and atrocity beyond human imagination. Hundreds of millions more lived their lives enslaved, impoverished and in despair. Communism, socialism, the immanent eschaton – who cares? Ideology is only the particular horse they ride in pursuit of absolute control of mankind.
Those who are driven by the will to power typically disguise their intentions under the guise of ‘achieving the greatest good for the greatest number’ or under the rubrics of social or economic justice. They may claim that they are ‘doing the business of the people’ or that they are acting according to ‘the will of the people’. The statement, ‘It’s for the children,’ should inspire instant disbelief and skepticism. When it has come to creating the ‘New Socialist Man,’ or immanentizing that eschaton or ushering in that New Age,, those who advance such arguments remain untroubled by the oceans of blood they would have to spill and the mountains of corpses they would have to pile up in order to realize their dreams. They are all animated by the unrestrained and unappeasable ‘will to power’. The Will to Power plays itself out at all levels. From the malice or indifference of the petty bureaucrat to the most savage and demonic mass murderers of recent times. As we have seen, power and the exercise of that power is more addictive than any drug.
The need is insatiable. The result is horror.
So – where are our modern so-called ‘progressives’ in all of this? Here’s my question for a proud ‘progressive’: If you’re a follower or apologist for today’s political and social multiculturalism, an adherent of liberal democracy, or believe that our culture can continue without a basis in moral absolutes, which camp do you suppose you belong in? Are you a cynical but clever elitist intoxicated by the will to power? Are you on to the deception but support it out of pathological spite? Or are you simply ignorant of your role in the intentional destruction of your culture, even if you think you stand in the relative right?
Finally, here’s a purely practical consideration for those on the Left: you may want to re-think your premises, because you are not likely to survive the consequences of the very bad ideas you’re advocating. History is my witness.
Whack them with a stick…that will make them smart.
I still for the life of me don’t understand the contention that Obama is smart. Where in the world did this come from? I mean really – what has he ever said, written or done that would lead one to believe that? All of his actual academic graded writings are under lock and key – as are all of his academic records. He has released neither grades nor IQ. All we have are two (almost certainly ghost written) books. He claims to have been a “professor” but no one can remember having him as an instructor and there are no records of him actually teaching. When he isn’t reading material verbatim of a teleprompter he is a C- to D public speaker. There are lots of things he says he wants to do but he has absolutely NO measureable achievements he can attach his name to. He did get some of his legislative adjenda passed but he handed off all policy specifics to the House Speaker and her staff (he just wanted to be able to sign a bill with the words “Health Care” on the title). As a leader – he has alienated absolutely everybody. He has polarized left vs right like no time in modern history AND 47% of Democrats want a primary challenger for him in 2012. So again I ask this in all seriousness and I really hope for some sort of response. I don’t get it. What has Obama ever done, written or said that would lead a reasonable person to believe he has more than a room temperature IQ?
“I still for the life of me don’t understand the contention that Obama is smart. Where in the world did this come from?” I believe it it comes from one of these two liberal syllogisms:
A: Obama is no dumber than me.
B: I am smart
“I still for the life of me don’t understand the contention that Obama is smart. Where in the world did this come from?” I believe it it comes from one of these two liberal syllogisms:
A: Obama is no dumber than me.
B: I am smart.
Therefore: Obama is smart.
OR
A: Racists think that all minorities are not smart.
B: I am not a racist
Therefore, Obama is smart
You forgot one:
A – I’m a conservative
B -Americans are patriots
Therefore, liberals want to kill my grandma.
That’s the great lesson of this election for Democrats: don’t waste time on logic. Conservatives don’t care about it.
That was dumb, and it’s doubtful that you’re a sensei. Surely liberal masters of the nuanced argument can come up with more. I doubt it.
Yo Senseless is just another dog that somehow got into a museum – barking at things on the walls it has no hope of ever understanding and piddling on the floor. Needs its nose pushed into its mess and a swat with a rolled-up newspaper.
Do you expect to keep your Soros funded troll position after the election?
Good job Frank.
Everybody remember to vote…………and king barry is a tyrant, whether we say so or not.
I offer that the dog when approaching the tree might decide, instead of walking around it, to hike his leg and pee on it – something the progressives have done to the American people. But the dog, unlike progressives, would stop peeing, then walk around the tree.
To add to your point Frank: Our country goes out of it’s way taking care of the dumb people. Pick up any item and read the warning labels. Read some of the Darwin awards. Maybe we should go back to the old ways of letting people learn from their mistakes, and if that means death, so be it.
I could while away the hours, conferrin’ with the flowers
Consultin’ with the rain.
And my head I’d be scratchin’ while
my thoughts were busy hatchin’
If I only had a brain.
I’d unravel every riddle for any individ’le,
In trouble or in pain.
With the thoughts you’ll be thinkin’
you could be another Lincoln
If you only had a brain.
Oh, I could tell you why The ocean’s near the shore.
I could think of things I never thunk before.
And then I’d sit, and think some more.
I would not be just a nothin’ my head all full of stuffin’
My heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry, life would be a ding-a-derry,
If I only had a brain.
If only our scare-crow-in-chief had a brain.
God save our Republic.
Did you also notice (in the movie) how, after the fake wizard gives him the diploma, the scarecrow misquotes the Pythagorean Theorem? (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/goofs) I’ve always wondered if the film makers did this on purpose as some sort of statement.
To be an honest student of history AND historical satire/prophecy, I think one must read the Wizard of Oz series.
Few people realize how much the story is a warning of the insanity of the corruption of our whole society by economic Progressives.
Woodrow Wilson was the Wizard and OZ was a warning about the Fed and going off the gold standard. This is not a fairy tale for the light-hearted or empty-headed. We are beginning to see the evils of this sanity come home to roost.
No, no, NO! Two plus two equals three. For sufficiently small values of two, that is.
But seriously (?) one of the great political fallacies is that we want “smart people” in government. No, we don’t. And until we learn that lesson thoroughly — “on our own hides,” as Ayn Rand once put it — we’ll keep mistakenly promoting intelligence as the true criterion of good government.
+1.
It certainly can help, but super-high intelligence is neither necessary NOR sufficient to be a good leader.
Smarter politicians doesn’t necessarily mean “better” politicians.
More intelligence might just mean a politician better at taking and concealing bribes, spending others peoples money, gerrymandering themselves into permanent office, and doing every other negative thing associated with politicians.
Again, we need politicians of good judgment and high moral character.
I’d add that given the intrinsically corrupting nature of power, term limits are a REALLY good idea.
“Yet we have entire universities full of people working on similar walking-into-a-tree feats of intelligence.”
That’s the thing. The Left has infiltrated and taken over academia. And they’ve replaced courses on the Classics, such as the ancient Greeks & Romans with “diversity” and gender studies. But they forgot that they send their own kids to those schools. So the Left has not only dumbed down the American people, (at least the college going crowd) but themselves. It was a short term tactic that has enfeebled themselves in the long term strategy.
Sorry to say, the same thing happens at the highschool level (Zinn) and even at the grade school level. Check out the books displayed for African -American month. Biographies of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mohammed Ali, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks. But Condi Rice? NADA. Justice Thomas? You must be kidding.
Stupid is when you think government actually is good at solving problems, when you have a religious faith, a real need to believe in government, when in the very face of either inadequate results or outright failure, you can’t, won’t stop believing, when in fact you support people who hold you in complete contempt,for example, trash who attend black racist churches for 20 years and tell dumb lies about it.
Lastly, stupid is when you try to mock others when your own party is going down to defeat, you can’t admit it,and so you try to divert your feeble attention span.
Hello your sensei.
Just one example but a good one.
I think it’s pretty stupid to deal in absolutes such as “the government can do nothing right.” Nuance is for smart people, and I see very little of that round these parts.
One thing intelligence is good for is discerning a record of failure. In its 200-plus years, the federal government has routinely failed at everything but warmaking. It even manages to misapply its immense military power, about as often as not. Generals are usually promoted for reasons other than their prowess as strategic planners or combat commanders.
The federal government doesn’t get everything wrong, but its successes are overwhelmingly more often than not to the credit of charismatic figures with powerful convictions, who were willing to buck its history and its rules despite the risks. He who “goes along to get along” with the incentive structures inherent in government will multiply its tragedies, perpetuate its wastefulness, and extend its arrogance toward those it presumes to rule — and it is exactly such individuals that goverment’s inherent dynamics select for.
Nuance is for close cases. It’s a bit tendentious to claim that government is generally a close case.
There are many things which can best be performed by a central government. That obvious fact does not by itself imply that the central government is doing a good, or even adequate, job at those things. Take, for instance, the National Health Service. One of its jobs is to examine visitors and immigrants to see that the more obvious and virulent infectious diseases aren’t brought into the country. But since other functions of the central government are not being performed adequately (the major culprits being INS and the Border Patrol) or at all, the NHS fails its disease-screening function, since it can’t check any of the flood of illegals crossing our porous borders. This is not the fault of the NHS, but it definitely is the fault of the central government. We still pay the costs, but don’t get the benefits of what should be a perfectly practical program. It all adds up to Epic Fail. Not much room for nuance there.
Truth Time, It is even stupider as well as dishonest to put in quote marks something that was not said in my post, reading apparently does not come easy to you. I did say inadequate results as well as use the word failure. The first may and can cover much ground but if one is too stupid and dishonest to quote me properly why bother.
I suggest you scurry back to the parts where intelligence is gauged by the Democrat party, by such lights as Reid and Pelosi, who if nothing else, at least have higher reading comprehension skills, that & the usual power hungry urges. But if your faith is central government you can’t be choosy over which gods to pick.
Truth Time? A bad joke ! Get another handle. And enjoy the evening !
Side-splitting, worthy of Swift, couldn’t stop laughing! Reminded me of something my Dad was fond of saying (that “smart” folks as defined in this piece are invariably puzzled by): “It takes brains to be that stupid!”
Wrong question.
There are plenty of really intelligent people who are absolutely selfish, corrupt, and/or evil.
The smart ones are just more successful at those endeavors, and this absolutely extends to members of Congress. Nixon was absolutely brilliant, and in a different way, so was (is) Clinton.
If you’re talking about elective office, you’d like someone of at least average intelligence, sure, but more importantly, of sound judgment and good moral character.
But we don’t have to postulate selfishness, corruption, or evil. Sometimes, these guys are just plain wrong. Occasionally it’s their megalomania which gets in the way – think Woodrow Wilson. I wouldn’t call Wilson corrupt or evil, or even selfish (in any personal way). But he felt he was on a Mission from God to drag the world into the future, and the future Wilson saw was very much like the one Mussolini saw, and acted on. Fortunately for us, Wilson was more of a failure as President than Mussolini was as Prime Minister, and Italy, rather than the US, suffered through the National Socialist experiment. Wilson’s problem wasn’t corruption or evil, but that he tried to push the US in a direction which we now know could have led only to disaster. In other words, he was just spectacularly wrong.
Compare Wilson to, say, James Polk, a President who was also stuck with difficult situations but came far closer to getting things basically right. It is possible to do that as President, but smarts alone aren’t anywhere near enough to do the job.
Forget “smart.” Show me “wise.” A bit of humility wouldn’t hurt, either.
Show me someone that:
* doesn’t automatically throw out the wise founding principles that made this country great, just because they were put forth by dead white men
* knows the difference between intelligence and wisdom
* has a well-thought-out set of driving principles based on time-tested classical wisdom instead of half-baked modern ideologies (Marx? Really? That crap should have been kicked to the curb long ago with phrenology and phlogiston)
* knows he doesn’t know everything, and depends on other wise people to help him out sometimes
* asks questions more often than he hands out answers
* isn’t too proud to admit when one of his ideas, put into practice, isn’t working, and change course
A Harvard education makes an inherently intelligent person even smarter, no question. So what? Intelligence – “smarts” – is overrated. There are plenty of smart fools. When did we stop teaching wisdom?
You can’t teach wisdom. Go forth wiser.
Of course you can teach wisdom. Pain and suffering teach wisdom. Good fathers teach wisdom… with a belt. The butt-bone is connected to the brain-bone.
I rest my case.
Well… sorta.
Good judgment is a major part of wisdom.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Experience teaches wisdom… or, at least that’s been my experience.
This is why the freedom to fail and personal responsibility are important.
Well, as we used to say at MIT, intelligence has never been shown to have any survival value.
Maybe more to the point, it can’t be shown to have much value in a President. The most intelligent man to sit in the oval office in the 20th century was almost unquestionably Herbert Hoover, not today remembered as one of our more successful Presidents. Next down on the intellectual ladder was probably Wilson, also no great success. In fact, he was a real weirdo, albeit a pretty smart one. The next is arguable, but a strong case exists for Nixon – but there’s no strong case that he was a good President. In more recent times, we had Clinton, who was pretty smart, but a mere caricature as President. Obama doesn’t strike me as very smart. A very pedestrian intellect, no imagination, poorly read, and stuck with the polemical skills of a tenth grader.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the smartest guy in the room at the Nuremberg Trials – in the dock, behind the bench, or in the audience – is widely believed to have been Hermann Göring (much to the undoubted annoyance of Albert Speer) … for all the good it did him.
Maybe we should vote for the dumbest candidate – we couldn’t do much worse, and we wouldn’t be so disappointed all the time. Although that would mean that Barbara Boxer would be in the Senate for the rest of the century. Ugh.
Sir: The dogs I’ve seen, if they were out walking about and saw a tree in their path, would walk right up to it and leave a little memento of their passing. This is actually not a bad model of human behavior, especially human political behavior.
What I hate is smart-sounding people coming up with smart-sounding plans and implementing them with no evidence whatsoever that they might work other than the fact that they “sound” smart.
The opposite of this is “evidence based policy making. For example, “Wisconsin came u pwith a plan to reduce the number of people on welfare rolls, and it really worked well in getting people back to work and reducing the dependency rate in the state. Therefore, based on this (ha! dare I say ‘scientific’??) evidence, we propose to implement such a program nationwide.”
But, hey, did ANYONE REALLY think Obamacare sounded SMART? Even from the beginning? I campaigned door-to-door for Scott Brown and had UNION guys come out on their doorsteps in sleety rain to rant at me about how STUPID it was. Although Obambi would probably disagree, these guys are definitely SMART.
Frank –
In your memorable way, you have just described the fundamental difference between intelligence and … wisdom.
The amazing thing is that Obamacare DID NOT EVEN SOUND SMART TO BEGIN WITH! And the American people–who it turns out are pretty smart–saw through it and expressed their disapproval loud and clear! But it didn’t matter! The Dems had the power; they laughed their evil laugh and stuffed ‘healthcare’ down our throats anyway. Now in addition to voting these people out, we still have to contend with the healthcare legislation that is on the books. Good for you for voting today, but please remember this is not a “one vote and you’re done” type deal. We have to stay informed and keep the pressure on. It is the very future of our country that is at stake.
Sorry, didn’t mean to post this twice (2 versions).
The computer paradigm offers a useful way to look at the whole stupid/smart thing. Which is “smarter”, a twenty-seven year-old PC XT (4.77 MHz!) with bug-free software, or a cutting edge 2010 computer with an utterly screwed O.S. and programming?
See, a lot of intellectuals and “elites” COULD be extremely smart, in the sense of reaching correct answers in record time. They have excellent “hardware”…fast cycles and memory access times, extensive databases, etc. If their software wasn’t completely screwy they’d be brilliant.
So instead they generate stupidities far beyond the typical mind. A true Ivy League intellectual heavyweight can generate four faulty analyses quicker than the average Tea Partier can say “God Bless America!”.
The acid test should be “Yes, but what evidence do you have that it is likely to do what you say it will do?” We should ask this question everytime a politician proposes some big program. We should also ask, “What negative side effects may occur?” This second one is important because going forward we will be confronted with a menu of only bad choices (i.e., raise taxes/cut growth v.s. cut taxes/cut services as the most obvious one.)We need to understand and articulate the negative as well as the positive consequences will be for each, and then take our lumps. Mature adults are able to choose between “bad” and “slightly less bad”–ha! we do it every day with our own household budgets! But we must not let ourselves be snookered into accepting pie-in-the sky from politicians who promise only the good and hide the bad from us until it is too late, a la Healthcare.
Perhaps the constitution should limit the power of politicians to the extent that voters can grasp the consequences of their actions.
It’s a lot of fun watching people here try to convince the world how smart they are . . . “As we used to say at MIT” . . . or “as Harlan Ellison would say.”
Flinging the faux and feigned . . . for our future!
No, the point is that the people cited are smarter than you.
In his defense, it isn’t that Sensel is stupid. He’s just shallow, dense, obtuse, nutty as a fruitcake and clueless. There is a difference you know.
I notice you aren’t trying to convince anyone of YOUR genius – good move on your part. Why set yourself up for failure in public?
Tenez-vous la bouche fermée pour ne pas paraître stupide, et regarder ce que vous écrivez, car il dure beaucoup plus longtemps!
In other words Keep you mouth shut to not sound stupid, and watch what you write because it lasts much longer!
You want stupid? Somebody who would support this:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101102/ap_on_he_me/eu_spain_child_mother_1
“Can We Tell the Stupid People From the Smart Ones?”
You will always be fooled by the smooth talking phonies because you will like them better than the competent people whom you have been calling nerds all your life. It is your loss.
Don’t forget originally only landowners had the right to vote.
I’ve become more and more convinced that a variation of this is not a bad idea. Only those with skin in the game should be allowed to affect it’s outcome. Only those that PAY taxes should be allowed to determine how those taxes are spent.
Re the question of Obama’s intelligence
Exhibit A:
UNDERGROUND
Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.
Its really not that difficult.They are still voting for Harry Reed,Nancy Pelosi,And Barbara Boxer.Still believe Barack Obama,And His Marxist Communist Socialist Policies.Promote Independence,Justice,And Liberty For all americans.They Are voting in favor of legalizing Marijuana,For Dope’s,Potheads,Airheads,And Deadbeats,In California.They are giving privilages,Taxpayer dollars,Unearned benefits,Superiority rights,And votes to Lawless/IllegalImmigrants,And others who hate america,Its People,Its Laws,And And its Constitution.They are trying to help C.A.I.R.Build a Shrine in N.Y.C. To honor the 9/11 Hi-Jackers.Solution;New homeland for all of them in,Guantanamo Bay,Cuba.So all of them can sing KUM BA YA,And live Happily ever after.As it is the kind of country,They are intent to force on the rest of us.So give them exactly what they intended for us.When they complain.Just reply;Be careful what you ask for.You just might get it.Jimmy Joe/”The Liarfryer
Jimmy Joe,
Since this piece was a lot shorter than your others, I read it. I suggest that in the future, you either keep your posts this short, or use spaces. Thanks!
It would also be nice to break his posts up into things like a paragraph, but it is possible the enter key on his computer is broke!
But I could be wrong, he just types away even though he might have something cogent on comprehensible to read, after all the strung together words and sentences it is illegible and unintelligible to me and perhaps others.
But it could be just his writing style which leaves a lot to be desired, and with just the use of the enter key it would be nice.
I give up on his posts after about the first three lines myself!
Frank, this one’s easy: if we want to keep from having stupid people in charge, just don’t put anyone in charge. If they can’t tell us what to do, they can’t tell us to do anything dumb.
Which is one of the virtues of a government of limited and enumerated powers – another good idea some smart bugger already came up with.
Well if they are drooling or babbling I do not think they should be able to vote. Also if they are in prison garb or even wearing a clown suit with the big shoes and red bulbous nose!
Being serious though I do think that there should at least be a requirement for signature verification as well as a photo ID just like when buying tobacco or firearms or alcohol, but this is my personal opinion, I am sure that liberal would like to disagree.
Hey when you are getting robbed would you ask the robber for his or her ID? No you either comply or take action which may hurt someone in the end!
Time for positive identification at the polling booth or is that racial profiling or something like that we always get from the liberals (progressives/communists?)
Why be smart?
One can be smart for the long run and in ways that benefit others – moral smart if you will.
One can be smart for the short run and only in one’s own interest and screw the world – pirate smart if you will.
For moral smarts, look at a person’s children. If they are moral and good, then you’ve found a morally smart person.
Pirate smart guys can leave a lot of unwed mothers behind. Pirate smart women marry rich guys and become wicked stepmothers.
No kids after one’s childbearing years have passed? Not smart at all!
One of Derbyshire’s observations is that political stupidity is uncorrelated with other forms of stupidity. That’s confirmed here. Maybe I’ll write a blog post to try to explain this.
Problem is we’ve all been surreptitiously trained to equate “smart” with superficial markers. If you’ve got a shingle on your wall or in your resume with a BS, MS or PhD from some institution with “College” or “University” in its title you are automatically endowed with the mantle of “Intellectual.” While this is sometimes a deserved designation it is never obvious and those of us who’ve yet to learn the hard facts and skills required to manage survival, much less success, on our own are easily swayed by charismatic, tenured professors cloaked in whatever the avant-garde sartorial garb and oozing a persona of utter coolness and sophistication to match; so unlike the drab, dull, unsophisticated boobs personified by their financial benefactors (parents) and their clueless, dull friends. If only these professors, these shining examples of brilliance could rule the world, oh what a wonderful world it would be. No more poverty, no more war, no more discrimination, no more hunger, no more disease, all the world, every religion, every culture, every race living together in perfect harmony and singing “kumbaya.”
Immersed in this claptrap for 4+ years dedicated to “higher learning” tends to propagate this myth and those of us not so fortunate to be exposed to this “learning” experience while perhaps mortgaged to the hilt in order to pay for juniors $200K tuition bill have to force awe and admiration to keep from experiencing profound depression at the nagging thought that we might have wasted a good chunk of our lives and fortunes for naught.
Enter Barack Obama. Here was the poster boy for the superior intellectual, a guy oozing the “coolness” persona, exceptional oratorical skills, the creds of the Harvard educated, offering “Hope and Change” and a promise to “transform America.” No need to explain or elucidate; he’s an intellectual! No explanation or background checks necessary, no questions about “gravitas” as required for that boob, Bush, and, as so expertly inculcated in those vaunted halls of academe, America, the epitome of evil, capitalist, racist imperialism; scourge, polluter and destroyer of the planet, certainly is in need of change. Nothing this exceptional, this successful, this superior in every way to every other nation on the planet could possibly derive from the stumbling, bumbling, idiots free to do exactly as they damned well please. Oh, the guilt, the humiliation; it’s just not fair. Let’s go get a Latte at Starbucks.
I am a proud member of the “stumbling, bumbling, idiots,” and we’re about to begin to take OUR country back from the “intellectual” jackasses who’ve done their best to transform America into some atrocious socialist/progressive/communist nightmare. But not to worry all you aspiring intellectuals, you’ll feel a whole lot better when you get a job worthy of your true intellect and begin to experience the freedom you’ve so diligently worked to deny your fellow countrymen and perhaps realize it’s what sets us apart.
Going back to one of the original premises: We keep being told Obama is “smart”, but no evidence has ever been provided. All his college, university, and law school records remain hidden. The whole Annenberg Challenge results have been hidden. Obama never published anything in the Harvard Law Review he wishes to claim. He never seemed to actually organize anything or any community. He gave a good speech with the aid of the teleprompter, but if you actually went and read the speech, it was essentially “content free”.
The only actual evidence that Obama is “smart” is that he managed to get that label stuck to him. But, we have no way of knowing if he did that himself or if he had other “smart people” who managed to make that stick. Besides, he has worked very hard to prove to everyone he is not very smart at all.
Did our smart ancestors develop programs to keep the stupid among them alive (away from the mammoths)? Why do smart people develop programs to keep stupid people alive and engaged in society (welfare, Head Start, etc)?
I keep coming back to the cliché of Those most interested in Politics are the least qualified to be in politics.
I think we need term limits for ALL politicians. Sure, that pushes out the good ones and makes the possibility that you will swap the rare good one for the more common bad one, but again this is a Public Service Role, not a career choice. Serve the Public to the best of your ability then move on.
In my experience there are some talented and selfless individuals drawn to politics simply because they want to change the status quo and figure that if they want it to happen, they have to personally step up and do it themselves.
Unfortunately, there aren’t that many of them, they are at somewhat of a disadvantage in getting elected (standing on principle often isn’t as politically helpful as being a “whichever way the wind blows this week” guy) and the ones that do it often become disgusted by the mess and don’t last long.
I’d phrase it as such, “Anyone who wants to be a career politician probably shouldn’t be allowed to do so”.
The biggest myth is that Obama is smart.
So how do we tell the smart people from the faux-smart people?
Well, this video should help clear things up!
I once heard the term “unwise intelligence” used to describe someone once. The problem with today, is that we tend to think because a person is intelligent, that mean he or she is wise.
SB November 2, 2010 – 9:00 am
” … We should also ask, “What negative side effects may occur?” … ”
======================
Exactly. In the perfect world I envision, the Chief Architect of the New Program stands before his working group and says, “OK guys, we’ve been working on the new proposed program to accomplish XYZ and we all agree it looks pretty promising. Now – hypothetically – let’s say we’re ready to implement the program next week. Before we commit, let’s brainstorm: WHAT COULD GO WRONG?”
Four one-syllable words: “What”. “Could”. “Go”. “Wrong”.
Apparently nobody east of Pittsburgh has figured out how to put them all in the same sentence.
Allow me to hypothesize that stupid people frequently mistake charisma for intelligence. That is, if he sounds good or looks good, he’s got to be smart, right? You’ll notice that the political elite crowd looks alot like the B students in High School who were in band, worked on the newspaper, were in the glee club, held various pointless student offices, and lettered in various sports? That is not I think a coincidence.
That they do this while at the same time holding the belief that smart people (geeks, nerds, engineers, scientists, Bill Gates, etc.) normally look and act like dorks shows that another important trait of stupidity other than not understanding things is not noticing irony.
Incidently, I’m not necessarily suggesting that we put geeks, nerds, doctors, engineers, and scientists in office. If you are smart, you would have noticed that just because you are damn useful at something doesn’t mean that you are damn useful at everything. See Noam Chomsky, for example.
However, I would say that that would at least be a step in the right direction.
Just watch the movie “Idiocracy”, yeah it’s a stupid movie, but the opening kinda makes you see where we as a species are headed
Quote from the movie Idiocracy
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.
I would like to offer two contrasting examples of intelligence/brilliance – Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Reagan had the brilliance to understand that:
1) Trying to take on and solve every complex issue in the world was the height of hubris and ultimately impossible
2) He needed to prioirtize on a few high priority issues; distill them down to their essence; develop understandable and executable policies for them and then select people of like mind and philosophy to carry out those policies.
He chose to take on communism – he determined that it was evil and he set policies in place to defeat it. Pretty big achievement if you ask any sentient being.
He also chose to fix the economy and wisely understood that command economies don’t work and that what works best is to try to get the government out of the way and the market would fix itself. That and, again wisely, understanding that rewarding rather than punishing people for achievement, through lower tax rates, would have an explosively positive impact on all.
And for this the left called him stupid and a dullard.
Contrast that with Bill Clinton, the policy wonk. He tried taking on everything and achieved little, getting lost in the minutiae (sic) of details that prevented him from establishing clear priorities. The only ‘smart’ thing he did was listen to Dick Morris and moce to the center after the ’94 election defeat. And to this day, the things he gets credit for are what the Republican Congress dragged him into, kicking and screaming – a balanced budget; ending welfare as we know it. His real legacy is that he was derelict in his most important duty – protecting America – and sowed the seeds for what happened to us on 9-11.
Yet the left dubbed him brilliant. Go figure. The gauge that I use is the following: whoever the left decrees brilliant, I shun. Whoever the left dubs stupid, I follow.
How can we tell stupid people from smart people? Haven’t you noticed? The dumbest people are frequenly fat, also. It’s logical if you think about it.
The stupid people are the ones that think any of this matters. The age old blue against red will go on ad infinitum and thwart anything from happening. At the end of the day, when it is all said and done – MORE WAS SAID AND LESS WAS DONE. Imho.
Morons are now known as liberals.
P
It is relatively simple those that still have Obama stickers on their cars or vehicles or Kerry or even as I have seen Gore bumperstickers, those are the stupid ones.
Ever notice that a liberal usually has about 20 or so stickers on their vehicle? I do and they are all krappy drivers to boot and likely to give you the bird if you have a conservative sticker like NRA or Marine Corps or anything military!
Yep the tolerant iberals that only tolerate those with their same insane viewpoint!
A rule applies that the brilliant occur very rarely. The real genus is often very rare and sees things that are not there but should be. Around 1000 AD somebody invented the house collar. People had used horses for thousands of years but nobody had ever figured out how to harness so that it could push effectively doubling the work a horse could do. Double stroke pumps that allowed higher temperature metal smelting in china about the year 1 AD. Archimedes Screw for pumping water all is simple inventions that changed the world.
The morons are people who think that you can manage development of progress or that progress comes from universities.
Very good column, but I think the word you’re looking for is not ‘idiot’ but ‘fool’.
I think that the dummies are already self-identified. Look at the TV when a politician is on. Some of them have (D) after their names.
Thank God none of them have an (R)….
Stupid – Unqualified, clueless, ignorant, excuses for everything, never giving an answer, moron, Pelosi, liberalism, left, Barrack Hussein Obama, his DB wife, punk, bitch, Harry Reid, dumbass, Barney Fwank, idiot, scary when you must include beginning on January 20, 2009 president of the United States, doesn’t say much about our people and our educational system.