Monday, November 26, 2012

Education ≠ Intelligence

Or for that matter, it doesn't equal experience either.  Ever heard the phrase "Book Smart, Street Stupid"?

For my money, I agree with Bookworm:

These high earning, upper echelon people didn’t embrace Leftism because their intellectual analysis inexorably led them to it.  Instead, they embraced Leftism because their smarts mean they’ve been steeped in the Leftist stew for infinitely longer than the average American who didn’t go on to a higher degree.

These same people also remind me that academic smarts do not correlate with real life intelligence.  I have no doubt that these people are good lawyers, doctors, CEOs, ambassadors, etc.  What they’re trained to do, they do well.  Outside of their sphere of expertise, however, they’re remarkably naive and intellectually incurious.

Here’s my example for today:  In the wake of the election, I’ve heard five Obama supporters — all of whom also voted for all the California Democrats and for all the California taxes — complain that their taxes are going up next year.  The cognitive dissonance is almost painful.  All of them consistently embrace big spending — and, therefore Obama and his fellow Democrats — because they’ve been trained to believe that the spending on welfare, entitlements, and “select” businesses is a “good thing.”  This is a knee jerk belief.  They will always vote for these “good things,” and for the candidate who promises them.  And they will ignore the rhetoric about higher taxes (Obama was not shy about targeting them as the next big source of funding), and they will ignore fiscal cliffs, and they will ignore plain old common sense that says that someone must pay the piper.

 A while ago I had a raging debate with a lawyer who was also a Socialist.  Hard core, progressive Socialist, and for all his education he consistently refused to look at the historical record of socialism.  And this was while Greece was rioting and sliding further into debt, and all he could say was "Oh, that won't happen here". 

Really?  Ever been to Watts?  South Central?  Compton?

The common thread between all the Obama-bots, both rich and poor, is their economic illiteracy.  They literally cannot fathom economic reality, and so they vote according to the pipe-dreams fed to them by the National Socialist Democrat Worker's Party, who continues to buy their votes with the money of the productive half of America.

That ought to scare the hell out of you.  And it's part of the reason that I think this country is doomed.  You cannot fix an economic problem when a majority of people think the economy can be fixed with unicorn farts and money trees.

3 comments:

Windy Wilson said...

I believe that Will Rogers wrote once that there was nothing more ignorant than an educated man outside the area of his education.
Your post, Q.E.D., to use an old phrase.
I'm sure that my leftist brothers and their Stalinist wives will be unhappy that their taxes go up in 2013, if they notice. Being paid wages with W2 they may only notice if the withholding increases; certainly there won't be any comparison with last year.

Steve B said...

I read an article recently that, in discussing what might be the "tipping point" for our country, wondered what would happened if suddenly all those EBT cards didn't work anymore? What happens if the money runs out, and all that free money all the welfare folks rely on for everything suddenly isn't there? Chaos, baby. Chaos.

Ragin' Dave said...

My dad pointed out that if you want to throw the country into a tailspin, make all money transactions electronic. Make all money storage electronic. And then turn off the switch.

Boom.