Here’s a letter to the Telegraph (in the U.K.):
Toby Hamden reports that “Jon Stewart’s smug ‘Rally for Sanity’ in Washington at the weekend, endorsed by Obama, gave the hipster crowd their chance to chortle at Middle America” (“Midterms 2010: Americans aren’t stupid – but they are angry with Barack Obama,” Nov. 2).
While every part of the political spectrum has an abundance of dolts and dimwits, intellectual vanity is more common on the left than on the right. My guess is that this phenomenon springs from the notion that persons who have ideas – especially ‘Big Ideas’ – for how to run other people’s lives are mistaken for being thoughtful and caring. In contrast, persons who offer no ideas, big or small, for how other people should live their lives – persons who have no itch to meddle in the affairs of others and want only to be left alone to mind their own business as they each judge best – are mistaken for being feeble-minded and uncaring.
In short, to the ‘Progressive’ brain, I’m smart and kind if I am enchanted by half-baked schemes to herd and prod and tax my fellow Americans, but dumb and mean if I question the wisdom of all such collectivist plots.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
