Too Smart To Be So Dumb
weeklystandard.com
I left out the part about Bill Clinton having a 182 IQ and George Bush having a 91 IQ. Well worth the read for those that are interested.
>>>The truth, which Orwell pointed out, is that truly brilliant people and truly talented people often believe truly stupid things: G.B. Shaw believed in Hitler and Stalin. Norman Mailer believed that convicted murderer Jack Henry Abbot deserved to be paroled because he could write well (and that we went to war in Iraq to bolster the white-male ego). Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich believed that the few hundred of us still alive after the ecological holocaust of the '80s and '90s would be living in caves. The academic establishment believed in the efficacy of bilingual education and largely continues to believe that communism spreads prosperity and social justice. Princeton professor of bioethics Peter Singer believes that parents ought to be able to murder their disabled children. And Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta believes that a 70-year-old lady from Vero Beach and a young Arab man chanting Koranic verses are equally likely to hijack a plane.
The best and the brightest, as we learned from JFK's advisers, offer little protection against absolute foolishness--and may, perhaps, be more susceptible to it, given the anecdotal evidence suggesting that brilliance and common sense are inversely correlated. It's no wonder Castro hoped Bush wouldn't be "as stupid as he seems." For 40 years the dictator has been surrounded and visited by brilliant people who swear that he's brilliant and benevolent--and if Bush were indeed a dimwit, he might see right through Castro and conclude that all those people willing to brave sharks, drowning, dehydration, and firing squads to escape from Cuba actually recognize something that the dictator's brilliant admirers do not.
Common sense is both rarer and more important to successful leadership than is genius, a fact true since before Voltaire first noticed it. Harry Truman, a man without a college education, had it; as did FDR, whose second-rate intellect, according to Oliver Wendell Holmes, took orders from a first-class temperament. Ronald Reagan had it, and so does George W. Bush.
What Bush doesn't have is contempt for the average American's intelligence, as the intellectual bullies seem to. Their language may be fortified with concern for the ordinary among us, but it's phony--a paternal concern, not a fraternal one; they're sure they know better what's best for us. And that, ultimately, is what they dislike most about the president. It's not so much that he's stupid. It's that he doesn't think we are.
How dumb is that?
Joel Engel is an author and journalist in Southern California.<<< |
