We're "stupid"

[Brett Bellmore]

http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment103100a.shtml

Ten more things [you can't say in America] from National Review's John Derbyshire

"11. American society is increasingly a conspiracy of the smart against the dumb. Who, exactly, do you think benefits from having a 70,000-page tax code? The low-IQ guy trying to run a small business? Or the accountant he has to pay to interpret the code for him? And who benefits from an "open borders" immigration policy? The $350-an-hour lawyer who needs his lawn trimmed and his pool cleaned? Or the low-IQ citizen who'd be glad to do the work … if there weren't 100 Mexican illegals on line ahead of him, willing to do it for half the price? But hey, low-IQ types don't vote much. And they can easily be bamboozled with some scare talk about "racism" or "the rich". True, they have guns and that might turn nasty; but the smart people have a plan to get their guns off them, so things will work out OK. This system is called "meritocracy."

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Don'cha love being stereotyped?


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Sic semper tyrannis!

 

[elector]

Mr. Derbyshire has betrayed himself as a strutting pseudointellectual. Or is he a pompous anti-intellectual? His rambling is so confused, it's hard to say. At the least, he demonstrates that fools may be conservative as well as liberal, even though not nearly so often.

As for his reference to "low-IQ" types, the successful small business owners I know seem far more intelligent than, say, journalists along the lines of Mr. Derbyshire. And the most dedicated gun hobbyist I know is a Phi Beta Kappa.

Really, Mr. Derbyshire's odd mix of arrogance and imbecility elicits more pity than anger.

 

[ckurts]

Did y'all read the rest of the article? Sounds like Derbyshire is more po'ed about the status quo than he is elitist. As a matter of fact, on a second reading, I think he's more ranting against elitism and pseudo-intellectuallism (is that a word?) than participating in it.

 

[elector]

Yes, I read the whole article, but found it so confused that at first I couldn't tell if the author was serious. Confusion (his or mine) aside, I may in fact agree with some of what he says. He shoots at some of the sacred cows worshipped by the liberals, and I'm for that. But he's way, way off when it comes to gunowners. His assumption that we're "low-IQ" is plain old bigotry, although I personally can't claim more intelligence than anybody else and probably have less than most. At any rate, I think Mr. Derbyshire just snipes away without being too careful about identifying his targets.



[This message has been edited by elector (edited October 31, 2000).]

 

[Brett Bellmore]

One of the handicaps conservatives labor under is a nasty tendency to adopt the premises of liberals when it comes to subjects they don't care enough about to examine closely. Derbyshire doesn't much care about 2nd amendment rights, so he's unconsciously absorbed the predjudices of liberals on this subject.

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Sic semper tyrannis!

 

[USP45]

Well, i agree with about 3/4 of the "top 20, #'s 11-20", but about #11. I think he's got the right idea but the wrong metaphore.

Replace "Smart" with "Socialist" and replace "Dumb" with "Libertarian" (or "Capitolist", what ever...)

Further, it's patently absurd to call gun owners stupid, what with all the tests and whoops we're forced to jump through these days...



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~USP

"[Even if there would be] few tears shed if and when the Second Amendment is held to guarantee nothing more than the state National Guard, this would simply show that the Founders were right when they feared that some future generation might wish to abandon liberties that they considered essential, and so sought to protect those liberties in a Bill of Rights. We may tolerate the abridgement of property rights and the elimination of a right to bear arms; but we should not pretend that these are not reductions of rights." -- Justice Scalia 1998