The New Know-Nothings

I often think he's a sexist pig and frequently wish he'd just shut up already about atheism and religion, but Bill Maher is right: Americans are stupid. I don't think all Americans are stupid, but there is a vast swath of dumbness that seem to run through the population like a venereal disease.

I give you exhibit A:

In other pockets of the state, the reaction to Democratic proposals has been strong, too. At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare."

"I had to politely explain that, 'Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,' " Inglis recalled. "But he wasn't having any of it."

................. Uh, yeah.

And lest you think it is only the man in the street that is stupid, I give you exhibit B, from the editorial of the very elite, very serious, very important right-wing organ Investors Business Daily:

The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof are legendary. The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror movie script.
The U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the "quality adjusted life year."
One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on.
The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

........Uh, yeah.

And then there's Sarah Palin latest gem about a "death panel" and the twice-elected former President George W. Bush trying to justify the invasion of Iraq through Biblical prophecy, and the birthers and...aw, hell that's just this month and it's only the second week of the month.

John Stuart Mill also was right on the money.

(major tip of the hat to Chet at the Vanity Press, who's leads I have totally stolen, though in my defense, he did steal my post title, which I stole from this guy. As Pete Seeger said, "Plagiarism is basic to all culture.")

Crossposted from the Woodshed.

You'd almost think someone laid a trap

I don't know if you could pay somebody enough to suck in the entire AGW denier community this way. (Yes. They are a community. With no science to back them up, they share an ideology. The only thing different among them is the breed of pony they wish for.)

First, you get this tripe from Michael Asher:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

[...]

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Paper? Really?! On a forum?!!!

That's not a paper! That's some loony writing a blog. For one thing, here's the disclaimer on his so-called "paper". (The original colour of the disclaimer is maintained for flavour)

The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions.

We'll get back to Lord Monkton of Brenchley in a moment.

In the meantime, first out the blocks to jump all over this, (between cheeseburgers, fries and diet cola), is none other than the Doughy Pantload.

Oh... oops! Jonah didn't do enough background. But then, Jonah doesn't do background. And while he usually dances around this kind of stupid fuck-up, he was forced to admit that he actually misled his readers.... because of this from the American Physical Society.

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that "Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum." This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.

At that you'd think everyone else would notice that Jonah got his diapers pulled down and would have steered well clear of this topic.

Apparently not.

And apparently there aren't a lot of retractions, with the exception of Goldberg's, flying around out there.

Then Gavin noticed something about Lord Monkton of Brenchley.

As if that weren’t enough, Lord Monckton is a British upper-class loony who, when not financing and publishing phony scientific papers, falsely claims to be a member of Parliament.

Of course a few bloggers north of the 49th grabbed the initial bit of Asher's nonsense and Monkton's faux-paper, but the whole thing having been dispatched by the APS as total bullshit, you know they'd retract or correct right away. Right?

Apparently not.

Another home-skooked Conservative intellectchul heard from

Probably a relative of these guys. I guess dictionaries are only for ivory tower liberal islamofacist academic pinko anarchists.

Shameless stolen from Orcinus

Dare to be stupid

Via Roy Edroso at Alicublog with are treated to the utterly unironic call to arms for conservatives not to be intimidated by smarter, more educated people than themselves. This tendency toward Forrest Gumpism is hardly surprising given that the current crop of nativist conservatives are the direct intellectual descendants of the "Know-nothings" and the current administration's motto, despite Bush's intention to be the "edumacation president", is the most hostile to science, reason and fancy book-learning since, well...possibly Andrew Jackson, but at least Old Hickory, for all his faults, recognized the danger posed by corporations.

From Alicublog, first quoting then analyzing Lee Harris' original paean to thickheadedness:

In a world that absurdly overrates the advantage of sheer brain power, no one wants to be seen as a member in good standing of the stupid party. Yet stupidity has been and will always remain the best defense mechanism against the ordinary conman and the intellectual dreamer, just as Odysseus found that stuffing cotton in his ears was his best defense against beguiling but fatal song of the sirens.

That's the close; the rest doesn't illuminate it much. Smart people will attempt to "pull the wool over the eyes of the rest of us," and though "the intellectual conservative of our day excels in good arguments," he must not use them to defend propositions such as (to use Harris' own example) resistance to gay marriage, because he might get out-argued by the smart alecks.

When the leading candidates for the party's presidential nomination all publicly state that they don't believe in evolution, can there really be any doubt that John Stuart Mill was right in calling conservatives the Stupid Party?

Crossposted from the woodshed