QandO

May 28, 2004

Who Peed in his coffee this morning?
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Syndicated columnist and talk-radio host Neal Boortz seems to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, if this column is any indication. After being on talk radio for twenty-some-odd years, Neal has come to the conclusion that about half of us are too stupid to be trusted with a dull knife, without fearing some hideous jugular-severing accident.

The majority of Americans can’t tell you who the vice president is. Not two out of ten Americans could tell you the name of their two U.S. Senators and their congressman. Examples are plenteous. Most Americans, for instance, actually think that the United States is supposed to be a democracy. It’s not. New Mexico, by the way, IS a state.

My opinion was reinforced last week when I heard that a Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll found that a huge majority of Americans think that our economy is growing worse. What have they been smoking? Our economy grew at a 4.4% rate during the first quarter of 2004, and these people think it’s in the tank? Employment numbers are up. Manufacturing is up. Government revenue is up. Incomes are up. Home sales are up. Home ownership is at record levels. Poverty is down. The truth is that our economy is doing amazingly well … and poised to do even better; yet the majority of Americans don’t realize this? The forecast for economic growth for the current quarter is between 4.5 and 5%. With these numbers, how do you say our economy is doing poorly? Maybe it’s because so many of these people rely on Entertainment Tonight for their daily news. You do know, don’t you, that more Americans get their news from Entertainment Tonight than from any other single news source.

Let’s cut to the chase. I’ve come to the reluctant but inescapable conclusion that about 50% of the adults in this country are simply too ignorant and functionally incompetent to be living in a free society. They have enthusiastically abandoned their sovereignty to the lure of the welfare state. They are, in fact, afraid to be free. They have no working concept of the responsibilities of individuals who would live free of government tyranny or mob rule. Their ignorance renders them incapable of coping with the responsibilities of liberty. These are people who cannot exist at anything other than a basic level without someone else stepping forward to take care of them. They’re adult children. They need to and deserve to live in a dictatorship, hopefully, for their sake, benevolent.

The real problem here is that the rest of us are constantly suffering encroachments on our own freedoms to provide for the survival of the ignorant. We’re forced to invest (if that’s the word) 15% of our paychecks into a disability insurance and retirement plan that would constitute criminal activity in every one of the 50 states were it not run by government. We must do this, we’re told, because there are just too many people out there who aren’t bright enough to do it on their own. We’re facing the inevitability of socialized medicine. As soon as the social Democratic party gets its way, with no small amount of help from the Republicans, Americans will be waiting months -- if not years – for basic elective surgery. Private citizens will be sent to jail for trying to find a private doctor to treat their ills outside of the approved and official government plan. Freedoms are being lost because of political pandering to those unable to cope.

Of course, dear readers, he's not referring to you. You're part of the smart, pretty crowd, obviously, or you wouldn't be here.

Well, most of you, anyway.

But, I have to admit that I occasionally get similarly jaundiced feelings about my fellow Americans. When I see that half the people in this country don't know who the vice-president is, or that a majority think the economy is getting worse, I get a bit down, too.

You see, our republican system of government--no, we aren't a democracy, thank God--requires a moderately educated citizenry that takes some minimal interest in our national affairs. And, frankly, I see less and less indication that we have it.

Bill Clinton, in his State of the Union speech $10 billion ago, declared that, "the era of big government is over." Obviously, not everybody got the message. And, as long as we keep dumbing down the population to E! Channel level, the government will keep getting bigger, in order to care for a population that is increasingly incapable of taking care of itself.

When I first moved to The Netherlands in 1988, I was surprised to learn that the income tax rate for the average blue-collar worker was 50%. Oh, and forget about "deductions". That's a quaint American concept. In Europe, 50% means 50%. The government conveniently took that money right out of your paycheck, thus freeing you from having to fill out one of those complicated tax returns, unless you wee one of those unregenerate, anti-social, self-employed a-holes. On top of that, you got to pay an 18.5% VAT on every good that you purchased, except for food and clothing. Then, of course, there were the gas taxes, which meant that, in 1988, a gallon of gas cost $4.50. And--assuming you could afford to buy gas--if you wanted a new car, it better not be a nice one, because there was a 25% luxury tax on any automobile costing more than about $12,000 at the then exchange rate.

Every time I criticized that tax system as eating the heart of the productive economy, some Dutch guy would look at me, and say--without any trace of irony--"But, we get free health care!"

That's the kind of in-depth political "thinking" that we are walking straight into.

Let's face it. It's easier to be dumb. And that's why it's so seductive. But dumb people can't afford to be very free, because the price of stupidity is high.

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