(Sorry, I accidentally posted too early)
...Plug in any information, and our faculties can interpret them on their own merits, without reference to any further information.
I realize that rationality is a much bigger word than I have thus far implied. If it meant the same thing as “logical,” then one or the other word wouldn’t need to exist. When dealing with economics or sociology, the truth or falsehood of a statement depends upon subjectivity, which complicates matters. The historian or the economist, in developing theories, must take into account historical evidence, personal experience, and probability. If I were to write a book in which I calimed George Washington joined the revolution because aliens told him too, critics would be right to call me irrational, because there is no evidence of such a thing being possible. In that sense, rationality is not the same to an economist as it is a logician.
Still, I have a difficult time asserting that all the thousands of otherwise intelligent people who have accepted socialism can all be, in partly or wholly, irrational. I cannot believe that any more than I can believe everyone who has ever believed in God was irrational.