Posted on 07/29/2014 6:30:40 AM PDT by SoConPubbie
In the first volume of his magnificent three-tome biography of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris recounts the story of writer Owen Wister’s visit to the Roosevelt White House. Wister, a Harvard classmate of the president, “has lent [Roosevelt] a book shortly before a full evening’s entertainment at the White House, and been astonished to hear a complete review of it over breakfast. ‘Somewhere between six one evening and eight-thirty the next morning, beside his dressing and his dinner and his guests and his sleep, he had read a volume of three-hundred-and-odd pages, and missed nothing of significance.’”
For those unconvinced of Teddy’s erudition, Morris glances over the president’s reading list:
It seems safe to say that America’s 26th president was “smart.” But it was not he whom historian Michael Beschloss christened “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” Nor was it John Adams, nor the famously learned Thomas Jefferson, nor Woodrow Wilson, the only Ph.D.-president. That title, of course, belongs to Barack Obama (B.A., Columbia; J.D., Harvard), whose intellect is the stuff of legend. Only a MENSA standout like him could state that, in columnist Jack Kelly’s pithy summation,In the past year alone, Roosevelt has devoured all the novels of Trollope, the complete works of De Quincey, a Life of Saint Patrick, the prose works of Milton and Tacitus (“until I could stand them no longer”), Samuel Dill’s Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, the seafaring yarns of Jacobs, the poetry of Scott, Poe, and Longfellow, a German novel called Jörn Uhl, “a most satisfactorily lurid Man-eating Lion story,” and Foulke’s Life of Oliver P. Morton, not to mention at least five hundred other volumes, on subjects ranging from tropical flora to Italian naval history.
there are 57 states; Canada has a president; “Austrian” is a language; America is “20 centuries” old; Arabic is spoken in Afghanistan. He’s called the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) the Maldives, and declared it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to invalidate a law passed by Congress.
Well, even genius lapses.
Of course, none of these examples proves that Barack Obama is not intelligent. However much choom he might have inhaled, he was certainly eligible for the local gifted-and-talented classes, and he has two Ivy League degrees — which, for the moment, is still an accomplishment. He is assuredly not “the smartest guy ever to become president,” but he’s still out on the right-hand tail of the IQ bell curve.
One would do well to keep in mind Barack Obama’s intelligence (and its occasional hiccups) while reading Salon’s “The ‘Ted Cruz is smart’ trap: Why this garbage is false — and dangerous.” Author Nathan Robinson’s rigorous scientific analysis mocks Cruz for producing “angry pants-on-fire platitudinous drivel,” “using distortive, misleading rhetoric that no sober-minded individual could apply,” and reading Dr. Seuss.
Predictably, Nathan Robinson is certain Ted Cruz is not “smart” because Ted Cruz tends not to agree with Nathan Robinson.
Robinson is particularly alarmed by the report of David Panton, Cruz’s law-school roommate and college debate partner, who told The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin: “Ted’s views today politically are almost identical to when I met him. There’s nothing he says today that I didn’t hear in college.” “Ted Cruz,” Robinson declares, “does not in his life ever seem to have taken on board a single challenge to his worldview” — the implication of such a statement being that, if he had, he would have changed his mind. “[Panton’s] assessment, spoken about anybody,” writes Robinson, “should be convincing enough evidence for shallowness of mind.” No doubt a Ted Cruz who supported homosexual marriage, on-demand abortion, and a $15 minimum wage would appear to Salon writers much more intelligent.
Robinson’s essay is self-congratulation masquerading as high-minded critique, though that is not to say that all of his observations are wrong. Conservatives have long bemoaned the fact that educational institutions — even, and perhaps especially, elite ones — do not promote any “intelligence” that indicates more than good exam scores. As Robinson notes, where success is predicated upon relentless ambition, cultivation of a meaningful intelligence may fall by the wayside.
But the conclusion he draws from this is: Ted Cruz is not intelligent. Which is not just wrong, but indicative of the type of shallow thinking by which Robinson is purportedly disgusted.
Barack Obama and Ted Cruz (and Rand Paul and Mark Pryor and etc.) are, by any reasonable measure, intelligent men. But a cursory glance through the historical record proves that “intelligence” (whatever that means) and political competence do not necessarily correspond. In fact, enormously “intelligent” men were political dupes. Think Heidegger. Robinson’s is just another article perpetuating the political fetishization of intelligence, the liberal belief that if only our politicians were smarter, we could feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and repair the ozone layer, all with enough money left over to secure universal Head Start enrollment. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was promoting exactly the same belief when he absurdly suggested that “one-party autocracy” is not a bad gig provided it is “led by a reasonably enlightened group of people.” “Enlightened” — that is, smart; that is, like Thomas Friedman, not one of those bumpkins the hoi polloi usually go in for. Modern liberalism believes that there is an answer to every question and a solution to every problem — that is, provided someone smart enough is in charge. But the reality is that there is no brain in the world big enough for the task.
None of which is to say that there is not a requisite level of intelligence for managing the affairs of state. But the general irrelevance of intelligence as a measure of political competence suggests that voters would do better to scrutinize candidates’ other qualities — loyalty, humility, common sense — over the density of their gray matter.
Then again, a closer look at Joe Biden’s report card may not have been a bad idea.
— Ian Tuttle is a William F. Buckley Fellow at the National Review Institute.
There’s absolutely no doubt that Karl Marx had a humongous intellect. Engels and Lenin well may have been even smarter. Moreover, if we could give IQ tests to Comrade Stalin and Chairman Mao, I’ll bet they’d be off the charts.
But as hath asked a well-known ex-FLOTUS, “What difference does it make?”
Speaking of whom...
I watched Ted Cruz during his valiant effort to halt the disaster called Obamacare. I hope you watched it as well. If he used it once, he used the phrase “...we no longer listen to the people, our constituents...” over a hundred times. And he was right...they don’t. And the fact is, THEY NO LONGER NEED TO.
I’ve posted my little rant on this topic before but Ted’s honest comment compels me to do so again.
*************
WHY THE POLITICAL RULING CLASS NO LONGER LISTENS TO US!
“When the servants of the people are paid with something other than that which the people themselves have produced (i.e. the real, tangible products of their labors or some fixed and real medium of that exchange), the roles of master and servant will be reversed.”
That was Thomas Jefferson warning that the financial disaster we now face would be but one of many problems paper money would visit upon us if we allowed our “leaders” to remove the backing from the currency.
It was believed by Roger Sherman and a majority of those at the Constitutional Convention that unbacked fiat currency would so damage the fabric of the nation that they ATTEMPTED to prohibit it with these few words at Article 1, Section 10, requiring the states to enforce the prohibition: “No State shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;”
If the people and their states grew inattentive to this matter (and they have!), Jefferson also saw another problem ahead.
In a letter to John Taylor in 1816, he wrote, “And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
We have been “…swindling futurity…” for a long time and this is now where we find ourselves. If the government, through its banker masters at the Federal Reserve, can create “money” from thin air, they certainly don’t need ours every April 15th. That annual sheep shearing is simply an attempt to vacuum enough of the excess paper from the system to keep the rest of us from catching on to the biggest theft ring in the history of man. They have now created so much that their attempt is failing and failing badly to a point where all but the dullest among us (Obama voters and his growing cadres of personal and corporate welfare beneficiaries) are starting to “get it.”
If you understood that last paragraph, you can now make the small leap to an understanding as to why the “progressive” utopian welfare state hacks in Washington don’t give a damn WHAT you think. Their power to create all the “money” they need to fuel their infernal machine and fill the gaping maws of enough of those growing hoards of welfare constituents to assure their perpetual re-election means that — ready — THEY NO LONGER NEED YOU! They have become, as Mr. Jefferson predicted, our MASTERS.
And this is for you who believe that we’re ALL equally screwed under this dishonest, fraudulent fiat money system: Inflation DOES NOT impact everyone at the same time and level. THOSE WHO GET THEIR HANDS ON THAT “MONEY” FIRST – BEFORE THE INFLATION ERODES ITS VALUE – SUFFER FAR LESS THAN THOSE OF US FURTHER DOWN THE FOOD CHAIN. THINK ABOUT IT (unless you’re an obama voter, in which case, let us know how you FEEL about that).
We won’t have even a CHANCE at an honest government until we again have HONEST MONEY.
That they are taking down a nation and a system that has provided more wealth, safety and abundance to more people than any other in history matters not to them. Failing to grasp the lesson of the French Revolution, they believe themselves to be above the impending disaster.
We’re running out of time to get this increasingly rapacious beast back into the cage from which we have carelessly allowed it to escape.
Dick Bachert
PS: I was a 3 year member of the national board of CATS (Citizens for an Alternative Tax System), the precursor to the current Fair Tax organization. I fully support the concept of a CONSUMPTION TAX over the current Marxist INCOME TAX. That said, UNTIL WE GET BACK TO HONEST “MONEY”, WERE REARRANGING DECK CHAIRS ON A SINKING SHIP.
PPS: A word about the brilliance of this scheme hatched in 1913 by the elites: Economics is called “the dismal science” for a reason. Freepers are a pretty sharp group, and most who get this far will grasp the importance of getting back to a Constitutionally sound money system. But hand this to the “guy on the street” and his eyes will glaze over, he’d start drooling before he hit the third paragraph, throw it down, declare you crazy and stomp off in search of a much needed drink. We can’t solve a problem until more of us recognize that there IS ONE!
America had better get down on her knees and pray Ted Cruz is the next President. This country is in an almost inevitable slide into oblivion. The only hope we have is a national revival and the election of leaders with a God-ordained conscience of right and wrong. In my analytical self I do not believe we will elect Ted Cruz. I believe we will elect an antichrist like figure such as Hillary or Elizabeth Warren. Republicans wil probably nominate a “reach across the aisle” RINO like Jeb Bush, Christie, McCain, etc. Please pray for this once wonderful country. How could we allow godless liberalism to take it all away so quick?
Same thing happened to Ronald Reagan. It seems when libs are having a difficult time trying to analyze a true conservative all they have to resort to is that the guy is an idiot.
It must be obviously true. Who needs to know more than their leftist professors taught them?
Who needs to read Tacitus or know what natural law is all about? Or what our Founders did that was truly spectacular.
All they need to know is that their professors at Columbia are pointing them to something that might resemble the Truth.
So, who is the real dummy? Ted Cruz or the loony leftists who wouldn't know a really true Truth if it hit them in the face with a 2 by 4?
The fact Cruz is smart and well spoken scares the left. The typical smear tactics start with either 1.) You are stupid or 2.) You are a hater.
Calling senator Cruz stupid is not going to stick.
Calling him a hater is tough because he is hispanic, and is clever enough to turn most “gotcha” questions back on the originator.
The best they have at the moment is to call him extreme, but that is a much weaker attack than stupid/hater.
We NEED Ted Cruz. A few others would fill the bill, but none are as quick and pithy as Ted Cruz in crystalizing issues. Bob
Actually Carter was Never a nuke engineer. He might have become one but he resigned to go back and take over the farms .
He did serve on a sub but not as an engineer.
so he got credit for smarter about nuke energy that he was.
Isn’t it amazing that even in the 70’s the media was willing to give a Dem candidate a pass on facts about their background?
....It seems safe to say that America’s 26th president was “smart.” But it was not he whom historian Michael Beschloss christened “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” Nor was it John Adams, nor the famously learned Thomas Jefferson, nor Woodrow Wilson, the only Ph.D.-president. That title, of course, belongs to Barack Obama (B.A., Columbia; J.D., Harvard), whose intellect is the stuff of legend. Only a MENSA standout like him could state that, in columnist Jack Kelly’s pithy summation,
there are 57 states; Canada has a president; “Austrian” is a language; America is “20 centuries” old; Arabic is spoken in Afghanistan. He’s called the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) the Maldives, and declared it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to invalidate a law passed by Congress.Well, even genius lapses.
PFL
I’ve always been amazed that Cronkite admitted that he’d slanted news in a liberal way his entire career. Growing up with him on the news, we just saw it as the news. There were no significant differences between CBS, ABC, NBC. The real difference was that Cronkite had that made-for-TV voice. If he were in news in this day, he’d be Chris Matthews. That’s a depressing thought.
I’ve never seen anything from Columbia, Harvard, anywhere.
I don’t think he’s a dumb man by any means, but I have watched him without a teleprompter and his brain isn’t facile. It’s stumbling. That says to me that in the world of intellect, if he were a pro baseball player, he’d be a .290 batting average. Good, but not great.
I wonder if ANY of todays leftist talking heads would ever admit they knowingly so slanted the news
slanted to the point of lies
lies that harmed our country.
Of course all ‘journalists: have a slant
but to distort and lie like they do should be beyond of he pale of journalism
“Ted’s views today politically are almost identical to when I met him. There’s nothing he says today that I didn’t hear in college.”
Which is why he is trustworthy.
Obama’s Pakistani roommate had a fake degree from Columbia. Does anyone remember Obama going to school there, or graduating from there? But, no matter, it was real enough for the Saudis to influence his way into Harvard. At least Cruz was smart enough to get into classes Obama couldn’t, and he didn’t need the Saudis to advance his educational career.
I know of nothing BO has done that would attest to a superior intellect....there is however a long line of failures that demonstrate his incompetence and total lack of rudimentary common sense.....he is totally ego driven. Arrogance and ignorance is a very dangerous flaw for the most powerful position on the planet!!!
I’d guess that the Kenyan anti-Christ has a triple-digit IQ, but not far to the right of the median. 115? 125 at the very top?
He is stronger verbally than non-verbally. His math acuity is awful, unable to deal on the fly with orders of magnitude, or to do basic arithmetic in his head when there are many zeros at the ends of numbers. He is, at best, merely average in his math intelligence. The anti-Christ is glib, given a functioning teleprompter.
Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is a genius.
It’s like comparing a toy car to a Mercedes-Benz.
Obama reminds me of a number of the social science profs I knew in college. Many of them were nice guys and knew their stuff as far as it went. Their IQs were certainly above average, but their politics were decidedly left-wing. Some were very left-wing to the point of being communists. I had one very funny and popular prof who was a Stalin apologist. I found that out after I said some nasty things about Stalin in class one day. It would have been interesting to sit in on one of Obama’s classes.
One of the many playgrounds of an evil mind is jealousy.
Nathan Robinson is not smart enough to know that!
Which he apparently did before learning that the word is not pronounced "New-kew-lar"
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