Miseducated or Stupid?

townhall.com ^ | 12/5/2018 | Mr. Walter Williams

[rktman]

Our young people are not the first Americans to admire tyrants and cutthroats. W.E.B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian in 1953, said, "Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature." Walter Duranty called Stalin "the greatest living statesman" and "a quiet, unobtrusive man." There was even leftist admiration for Hitler and fellow fascist Benito Mussolini. When Hitler came to power in January 1933, George Bernard Shaw described him as "a very remarkable man, a very able man." President Franklin Roosevelt called Mussolini "admirable," and he was "deeply impressed by what he (had) accomplished." In 1972, John Kenneth Galbraith visited Communist China and praised Mao and the Chinese economic system. His Harvard University colleague John K. Fairbank believed that America could learn much from the Cultural Revolution, saying, "Americans may find in China's collective life today an ingredient of personal moral concern for one's neighbor that has a lesson for us all."

Are Americans who admire the world's most brutal regimes miseducated or stupid? Or do they have some kind of devious agenda?

[rktman]

I think I lean more towards "ignorant". Since the history of these brutal regimes and where they came from are not generally taught in school any more, it's easy to see once again how easy it is for people to fall in to the "The government will take care of everything!" trap. Where the money comes from? Why the rich of course because they have an endless in-exhaustible supply of money made off the backs of the working man. Well, maybe stupid too. Not sure they would know what an agenda is.

[cuban leaf]

I use these two words a lot when discussing controversial issues:
1. Ignorant
2. Stupid

Ignorant is when you don’t know a thing. I’m ignorant of a lot of things.

Stupid is when you don’t know a thing you SHOULD know. A voter that doesn’t know anything about the person or issue they are voting for is a stooooopid voter. It’s really that simple.

[Cold Heart]

If you voted for Obama, you are either ignorant or evil

[rktman]

Same folks would have followed jim jones or lrh or the clintoon clan or ecoclimate assclowns or......... You see where I’m going with that, right?

[exDemMom]

Are Americans who admire the world's most brutal regimes miseducated or stupid? Or do they have some kind of devious agenda?

The answer to that is yes.

[rktman]

Very astute observation. :-)

[z3n]

I would like to relate this to people I meet these days who are really quote the conundrum, because they are both ‘stupid’ and ‘ignorant’ using your terms.

First of all, they are ignorant because they are very poorly informed. We harp on the MSM all the time here, but these people still think that CNN is a news network and that the nightly news anchors are Walter Cronkite. These “news” sources deliberately shield them from the kind of information that would awaken them to the real causes and sources of problems today.

However, they are stupid, because they want this. They choose to be shielded from the truth. They can’t handle it. Put on an alternative source of information that exposes what is really going on, and they get angry. They reject it. In some ways, they are informed, but they expel anything that challenges their socio-political cosmology.

[jonascord]

Something bemusing, as a side note.

Sundance channel did a 4 hour documentary on Jim Jones and his People's Temple. Lots of commercials. One, tho, was Peter Popoff, peddling packets of Magic Spring Water, LITERALLY!

Either Sundance was making a point, or Popoff was massively numb to the message the documentary was selling.

[Texas resident]

A lot of Obama voters are like him.

Educated way beyond their intelligence.
Also dangerously arrogant and ignorant.

[NonValueAdded]

I’m not sure that’s mutually exclusive

[ChildOfThe60s]

1) Severely ignorant

2) Non existent critical reasoning skills coupled with no desire to learn and likely bereft of basic learning skills anyway. That’s a pretty good definition of stupid in my book.

The majority of kids can’t tell time with an analog clock and most HS grads read at what was a 6th or 7th grade level when I was that age.

I rest my case.

[erkelly]

There are a lot of reports from that time that say that these horrible people could be quite charming. Indeed, the devil himself can appear as angel of light. It is not at all surprising that Hitler, et al, could be quite personable in private.

[fruser1]

DISeducated.

That’d be deliberately planted misinformation - disinformation.

A distinction made by the Soviets.

[Vaduz]

Miseducated breeds stupidity a useful tool for the democrats guess why they want more illegals and turn public schools into snow flake baby sitters.

[rktman]

Mr. Williams terms, not mine. But I know what he's talking about. 👹

[aquila48]

“I’m not sure that’s mutually exclusive”

Or that those are the only choices. I myself opt for “fools”, as in opposite of wise.

[Boogieman]

When you are a utopianist and an atheist, then your only real option is to replace the God who will bring heavenly paradise with an all-powerful government who will bring earthly paradise.

Since those types are inevitably also “ends justify the means” believers, as they have dispensed with any basis for objective morality, then anything it takes to achieve that all-powerful government is justifiable in their eyes.

So all this misery goes back to the initial temptation in the Garden. First you give in to the temptation that you need not obey (or even believe in) God, then you give in to the temptation that you can make yourself (or your creations, such as government) take the place of God. They are not necessarily either miseducated, or stupid, but merely sinful, and a sinful mind naturally tends towards this type of thinking.

[vpintheak]

There are a lot of ignorant people out there, but it isn’t all their fault.
I place the blame on miseducation and misinformation. Truth has been replaced with evil communist lies.

[DeweyCA]

So all this misery goes back to the initial temptation in the Garden. First you give in to the temptation that you need not obey (or even believe in) God, then you give in to the temptation that you can make yourself (or your creations, such as government) take the place of God. They are not necessarily either mis-educated, or stupid, but merely sinful, and a sinful mind naturally tends towards this type of thinking.

Bingo. Very good analysis. This is the root problem.

[DeweyCA]

FTA: When the tragedies of socialist regimes -- such as those in Venezuela, the USSR, China, Cuba and many others -- are pointed out to America's leftists, they hold up Sweden as their socialist role model. But they are absolutely wrong about Sweden. Johan Norberg points this out in his documentary "Sweden: Lessons for America?" Americans might be surprised to learn that Sweden's experiment with socialism was a relatively brief flirtation, lasting about 20 years and ending in disillusionment and reform. Reason magazine reports: "Sweden began rolling back government in the early 1990s, recapturing the entrepreneurial spirit that made it a wealthy country to begin with. High taxation and a generous array of government benefits are still around. But now it's also a nation of school vouchers, free trade, open immigration, light business regulation, and no minimum wage laws." School vouchers, light business regulation and no minimum wage laws are practices deeply offensive to America's leftists.

The Johan Norberg video on Swedish economics is available to see on YouTube. It is quite good. It shows that Sweden today is not really socialistic. In some ways, it is more free-market than America.