By Peter Burrows 9/3/15 elburropete@gmail.com - silvercityburro.com

Years ago, I used to get irritated with dyed-in-the-wool liberals because, almost without fail, they all suffer from moral and intellectual certitude, regardless of the topic. It seems that if a liberal thinks something is, it therefore is, whether they know anything about the topic or not. (Liberals spend a lot of time defining €œis. €)

Some of my liberal friends are what Eric Hoffer called true believers. It does no good to argue with THEM. They are protected by what Hoffer called €œa fact-proof shield. € He writes, €œThe facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observations but from holy writ. € By €œholy writ, €œ Hoffer was not referring to any sacred texts, but making the analogy that secular beliefs can be essentially religious beliefs, with a similar intolerance of doubt.

He then quotes something that Reformation leader Martin Luther said: €œSo tenaciously should we cling to the world revealed by the Gospel, that were I to see all the Angels of Heaven coming down to me to tell me something different, not only would I not be tempted to doubt a single syllable, but I would shut my eyes and stop my ears, for they would not deserve to be either seen or heard. € (1)

I said as much once to a church-going believer in the modern Apocalypse of Global Warming. I told her if the Almighty appeared before her to declare global warming the biggest scientific scam since Piltdown Man, that I suspected she would instantly become an atheist rather than deny her belief in Global Warming. (Global Warming: Capitalized in the tradition of capitalizing religions.)
Here €™s a sad fact: The Global Warming believers will be DISAPPOINTED if the world DOESN €™T suffer all the dire calamities forecasted in the Global Warming scenario. What pathetic people.

The liberal true believer €™s tendency to ignore reality is evident in their vision of how the world works, which is based, in part, on the naive assumption that people are stupid. Let me give you some examples.

1) Poor people are POOR, not stupid. This means that they will game-to-the-max every well-meaning program meant to help them. Last year, Governor Paul LePage of Maine imposed a three-month limit on food stamps for those known as Abawds, able-bodied adults without dependents, unless they work 20 hours a week, take state job-training courses or volunteer for six hours a week. Repeat: OR VOLUNTEER FOR SIX HOURS A WEEK. After LePage €™s rules went into effect, the number of Abawds on food stamps dropped nearly 80 percent.(2) I suspect the governor was able to get the food stamp restrictions passed because Maine is a lily white state, so he didn €™t have to face the inevitable charge of €œracism. € Care to guess LePage €™s political Party?

2) Crazy people are CRAZY, not stupid. If a crazy person wants to get his picture in the papers and on television by going into a movie theater and killing as many people as he can, he will not be deterred by a sign that says, €œNo Guns Allowed. € Just the opposite. If I owned a movie theater, I €™d have a large sign at the ticket counter: €œOff-duty policemen and spouses: Half-price if armed. € THAT would stop the crazy bastards. By the way, it is society that €™s crazy for allowing the media to so heavily publicize the perp €™s identity, such publicity being at least a partial motivation for the crime. (3)

3) Uneducated people are UNEDUCATED, not stupid. The ghetto mom who wants to put her kids in a better school, whether it be charter, voucher-chosen or religious, knows damn well the public school systems are lousy. She probably also knows busing is stupid. You can watch a William F. Buckley Firing Line show from 1981 (1981!) in which his guest is Thomas Sowell. Buckley €™s guest questioner, a liberal woman, simply could not believe that ghetto moms were capable of making good school choices for their children.(4) Her attitude was unmistakable: If I believe it is, it is. Typical liberal: Then, now and forever.

This tacit liberal assumption that people are stupid implies that liberals are NOT stupid. That €™s debatable. It €™s the liberals who are stupid, either that or they €™re evil. Welfare programs that don €™t do anything to exclude the non-poor are stupid, unless the goal is to get as many as possible dependent on government handouts and the champions of such handouts, the Democrats. In that case, it €™s buying votes for Big Government, and that €™s evil.

Publicizing the identity of mass murderers is definitely stupid, as is thinking that no-gun zones are anything but counterproductive. Do some liberals WANT more such mass killings so they can eventually pass laws to confiscate all our guns? I €™m afraid so. Look how they eagerly jump on every such tragedy to call for more gun laws, most of which only disarm law abiders. That €™s evil.

The liberals support of public education in spite of never-ending poor results is not stupid. They keep the valuable support of the teachers unions, and they don €™t give a damn that the most disadvantaged students, the black kids, are the ones who pay the price. This builds the tinder for racial strife, €œvictimhood € and welfare, all Democratic political staples. That €™s evil. Stupid is the rest of us who let them get away with it.

Run Ben, run. (You too, Carley.)

(1) Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, Harperperennial Modernclassics, 1951, p. 79.
(2) Governor Requires Food Stamp Recipients to Work 6 Hours a Week, This Happens Immediately After by
Michael Cantrell Young Conservatives April 14, 2015
http://www.youngcons.com/governor-requires-food-stamp-recipients-to-work-6-hours-a-week-this-happens-immediately-after/ 
(3) €œThe Deadly and Suicidal Side Effects of the First Amendment, € silvercityburro.com, 7/19/15
(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y021WAdUlW8