There's a great science fiction story from the 1950s about a future where really stupid people have outreproduced the smarter half of the bell curve--and the average IQ, measured on today's scale, has plummeted to about 60. (It is titled, appropriately enough, "The Marching Morons.") As I look back on that story now, its depiction of degraded, almost pornographic advertising and moronic television shows starts to look surprisingly...familiar. "Put it in the tomorrow file," to quote from one of my favorite dystopian science fiction novel.
Ilya Somin has often argued over at Volokh Conspiracy that the general public is rationally ignorant of public policy issues. By this, he means that even if they understood the issues--what influence can they have on our government making decisions? And here he points to a disturbing new survey that finds THE JEWS are responsible! And this isn't in some ignorant place where they wear their turbans wound too tight, but in America:
Political scientists Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit have an article describing survey data showing that some 25% of [non-Jewish] Americans believe that "the Jews" deserve at least "a moderate amount" or "a great deal" of blame for the current economic crisis. Some 32% of self-identified Democrats and 18% of Republicans take that view. Similar results were obtained in a recent survey of opinion in several European nations.And yes, you read that correctly--Democrats are almost twice as likely to blame "the Jews" for this as Republicans. And the Democrats call us bigots?
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