At Power Line, one of John Hinderaker's recent exercises in unconscious self satire concerns a Washington Post article on the dumbing down of America. Hinderaker is sanguine about the fact that one in five poll respondents says that the sun revolves around the earth. It's shocking, sure, but he's "observed that you can ask virtually any question in a survey, and ten to twenty percent of respondents will give you an off-the-wall answer." He proceeds to advance the "pimping the questioner" defense, which is followed by the "distracted mother defense." There is, however, one thing that really frosts him: the roughly half of all Americans who are in favor of price controls. It's the worst thing a government can do, short of hauling citizens out of bed and executing them. (I swear I am not making it up, but if you don't believe me, the link is above.)
So it is understandable that a mother with a crying infant on her hip might tell a survey taker that the sun revolves around the earth but woe to her if she should perform a harried speech act expressing support for price controls while loading her groceries!
Lurking beneath the surface of this absurd post is the reason that Republicans are always whining about "the elites." Smart people aren't buying what they're selling and, in the smart people demographic, that is a problem. But there are other demographics to go after, and one thing ignorant people like to hear is that they know better than "the elites."
Hinderaker, by the way, thinks evolution is "pseudo-science," and that Darwin was motivated only by "hostility to religion." Honest.
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