I came across a book the other day with the title, A Short History of Stupid by Bernard Keane and Helen Razer. Not knowing who either of these people were, before committing my $29.95 I thought I would suss out their views by going to the index and seeing what they had to say on global warming, the most certain indicator to me of stupid. Alas, no index but there was, at the back, a series of lists of which there were strangely two with the same heading, “Top Ten Enemies of Stupid”, one beginning on page 299 and the other on page 314. Since I don’t know any more about the book than the title, the names of the unknown-to-me authors, the absence of an index and these lists, everything I now say must be taken cum salis grano, as they say. Might well be a wonderful book, filled with insight and knowledge. But then there were these two lists, and one in each, as the grand enemies of stupid amongst the twenty top ten, there were:

Karl Marx and
John Maynard Keynes.

I take it that to embrace the views of Marx and Keynes is, according to these authors, part of the way one defeats the forces of stupidity. Now my own near certainty, having read widely in both, is the high likelihood that they have never read much of either, assuming they have read any at all. And if they have read what M&K wrote, and still think of them as part of the smart set, they are, I must tell you, not very good judges of what is and what is not stupid, at least so far as the practical effects of following their advice. But at least there is this one piece of good that these lists have done, which was to save me $29.95.

What is more remarkable, however, is their very bad timing in having such a book published just at this moment when we have had definitive recognition where stupidity in politics is most prevalently found. This, of course, has come courtesy of Jonathan Gruber, Obamacare’s multi-million dollar man, who explained how Democrat voters are too stupid to know what’s good for them so had to be deceived to allow their betters to fulfil their agenda.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Mr. Gruber said. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass.”

Well, to get it to pass they had to depend on getting stupid people to support the change – that is, they had to depend on supporters of the political left to be just as stupid as they were assumed to be. Dangling in front of these voters was the promise of cheaper health care costs run through the government. And if they believed that they really were stupid, just the kinds of people to take policy advice from J.M. Keynes and Karl Marx.