http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/brain-flapping\/2015\/apr\/02\/democracy-psychology-idiots-election<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are, of course, the obligatory cheap shots at Sarah Palin and George W. Bush.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
At least, now that Ronald Reagan has been dead for quite a while, there were \u2014 unless I missed one \u2014 no references to him. \u00a0(It\u2019s hard not to think of Tip O\u2019Neill\u2019s famous description of Mr. Reagan as\u00a0\u201can amiable dunce.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the other hand, trying to keep up to date, the article takes an equally cheap shot at Senator Ted Cruz.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m really tired of this sort of thing.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Let me make it clear: \u00a0I\u2019m not a fan of Sarah Palin. \u00a0Not even close. \u00a0Nor have I endorsed Senator Cruz for president. \u00a0I have reservations about him and prefer others thus far, though I\u2019m open to persuasion. \u00a0Nor was George W. Bush my conservative dream. \u00a0Moreover,\u00a0I freely grant that Mr. Bush was among the least articulate major politicians of my lifetime. \u00a0I found his press conferences and debates excruciating.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But I also found it extremely irritating to watch smug journalists with no obvious claims to academic distinction complacently treating President Bush as America\u2019s\u00a0national dunce. \u00a0He did, after all graduate from Yale University, which has a pretty decent reputation. \u00a0Of course, he might have gained entry to Yale as a \u201clegacy admission\u201d because his father had attended that university and attained some prominence (though the senior Bush wasn\u2019t yet Vice President, let alone President). \u00a0But I seem to recall that Mr. Bush\u2019s\u00a0SAT scores and his grades were actually higher than those of either the suave and urbane John Kerry or the cosmic genius who deigns to walk among us as Al Gore. \u00a0And then Mr. Bush went on to earn an MBA at Harvard Business School, which I\u2019m told is hard to get into and rather competitive once you\u2019re there, and where his father\u2019s Yale connections would have carried little weight.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And what about Ted Cruz? \u00a0Is he the \u201cidiot\u201d that Mr. Dean Burnett of The Guardian<\/em> assumes \u2014 and assumes that his audience<\/em> will assume \u2014 him to be?<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Well, he was valedictorian at his Texas high school.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
He graduated cum laude<\/em> from Princeton University.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
While at Princeton, he\u00a0<\/span>won the award for top speaker at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship. \u00a0That same year,\u00a0<\/span>he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year and shared the \u201cTeam of the Year\u201d honor with his debate partner, David Panton.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Princeton\u2019s debate team eventually named their annual novice championship after him.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
He\u00a0then graduated magna cum laude<\/em> from Harvard Law School, where\u00a0he was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review,\u00a0<\/em><\/span>executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy<\/em>, and<\/span>\u00a0a founding editor of the\u00a0<\/span>Harvard Latino Law Review<\/i>.<\/span>\u00a0One of his professors at Harvard Law was the famous liberal icon\u00a0Alan Dershowitz<\/span>, who\u2019s said simply that \u201cCruz was off-the-charts brilliant.\u201d \u00a0Before being elected to the United States Senate, Mr. Cruz was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in the history of Texas, as well as the youngest and longest-serving person ever to hold that office.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Obviously, an \u201cidiot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
This abuse of science in an attempt to discredit an ideological target reminds me \u2014 yes, I\u2019m that old \u2014 of the ad taken out by a group of liberal psychiatrists during the 1964 presidential election in which, on the strength of their putative expertise but without having ever actually examined or even met him, these men prostituted their scientific and medical authority by declaring Senator Barry Goldwater\u00a0psychologically unfit for the presidency.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I posted an item yesterday pointing out that religious and political conservatives, despite the stereotype, clearly don\u2019t have a monopoly on ignorance, stupidity, and hostility to science. \u00a0 But here, I think, is a good example of the stereotype, and, at least in passing, of a left-wing journalist pressing science into service in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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