[lbo-talk] stupidest quote of the week from an American politician?

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Jul 20 09:43:05 PDT 2006


Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
>
> Why are you any different? Why are you not "them"? Why do you insist
> that "they" are so stupid? If they are so stupid, what makes you so
> smart, and so not them?
>
> I simply don't get it, Woj. I guess since I worked as a Taxi Driver
> for my years of in school I have a different view of things. I kept
> on thinking to myself that most of the people I knew should switch
> places. . . .

This is why I stopped reading WS -- too ready to assume that the educator needs no education. It seems to me that every attempt to judge the "intelligence" of any group of people, or even of one person, ought always be in the context of "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted by the past." Within that context there are very few if any humans who (however stupid or wrong one might think their _conclusions_) I would judge to be, as a person, unintelligent. For some on this list the distinction of view held and person holding the view may seem nearly invisible; for me it is perhaps the most important distinction one can make in viewing other humans. In other words, it is crucial to hold that stupid or ignorant conclusions are no evidence whatever that the person holding those conclusions is stupid or ignorant.

Carrol

Carrol



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