Stupid fundamentalist Protestants in Florida burn a Koran publicly because it’s their constitutional right. Stupid Muslims in New York, who say they are not fundamentalists, insist on their right to build a mosque near Ground Zero because it’s their constitutional right.
It all sounds very malicious and moronic but fair.
Speaking of morons, I catch a bit of the far-left show “Democracy Today” on the radio. Some guy whose name I did not catch sermonizes the West about the lack of clean water access for millions of people in the underdeveloped world. He intones that one week of the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be enough to provide clean water wells to most of those who lack them.
The speaker does not seem to know the basic facts of life: In places like Afghanistan, in most of the underdeveloped world, if you give the government money to dig wells in the countryside, it ends up in Switzerland or on the French Riviera. The solution, of course is to entrust the money to NGOs (voluntary non-government organizations). Oops, NGO workers are targeted for assassination in places like Afghanistan! The assassins are the very people our military are trying to control. There are very mean people who are mean to their own people. Deuh!
Money is not the issue. If his figures are right (they might be), the costs, technical, constructions cost, of providing clean water to nearly everyone could be covered by voluntary subscription in the US and in a handful of other developed countries in one week. We are not selfish or stingy, you left-lib moron!
I keep wondering how an adult man can have the shamelessness to preach on the radio in full ignorance of such basic facts, of facts everyone can ascertain. Oh, well, the President does it all the time.
Obstinate ignorance and the insanity of the sane: Two topics that interest me endlessly. They tend to merge into each other.
Notes On Liberty 
I think that there is another way of looking at what the person on “Democracy Today” was saying. This is because, if you look at it in the context of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and its current struggle to fulfill the 2015-target date, which seek to reduce world poverty, then he might have a valid point, though admittedly, and assuming this was his point, his phrasing is more controversial than necessary. With that being sad, he actually may have found himself, as the saying goes, just “preaching to the choir”. Just fodder for thought.
“Obstinate ignorance and the insanity of the sane”
Now that’s a great line. Thanks.
It’s angering, and even sad, how these people speak as though nobody is even listening to what they say. I mean, I’d add arrogance to the ignorance, but maybe your quote covers that base as it is.
[…] 1) The people who are calling for more gun control (whatever that means) are not very good with numbers. I suspect this ignorance is of the obstinate kind. […]
[…] once it has been explained. Perhaps I need to work on doing a better job of this, but I suspect, as does Dr. Delacroix, that most of it is simply obstinate ignorance and a failure by Leftists to actually read what […]