Columnist: What If Some Of Us Are Dumb?

[manu1959]

well, my feeling is you can't be editor of Harvard Law Review and be a slouch. I'll disagree with you about his intellect anyway. but different strokes, as they say:

you say he was the editor like he wrote all the articles himself....

how about you cite some of his great intellectual achievements....

 

[manu1959]

see, i don't feel the need to diminish someone's intellect just because i disagree with them. I can tell you I saw George Will on TV with Stephen Colbert this week and the guy is brilliant. I disagree with him, but I'd never question his smarts. (Yes...btw... as opposed to baby bush whom I think is one of the stupidest people I've ever seen in politics.. .but it's b/c he's really dumb, not because I don't agree with him. I think Cheney is a really bad guy... but I'd never call him stupid).

But ... for some reason, some parts of the right seems to have this need to diminish every aspect of people they disagree with... I think not acknowledging that Obama's smart is kind of silly.

that is not quite true.....you disagree with bush's views and earlier in this thread bashed his intellect....and then did it again in this post....

 

[jillian]

that is not quite true.....you disagree with bushes views and earlier in this thread bashed his intellect....and then did it again in this post....

That's cause he's stupid... not because I disagree with his politics, though. I think Scalia's politics suck. Doesn't mean he's not a formidable intellect.

My disdain for George Bush's lack of intellect is specific to him...not his politics.

 

[dilloduck]

Yeah, it was put to the test. Didn't he respond with something along the lines of "gun-toting rednecks in little towns ....."

I guess it takes intellect to figure out a zillion ways to take back something that sorta slipped out of your mouth.

 

[manu1959]

That's cause he's stupid... not because I disagree with his politics, though. I think Scalia's politics suck. Doesn't mean he's not a formidable intellect.

My disdain for George Bush's lack of intellect is specific to him...not his politics.

stupid is a strong word......how do you know he is stupid.....

 

[Ravi]

Not often thought about...

Rod Dreher: What if they're not smart enough? | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Opinion: Points

"Yes, we can!" says Barack Obama at every turn, and why shouldn't he? It's a deeply American sentiment. We Americans are romantic egalitarians by nature. We like to think that ours is the land of opportunity, where anyone can succeed if he just works hard enough. But what if it's not true? No rational person would believe that every child born has the same chance to become Tony Romo or Tiger Woods. Some have more opportunity to develop their athletic talents, of course, but it's obvious that there are natural limits to an individual's physical abilities. This is not even controversial.

But we aren't allowed to say openly that some people are flat-out more intelligent than others, though it's not hard to find evidence for this. In fact, you wouldn't have to look much further than my math grades in high school to see that I was not MIT material and never would be. I barely passed college math.

So what? I excelled in classes that required verbal skill and found my vocation as a writer. Had I been pushed to go into engineering or a field that required a mathematical mind, I would have been fighting my own natural limits and miserable.

There's no shame in discovering one's limits and learning to succeed within the boundaries set by nature. The fictional town of Lake Wobegon and the candyland of No Child Left Behind are the only happy-clappy utopias where all children are above average. It is a false, even cruel, egalitarianism that leads people to believe otherwise.

If it's true that quite a few Americans are incapable of doing serious college work, our nation has to face some serious moral questions. In fact, the social justice of the globalized economic system comes directly into play.

Globalizers of the left and right keep saying that American workers have to be re-educated and retrained to compete in a world market in which manufacturing jobs move overseas. But what happens to workers who lack the cognitive abilities to do the higher-level "knowledge" work the new economy requires of them?

A thought experiment: What if staying competitive in the globalizing economy required developing a stronger back? What if the economists told lawyers, professors, paper-pushers and other nerdlings they were going to have to spend a lot more time at the gym to develop the muscles of longshoremen – or get left behind? Would this be the insult that made a man out of Mac?

As if. The nerdling would be able to improve his strength to a certain degree, but to tell him his physical limits are defined only by his desires and will to succeed is to play a cruel hoax on him.

I see Dreher has embraced his stupidity and believes that intelligence is something that can't be improved upon.

 

[jillian]

stupid is a strong word......how do you know he is stupid.....

The same way I know if anyone else is or isn't.

 

[Toro]

Asians are the smartest.

Everyone knows that, right?

 

[midcan5]

AB, After Bush, I have no idea how anyone could look down on anyone of any other race color creed or humanity. Bush has forever made white men dumb. It will take years, maybe centuries to undo the damage. LOL

 

[Gunny]

I see Dreher has embraced his stupidity and believes that intelligence is something that can't be improved upon.

That isn't what he's saying at all, but either you know that or you are proof of his point.

 

[Gunny]

AB, After Bush, I have no idea how anyone could look down on anyone of any other race color creed or humanity. Bush has forever made white men dumb. It will take years, maybe centuries to undo the damage. LOL

Stupid would define quite nicely partisan hacks incapable of rational thought making blind attacks against people who don't agree with their stupid ideology.

You are a completely different animal than is discussed in the original article. It's obvious you posess intelligence. It's equally as obvious you are incapable of applying it to reality. All the horsepower in the world is worthless if you can't get it to where the rubber meets the road.

 

[Ravi]

That isn't what he's saying at all, but either you know that or you are proof of his point.

But we aren't allowed to say openly that some people are flat-out more intelligent than others, though it's not hard to find evidence for this. In fact, you wouldn't have to look much further than my math grades in high school to see that I was not MIT material and never would be. I barely passed college math.

IMO, that's exactly what he said.

 

[José]

Originally posted by Dirt McGirt
There's no need to post an article for validation. Alucard and Jose are proof that some of us are just naturally dumber than others. I think most of us figured that out on our own already.

Originally posted by Swamp Fox
I'm with Dirt, this goes without saying. All you have to do is read one post from Jose and realize that some people in the world are really stupid.

The intellectual level of the Board must be fairly low then, because I manage to kick everybody’s ass every fucking time I “open my mouth”.

 

[José]

And to add insult to injury, English isn’t even my first language.

 

[Steerpike]

Que?

 

[Shogun]

The intellectual level of the Board must be fairly low then, because I manage to kick everybody’s ass every fucking time I “open my mouth”.

uh, if by "kick everybody's ass" you mean "swallow a load of information that you desperately want to ignore" then yea.. you are correct.

 

[William Joyce]

Putting Barack Obama's intellect against George Bush's kind of shoots WJ's theories in the gonads anyway.

Actually, it doesn't. A theory that holds the general intelligence of whites is higher than the general intelligence of blacks isn't "shot in the gonads" by an example of one black who is smarter than one white. In fact, 10 percent of American blacks have IQ's higher than the average white IQ.

And (Askenazi) Jews have the highest IQ of any ethnic group in the world. But again, there are exceptions.

 

[Paul Itical]

Stupid would define quite nicely partisan hacks incapable of rational thought making blind attacks against people who don't agree with their stupid ideology.

You are a completely different animal than is discussed in the original article. It's obvious you posess intelligence. It's equally as obvious you are incapable of applying it to reality. All the horsepower in the world is worthless if you can't get it to where the rubber meets the road.

Ouch! Nice diss, man.

 

[Gungnir]

I find this article dumb.

The elderly are encouraged to do mentally challenging activities to stave off brain deterioration. This stooge might be miserable but he will learn valuable lessons and pass them on to his children and associates. His worked brain might just get a few nuerons to connect that someday might produce a really genius idea.

 

[trobinett]

Putting Barack Obama's intellect against George Bush's kind of shoots WJ's theories in the gonads anyway.

Late to the game jillian, but that statement is lame, and totally racist.

May want to rethink your position, both as a person, and as a defender of the politically correct.