The notion that we know enough to know what is in someone else’s best interest is evidence of this fallacy, and I have found over the succeeding decades there are many academics that fall into it. Applied in the political sphere, it takes the form of “why does the public not understand what we are trying to do?” We heard it in President Obama’s State of the Union address last week in his claim that his failure on health care was “not explaining it more clearly to the American people.” It characterizes the thoughts of Thomas Frank in “What’s the Matter With Kansas?, a book that I found alternately patronizing and pathetic, arguing that it must be false consciousness or hypnotizing demagoguery that leads the working class of Kansas, once home of agricultural Wobblies, to now vote consistently conservative.I have it via Mark Steyn that Sarah Palin, when asked to summarize the State of the Union speech in one word, pronounced "Lecture." Good call. Stop by Hot Air to read the whole post. It isn't long, and it's well worth the brief time it would take.
Opinions and analysis regarding politics, religion, sports, popular culture and life in general, expressed with my own humble brand of hubris
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The SOTU "lecture"
Over at Hot Air, King Banaian provides an excellent commentary about one attitude of the political left toward those who fail to agree with their political goals.
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