Here’s a typically sharp missive from Professor Don Boudreaux:

2 November 2010

Editor, Telegraph
London, U.K.

Dear Sir or Madam:

Toby Hamden reports that “Jon Stewart’s smug ‘Rally for Sanity’ in Washington at
the weekend, endorsed by Obama, gave the hipster crowd their chance to chortle
at Middle America” (“Midterms 2010: Americans aren’t stupid – but they are angry
with Barack Obama,” Nov. 2).

While every part of the political spectrum is overrun with dolts and dimwits,
intellectual vanity is more common on the left than on the right. My guess is
that this phenomenon springs from the notion that persons who have ideas –
especially ‘Big Ideas’ – for how to run other people’s lives are mistaken for
being thoughtful and caring. In contrast, persons who offer no ideas, big or
small, for how other people should live their lives – persons who have no itch
to meddle in the affairs of others and want only to be left alone to mind their
own business as they each judge best – are mistaken for being feeble-minded and
uncaring.

In short, to the ‘Progressive’ brain, I’m smart and kind if I am enchanted by
half-baked schemes to herd and prod and tax my fellow Americans, but dumb and
mean if I question the wisdom of all such collectivist plots.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University