SINCERE IGNORANCE AND CONSCIENTIOUS STUPIDITY.

"Nothing is all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance."

I read that quote on someone's t-shirt in my elevator the other day. It's from Martin Luther King and it's become one of my favorites, maybe because it speaks so clearly to the kind of divisive politics going on in the US right now. Turn on the news these days and you're bombarded with stories about right-wing, self-styled Tea Partiers, nattering on about how balancing the budget creates jobs or how illegal immigrants are stealing jobs or how Muslims are trying to institute Sharia law in the new Mecca Oklahoma, or how global warming doesn't exist because it was cold today.

I used to believe these people were purposely being wrong-headed, that they knew better but said these things because they were mean-spirited or bigoted. I'm starting to believe, as MLK alludes, that they're sincerely ignorant. They really believe these things to be true. This doesn't excuse them of course because those beliefs are mostly based on an anti-elite intellectual laziness that's dangerously taken hold in the most powerful country on earth.

This morning, when I googled King's quote I discovered it was actually even more relevant than I thought because the end of it had been lopped off to fit that t-shirt I first saw it on. The full quote reads:

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

Wow. Conscientious stupidity. Could two words better describe the debt ceiling discussion now going on in the US? Republicans who seven times during the Bush administration raised the government's legal limit on borrowing have suddenly found Jesus during the Obama administration and have decided that deficits and too much borrowing are bad -- and that, despite all evidence to the contrary, debt rather than lack of consumer confidence is the reason unemployment is so high. And now they're willing to put the full faith and credit of the US economy on the line to blackmail Obama and Democrats to slash government spending right this minute, otherwise they won't vote to extend the debt limit -- a move that would send the global economy into a tailspin.

Sincere ignorance. Conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King was more of a prophet than we ever realized.

Comments

[Jballz]

Thanks... Was looking for the quote and found this blog post. Timely again as the debt ceiling looks yet again.

One comment I must make in the vein of sincere ignorance. My credentials, I have a plus 150 iq. I have been an agricultural consultant most of my career, market analysis mostly. This requires global awareness and tons of data, as well as understanding models and most importantly understanding when models do not perform vs reality. I was involved in the carbon credit trading industry with cantor Fitzgerald prior to 9/11 when all the people I was working with at their environmental brokerage service were killed.

I am politically...disliked. I have no party affiliation, and take the side of reason as a rule. Parties and ideologies do not.

I believe, based on a great deal of contemplation and analysis of the facts, anthropogenic global warming is a false narrative. The need to change the term to climate change duly noted, that too cannot be linked to carbon dioxide emissions. I realize this flies in the face of the alleged science, but the truth is the truth. The most recent warming trend hated 16 years ago. The models are being constantly adjusted now to try an explain away their massive divergence from reality with any other input besides the obvious...that the co2 is not causing warming.

Sincere ignorance can be pervasive. But at this point there are enormous financial incentives for the myth to be propagated. I have always admired your work and your insights, and offer this as a suggestion that you keep an open mind on this subject. History will prove the point.

[Terry Levine]

Thanks for your comment. I've heard your narrative before on global warming and I'm still not convinced. Feel free to send me something concrete that backs up what you say. But frankly, if it's "research" sponsored by corporations that have a stake in downplaying global warming or birther-type conspiracy lovers, save it.

[Noel]

Republicans are not always conservative as in GW Bush. Please enlighten this sincrely ignorant man how Obama trillions are good for America. I recall obama chstising Bush fior the debt increses. Further obamacare was and is misrepresented in what it does and what it will cost. The democrats grossly and maliciously under estimated cost as they rammed ths mess upon us.

[Terry Levine]

Republicans are now more conservative than GW Bush. And when Bush came into office there was a surplus. He created the deficit that Obama inherited and Obama has actually reduced it from where it was under Bush. As for Obamacare, you better do some research. Non-partisan groups have concluded it will save the healthcare more than what is currently being spent. As for ramming things, I believe the GOP tried every trick in the book to stop Obamacare from being passed. Nothing was rammed by anyone.

[Terry Levine]

http://climate365.tumblr.com/ care to disagree?

[HilliardPatriot]

Many a conservative would say the same about the liberals/progressives/Democrats.

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity" is the full quote.

Ronald Reagan said: "Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."