The Village Idiot and the Village Genius

Here's a great quote from a recent article by Thomas Sowell:

"John Roberts is no doubt a brainy man, and that seems to carry a lot of weight among the intelligentsia — despite glaring lessons from history, showing very brainy men creating everything from absurdities to catastrophes. Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius." ("Judicial Betrayal," 7/3/12)

The last sentence bears repeating: "few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius." I have often said--even told my students--that the stupidest people in the world are so-called "intellectuals." Most of them have no common sense, they rarely live in the real world where they themselves must accept the responsibility and bear the consequences of their fallacies, and worse yet, too many of them don’t believe in God.  It hasn’t been the Gomer Pyles who have started wars and killed untold millions, but Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and a whole host of such “intellectual” leftists who thought they had the genius to re-make the world according to their own vision (and, in their subjectivism, they never agreed on what that vision is), and, all the while, they completely ignored history and the moral and spiritual laws that the Creator handed man for his own good. 

That’s the quintessence of stupidity.  And barbarism.  And human tragedy.  And the reason why the United States, and most of the world, is in a mess right now.

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I haven’t written on the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare because, to me, it was ho-hum.  How could anybody be surprised at the decision?  When was the last time the SCOTUS was right about any major decision?  Why, why, why do we expect “intellectuals” to do the right thing?  They rarely ever do.  So, of course, the Supreme Court got it wrong.  Ho-hum.

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Overlooked in all of this, and a point I haven’t seen anybody talk about, is that nowhere in the Constitution does that document make the Supreme Court the final arbiter of what is “constitutional” or not.  I know that, from very early in the history of the United States (actually from even before Marbury v. Madison), the Court has taken it upon itself to declares laws of Congress and/or the states unconstitutional, and it has been accepted practice ever since.  But, again, where does the Constitution give the Court that right?  That 9 (or 5) unelected, unaccountable scoundrels have the ultimate power to decide what is to be bound upon the rest of the people can hardly be considered in harmony with a republican form of government or the intentions of the Founders.  In that sense, Chief Justice Roberts was right—the legislature makes the laws, regardless of how stupid they might be.  The executive “executes” (enforces) the laws, and the judiciary is to apply the laws.  That’s by simple definition.  If Congress makes an unconstitutional law, technically, it’s up to Congress to repeal it.  If they don’t, the states have the right to nullify it (nobody can be forced to obey an illegal law), as a warning to the national legislature.  If Congress still doesn’t repeal it, and insists on continuing to enforce its unconstitutional (tyrannical) mandates, the states have the right to secede from the Union—that’s the ultimate Damocles’ sword the Founders put over the head of the national government to help keep it in check.  If Congress insists on going beyond the delegated powers given to it in the Constitution, then the states, who created that Congress in the first place, have the right to secede—Congress won’t have anybody to govern anymore!  The United States government exists by the “consent of the governed,” and if all, or part, of those “governed” no longer consent to that government, then they have the right to leave it and form their own.  (Abraham Lincoln concurred in that view, which was, by far, the majority opinion of the Founders of the country.  It had to be since that is exactly what they did to England!)  Otherwise, those people are no longer free, but enslaved.  That’s the way the country was founded and intended.  The Southern states tried to make it work.  They failed.  Now, the federal government defines its own powers, so it is hardly surprising that there are virtually no limitations on what it can do (keep in mind that the SCOTUS is a part of the federal government, thus a major part in allowing Washington, D.C., to determine its own dominion).  Article One, Section 8, of the Constitution means nothing anymore because it can mean everything.  That is hardly what the men who founded the country had in mind.

Jefferson, et al, knew exactly what they were doing, and it was the most brilliant governmental construction the human mind has yet conceived.  The only thing is, it didn’t work.  And it didn’t work because of the very thing those men feared and tried to prevent—the undying, unquenchable thirst that humans—especially so-called “intellectuals”—have for power.  It is an intoxicant that has killed more of God’s creatures than any other vice in history.  And it is the intoxicant that is the main motivation of Barack Obama and the “progressives” whose one obsession is to control the United States of America and to create a utopian vision that only they can see.  That scares me to death.  Because other such “progressive” visionaries have been named…Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot…

History teaches that man has been plenty barbaric even when he acknowledges there is a God in heaven.  Man, without God, has absolutely no boundaries and no controls—and no reason to have any.  And so much the worse for the countless, nameless millions who have lived—and brutally died—under such a system. 

Give me Gomer Pyle any day of the week.