The Village Idiot and the Village Genius

Here's a great quote from 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," July 3, 2012)

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.