[Pearls Before Swine]

Re: Meh on the poll:

Source noted. But, let me reprint a famous quote by H.L. Mencken:

“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.”

PT Barnum had a shorter version. He also paraphrased it with, “A sucker is born every minute.”

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

PT Barnum had a shorter version. He also paraphrased it with, “A sucker is born every minute.”

It isn’t a lack of intelligence, generally - it is simply that

The natural disposition is always to believe.

It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.

The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing. — Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)