Charles Franklin, a prominent political scientist who works about a block up Bascom Hill from me, made a bit of a splash with a comment he made in an article by local opinionator Bill Leuders:I was struck by the fact that what struck Prof. Franklin as "stupid" was not anything in Leuders' question -- not, eg., the apparent assumption that what causes deficits isn't those entitlements you have been reading about, those vast giveaways to ordinary citizens, but giveaways to the rich -- rather it was the people themselves who are stupid.In my questions to Franklin, I noted that the public seemed to vote against its own interests and stated desires, for instance by electing candidates who'll drive up the deficit with fiscally reckless giveaways to the rich.
Franklin, perhaps a bit too candidly, conceded the point. "I'm not endorsing the American voter," he answered. "They're pretty damn stupid."
"Thank you, professor," I responded. "That's the answer I was looking for.
The exchange reminded me of a poem that Communist Bertolt Brecht wrote in the wake of the revolt against the East German government in 1953:
| Die Lösung Bertolt Brecht Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni | The Solution Bertolt Brecht After the uprising of the 17th June |
The English translation is from Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1913-1956, eds. John Willett and Ralph Manheim (Methuen 1976), p. 440.
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"Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?"
Hence unimpeded mass Third World and/or non-Western immigration, of people less proficient in English, and/or more inclined to sheeple behaviour, less inclined to know and/or assert their rights. (Who make trailer trash and ghetto trash look desirable, by comparison.)
'Divide-and-conquer' always has been the strategy of the ruling class, and mass influx of unassimilable foreigners feeds that.
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