SCOTUS And Kelo

LauraW (at Ace of Spades), on the aftermath of Kelo:

SCOTUS' Chickens Come Home To Roost In New London

This cannot be emphasized enough.

The people who run your city, the politicians who are full of bright ideas for improving your life by infringing on others' rights, and the black-robed genius who is tasked with interpreting our founding documents; NONE of these people are smarter than you.

NONE of these people are gifted with superior insight on how better to run your life or use our native resources. But they believe that they are. So without the brake of morality or explicit law, these geniuses and pols and town busybodies will extend professional courtesy to each other as they go about dismantling your life for some dubious utopian idea.

Think hard about those words, particularly in the context of the current healthscare debate.

From the comments of that post:

I have kept saying this since the campaign. Obama is sooooo smart. Why? Well, uh, he got accepted to Harvard Law School (finishing is not a problem, the day you are accepted, they print your diploma). He wrote that super-awesome book about himself.

First, none of this is a serious intellectual task. There ain't no math. It's not about solving problems, it's about empty rhetoric at best. Just because pretentious people, who like to think they are smart (David Brooks) can understand nothing more complicated than prose in their mother tongue, doesn't mean someone who does it well is intelligent. Just the opposite, in my experience.

Second, this is why I rag on lawyers. If lawyers were like accountants -- experienced, professional specialists who (Doug Hoffman aside) don't try to parlay their education into some sort of divine right to rule -- then I'd have no problem. But there ain't nothin' special about lawyers. They're idiots by my scale. They usually have trouble with math. Send a native-English speaking PhD mathematician -- one of the two of them left -- to Harvard Law and see him laugh at the trivialities involved.

Law school is where you go when math is too hard for you.

So not only are these self-styled philosopher kings not smarter, they're dumber. But even if you do get a true genius, he doesn't know anything. Look at the brilliant economists who said that the unemployment rate wouldn't get above 8%. Has one of them apologized? Committed hara-kiri?

One thing math tells you is that everything, in the real world or theory, is waaaaay too complicated for even the most brilliant person to understand. It is one of the reasons American democracy has worked so far. We have resisted the siren's song -- more or less -- of the ubermensch and we are better for it.

Posted by: AmishDude at November 11, 2009 10:56 AM

What he said.

More & more excellent comments at the link.

LATER: Related only in the style over substance sense, Snapped Shot on President Pose & Prose.

h/t Carin, at Is This Blog On?

EVEN LATER: Uncle Jay Explains The News.