Sunday 3 July 2011

Stupid people are usually wiser than clever ones.

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I try to remember that being intelligent is not the same as being right. Stupid people are usually wiser than clever ones. John Stuart Mill’s canard that the conservatives are the stupid party is, said AJP Taylor in a wry gloss on his own views, a back-handed compliment.  `The Tory Party are the stupid party but to be stupid and to be sensible are not far apart. The Progressive party, Radical and Socialist, is clever, but silly.'  Yes indeed and if you seek their monument look around you.

Mrs Thatcher Charles Moore pointed out was where all the snobberies met, snobbery towards a grocer’s daughter, Southern snobbery towards northerners, Arts students’ snobbery toward scientists, male superiority.  She sounded like the Daily Mail (my mother’s paper) made flesh and grated on my ear (I was an ardent teenage Tory) like a knife scraped across a plate. 
Intellectual snobbery was the main reason why in the 80s I didn't see how good Mrs. Thatcher, Mr. Reagan and Lord Lloyd-Weber were. I have now been introduced to Phantom of the Opera and it is very good - as good or better than the 1925 silent film version. And I esteem Mrs. Thatcher for much that she did though I admire her somewhat less than my leftish friends (privatisation meant selling off industries cheaply) and I love her for all the things she didn't do which Labour did: devolution; out of control immigration; politically correct equality legislation, powers surrendered to Brussels and all the rest. 

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