The candidates’ ignorance—or the candidates’ liberalism? Or is there any difference?

A. Zarkov writes:

Obama’s talking points include many canards. Unfortunately McCain is himself so poorly informed he can’t take advantage of the opening.

Here are two examples. First “preventive medicine” won’t save the government money. Paradoxically it would actually increase costs. If a medical intervention saves someone’s life at (say) 45 prolonging it to 85, Medicare will end up with the expenses associated with the chronic illnesses of old age. Moreover preventive medicine is only effective for a few diseases. Lifestyle and genetics are the primary determinants of medical costs, and government has little control over the former.

Second, both candidates keep repeating false assertions about American education. The reason the U.S. has mediocre average scores on some international exams lies with the underclass. The distribution of scores is actually bimodal, and the average is the worst descriptor for this kind of distribution. If one looks at the average of upper quartile (the upper tail of the distribution) then American students are some of the best in the world. We produce ample numbers of well educated and highly intelligent graduates, fully capable of advancing American technology. However very few of these top graduates are black or Hispanic, which is exactly what you would expect from these two low-IQ groups. Thus we don’t have an education problem; we have an underclass problem made worse every year by the constant immigration from the Third World. Obama’s plans to fix the non-existent problem of too few engineering and science graduates by more funding for minority education—a strategy doomed to failure. If McCain were on the ball he could have trounced Obama on the facts.

LA replies:

“If McCain were on the ball…”

Meaning in reality: If McCain were a non-liberal prepared to attack the most sacred belief of modern liberal society!

A. Zarkov replies:

I agree. The root cause of McCain’s paralysis lies in his basic acceptance of liberalism, especially the multicultural dogma. He can’t think critically, even about medical issues. He simply can’t accept the idea that the government can’t do much to make people healthier. This paralysis extends to the media. Did any of these false assertions get talked about in any of the post debate coverage?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 16, 2008 09:01 PM | Send