Intuitive

An interview the Trib’s Eric Zorn conducts with a speaker at one of the tea party speakers in Chicago yesterday shows why this movement is so dangerous. In his responses, the interviewee repeatedly says that activists don’t know exactly what they want fixed, they just “instinctively” or “intuitively” know that things aren’t right and there has to be a better way to run a government.

We’re in a period of extremely dangerous anti-intellectualism. It doesn’t matter how much people who know what they’re talking about explain the reality of the situation to ordinary folks – if it doesn’t jive with what they feel intuitively regardless of their background it’s got to be wrong and just another example of the elite class trying to be better than everyone else.

Time was we respected experts and those who had made a career – or lifetime – out of studying a subject and relied on their opinions and experience to make good decisions. Now, though, these people are being pursued with torches like they’re carrying the damn plague.

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