B. U. G. S.

On George Washington, Shari says:

NOT SPAM Maybe the best spot to be in, is one that can RECOGNIZE smart and stupid, without being one way or the other too much themselves. Of course honesty would be nessesary in such a spot.

Comment by Shari

MY REPLY:

Shari, PLEASE put the NOT SPAM at the top as a separate sentence, the way Antonio does.

I would much rather not have attention deficit, but the next best thing to not having it is finding ways to DEAL with it.

Your mention of honesty goes right to the heart of the matter.

I have repeatedly mentioned that two of my professors in grad school won the Nobel Prize in economics.

One of them won it by pointing out that an honest society is an EFFICIENT society. The less time you spend on figuring out how to say what you are saying, how to deal with people who are trying to trick you, the more you can concentrate on DOING things.

He used a lot of calculus equations and stuff, but only in order to get a bunch of dumbass “intellectuals” to see this as an insight they never thought of.

Now let’s go away from the True Intellectuals and get down to the Bob level.

You remember when I accidentally insulted Peter by saying he was a Pain? It didn’t occur to me he might take it as an insult because I obviously respect the hell out of him.

But Ole Bob is just a little odd, and sometimes his statements don’t come out well in translation by normal human beings like Peter.

By the same token, a lot of people will go ballistic when I point out that George Washington was not all that bright.

George himself might have shot me for that, but my reasoning is, “If you’re George Washington, why would you care whether somebody says you would score high on an IQ test?”

Shari emphasized honesty.

When I said he was “not bright,” I was emphasizing moral courage.

If GW had appointed a bunch of intellectual demigods to his first cabinet, it could have just meant that he knew he was smarter than they were.

You cannot have the awe I do of the man unless you realize that he was not all that IQ smart and he knew it. Everybody who assumes that GW was an IQ genius ignores the fact that he really didn’t give a damn about it.

If you think that way, you are ignoring his MORAL COURAGE.

This was a man who was writing letters during the Revolution about what land might be good to buy after the war was over.

GW did NOT write, “This would be a good investment if I am not hanged or assassinated or killed in action or have to spend the restof my life as a propertyless guerilla.”

He was able to write those letters with all that hanging over his head.

I couldn’t have done it.

Shari mentioned honesty. My professor Robert Chesen got a Nobel Prize for discussing that little point.

Nobody ever notices that a second-rate man hires second-rate people. He is worried about making himself look good.

This never occurred to GW, exactly as it never occurred to him to write, “This would be a good investment if I am not hanged or assassinated or killed in action or have to spend the restof my life as a propertyless guerilla.”

We all take it for granted that Washington knew he needed the transcendental geniuses like Franklin, Hamilton and Jefferson to run his country.

Moral courage like that BUILT this country.

The total moral cowardice of the group that calls itself The Greatest Generation is what we are trying to save our country and our race FROM.