Do stupid opinions deserve some sort of respect?

Sarah Hoyt writes,

...You see, there is a trade off not just between security and innovation but between security and comfort. Systems designed to make life safe from surprises are, by definition, hostile to innovation and competition. The Scandinavian countries, in burdening employers with regulations designed to smooth out employees lives also made it almost impossible for entrepreneurs and non-corporations to survive, thereby stifling the fountain of innovation, for instance.

It is important to remember all this as our economic lives become more interconnected. In watching the economic follies out there (yes, yes, this WILL end in blood, duh. But not everywhere, and there is a chance however slim that in the end sanity prevails) one can’t help but go “Who in heaven’s name thought it was a good idea to trust economic reports from a communist regime that controls everything that comes out of it?” And then one remembers. Maleducated yokels.

These are the same people who run around the net lecturing us on the virtues of things they never experienced — like communism — but about which they’ve read. Because they think — being yokels, of course — that other countries function exactly as the US and that their priorities and “control” of information is the the same. Also, inexplicably, that people abroad know more about the US than people in the US. So when French or Scandinavians lecture them on how in the US we’re much worse off, it never occurs to our yokels to go “Wait? Wut? How do you know that?” No. They nod their little pinheads and go “Oh, yes, of course. Because I’ve been there on vacation and–” (In fact, if you talk to foreigners in web forums the “reporting” they get about the US is not only wrong but hilariously so. For instance, people without insurance are routinely left untreated in our emergency room. Yep. Sure thing bob. Because see, their governments have a vested interest in supporting socialism, which gives them power, and in keeping them on the farm without seeing Paree.)

...And this is how we end up with people who are convinced that all cultures are equally valid, except the US is equally evil. And they must protect poor little communists from “slurs” (or as an unspeakable ignorant *sshole put it, “people who think communism is the worst regime ever should be pushed out of airplanes.” Because he’s read books. Books, I tell you. Or more likely watched movies, or maybe cartoons. And he’s been assured that greed and the evils of capitalism are much worse than being assigned a job where you pretend to work and they pretend to pay you. Said idiot should contemplate the joke add that P. J. O’Rourke reported from the waning days of the Soviet Union “Want to trade Moscow state apartment for sleeping bag on the streets of New York City.”)

...And, in an increasingly interconnected world, that brings the risk of serious mistakes. Like, believing that Iranian leaders think just as we do and aren’t really serious about this bringing back the Imam thing and the end of the world. Or like believing the reports from a communist dictatorship. Or – you can fill in the blanks, right?

So we need to stop maleducating people and treating stupid opinions as though they deserved some sort of respect.

Read more here.