An inevitable consequence of the dumbing down of society is the extent to which stupid ideas are gaining ground so quickly.

People come to believe things their grandparents would have found bizarre, if not laughable, and which are more suited to ignorant tribes ruled by shamans and wizards than educated human beings ruled by elected officials.

As such, the following are, in two parts, the 10 dumbest of the many stupid ideas that have been circulating in our political discourse over the past year. Some of them date back further, but each got a major media buy in 2021 and has been endorsed by prominent politicians and pundits.

10. Eliminate standardized exams as a requirement in the college admissions process. Originally billed as a pandemic-related measure, the drop in SAT or ACT scores has now become permanent for many colleges across the country.

Although students often found passing them painful, the standardized exams represented a remarkable advance in the concept of merit and upward mobility in American life over time. Replacing them with subjective indicators (called “holistic”) makes admissions decisions more opaque and allows college administrators to more easily disguise the degree to which racial preferences are involved (including the extent of discrimination against Americans. of Asian descent, the Jews of our time in matters of higher education).

As with so many other “fairness” campaigns, if black applicants don’t do as well on these tests as some other groups, and you don’t want to do the hard work to find ways to improve their performance, just get rid of the test.

9. The proposal to impose a “global minimum” tax on corporate profits.

Such a tax cartel, approved by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, will never work because the more countries it comprises, the more incentive other countries have to stay out and undermine it.

This says something telling about our leaders’ understanding of the sources of prosperity that when lower taxes in place X than in places W, Y, and Z produce greater economic growth for X, then W, Y and Z must come together to find ways to force higher taxes on X, lest he gain an “unfair advantage”.

The ever-ravenous welfare state demands a grabbing of wealth, and any place not so cornered (otherwise known as economically free) becomes a threat to statist racketeering.

In a broader sense, though superficially attractive, corporate tax is also the dumbest tax as research indicates corporations simply pass the bulk of that tax on to those who consume their goods and services. , which means that when we raise corporate taxes, we are really just raising taxes on ourselves.

8. Allow biological men who claim to be women to compete against biological women at sporting events (and reject anyone who thinks this is unfair to biological women as a “transphobic”).

It is difficult to find a question where long-standing scientific knowledge, specifically the basic tenets of human biology, have been so blatantly and easily sidelined in favor of political fashion. When it comes to awakened notions of identity, “following science”, let alone common sense, becomes heretical.

When a society no longer has an agreed way to correctly distinguish between men and women, the risk is greater than just women’s sport.

7. Under any name (“critical race theory,” https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2022/jan/03/plague-of-dumb-part-i/ “intersectionality,” https: / / www. arkansasonline.com/news/2022/jan/03/plague-of-dumb-part-i/”anti-racism “, etc.), teaching children in our public schools to define themselves in terms of color of skin.

It is difficult to see who is helped if children come to believe that American society has been hopelessly racist from the start, that all of its accomplishments are the result of slavery, and that whites are inherently and forever oppressors and blacks inherently and forever victims simply because of their respective pigmentation.

Sadly, proposals from the political right to ‘ban’ such poisonous pedagogy often tend to make matters worse – bans rarely work, usually make what is forbidden appear more than less desirable (and those which prohibit more are subject to change). to an unfavorable caricature), and can be easily circumvented by the culprits by simply teaching the same things under a different label.

It is far better for states to simply pass legislation banning the teaching of racist material in their schools, which, given the blatantly racist nature of the CRT and associated tributaries, would quickly fix the problem.

The goal should be to ward off both Jim Crow and open racism.

6. Cancellation of university loan debt.

This is a cowardly vote buying that has “moral hazard” stuck all over the place.

Those who support such a cancellation argue that a university education is a basic human right, but are unable to explain how, along the same lines, the cancellation of mortgage and auto payments would not be recommended (in this case, if l ‘we say A, then we really have to also say B and C).

At the very least, it’s a bizarre conception of fairness that would force truck drivers and factory workers without college degrees to pay for those of doctors and lawyers.

That Democrats overwhelmingly support such proposals makes fun of the concept of “social justice” and tells us a lot about how “the party of the working class” and Franklin Roosevelt have changed.

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, earned his doctorate. in Political Science from the University of Illinois.