Of course, the Constitution WAS designed to mitigate power and stupidity among our elected leaders. Unfortunately, there's no defense against a majority of the people going sour on liberty, embracing ignorance or wallowing in ideology.
The proverbial "tyranny of the majority" may indeed be a tyranny of the moronic. Morocracy? Should work, based upon the following:
Moron comes from Greek moros `foolish, stupid.' It was coined as a scientific term by Dr. Henry H. Goddard and proposed to the American Association for the Study of the Feebleminded by him in 1910. It was accepted by the Association and described a person suffering from mental deficiency who was between eight and twelve years in mental age and who possessed an I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient) below 75. It was the highest rating of a mentally deficient person, the two lower ratings being imbecile and idiot. Moron was quickly adopted in common English to mean `fool' and it is no longer in scientific use.
I suppose one could argue that, for all intents and purposes, any person who thoroughly embraces an ideology, as, by definition, to the willful exclusion of pertinent knowledge, might be described as an intellectual idiot or imbecile, but perhaps not a moron; for, by the original "scientific" definition, a moron can learn, though only advancing in rudimentary ways. Ideologues like our President and some others on both sides of the isle often display immunity to reason, arguably to the point of idiocy.
Personally, I think his behavior is in the vein of fideism, which has its own specie of imbecile. Progressivism and socialism are demonstrably faith based. If, purely for the sake of argument, we may agree that there is no God, then the irrational attributes and methods of religious devotes and political ideologues are essentially equivalent, from a philosophical standpoint.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism
Another arguable difference between left-wing and right-wing is the propensity of progressives or socialists to justify their positions, as opposed to falsifying their own propositions or those of their opponents. What I describe as small "c" conservatives (i.e., secular) are hesitant to embrace new methods or policies for lack of empirical evidence that they work. In this respect, there seems to be a natural difference in dispositions -- predispositions, if you will -- which respectively coincide with justificationism and falsificationism.
Of course, every physical scientist knows what it means to falsify a theory. Experimentation, with falsification in mind, is intrinsic to science.
Tragically, many so-called "social scientists" have no enthusiasm for empirical methods, and no lab to blow themselves up in, sparing the rest of us from their stupidity. Rather, the real world is their lab, and we, their rats.
The social sciences are infested with ideologues, as you know. Paul Krugman is a prime example. Perhaps, in essence, their errors are attributable to mere obsession or infatuation with theory. I suppose, idealism leads to these two things when it is divorced from reality.
This is why I make the argument, from time to time, that the Left is philosophically bankrupt. Their ideology is, by and large, epistemologically hollow. Many of the policies derived from their ideologies have been falsified time and again. Consequently, there is little left but their idealism, as well as their cynicism and paranoia, based upon chronically unfulfilled expectations.
This is not to say that their opponents are more generally better examples of prudent behavior -- they are not, I would venture to say. But, they do seem to offer more exceptions in astute, empirical observation than the left-wing. Sadly, they number fewer than in the past, so far as political theory and practice is concerned.
Television, single parent families, and syndicalism in our public schools have all taken their toll on the latent empirical dispositions of many people. No doubt, the corruption in the grants process has also contributed to society's stupefaction, via inculcation. Historicism has also led many a leftist to ruin; and, of course, the right is not immune to embellishing history. For example, too many folk on the right esteem our Founders as virtual demigods and, so, take their wisdom on faith. In point of fact, this irrational approach to their hard won knowledge would offend them; for, they were creatures of the Enlightenment. Some explicitly stated that they wanted no monument, but preferred that their ideas speak to posterity, for better or worse.
