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Opinion, Fact, and the Right to Take Dead Aim at Your Foot

Daniel Patrick Moynihan
"You are entitled to your own opinion, 
but you are not entitled to your own facts."


Daniel Patrick Moynihan is often credited with saying that.  We have just had an election in which the results demonstrated that opinion wins elections.  


Hendrik Herzberg, writing in the New Yorker (Nov. 15), cites a poll taken a week before the election which showed that the opinion of two-thirds of the people is that 1) middle class taxes have gone up, 2) the economy has shrunk, 3) billions lent to the banks were lost forever, 4) illegal immigration was skyrocketing, and 5) the health care law would drive the deficit higher.  


The facts are that 1) for 95% of us our taxes are lower, 
2) the economy has been growing, slowly, for five straight 
quarters, 3) most of the TARP funds have already been repaid, 
and the rest soon will be, with a modest profit, 4) the number 
of illegal immigrants fell by about a million last year, 
5) the Congressional Budget Office says the new health care 
law will bring the deficit down.  

People don't go to the polls and affirm the facts.
People go to the polls and act on their opinions.

People go to the polls believing that Obama is a Muslim.
He isn't, but even if he were, would that make him ineligible?
People believe that our Constitution says we are a religious state:
specifically, a Christian religious state of (perhaps) a fundamentalist,
Baptist or Pentacostal or Catholic sort.  People are of the opinion
that there is a Death Panel; that making filthy rich people
stinking rich will increase their chances of becoming rich, too.

People actually believe that Christine O'Donnell would make
a fine Senator, that Michele Bachmann really sees
"unamericans" in Congress, that Barack Obama was born
in Kenya, that the universe is only 6,000 years old, that
the moon is made of green cheese, and that their friendly
neighborhood banker is only interested in helping them.

That the best government is no government.
That the best way to have money for retirement
is to put it into the hands of Bernie Madoff.
That only people who can afford it should have health care.
That Social Security is a scam.  That the earth is flat.

Well, Daniel Patrick Moyhihan was right:
people are entitled to their own opinions.
They are also entitled to vote.
And to shoot themselves in the foot.

That is a fact, enabled by the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court.

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