Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1878 — Stupid People. [ARTICLE]

Stupid People.

We are often tempted in moments of forgetfulness to overlook the blessings we owe to stupid people. Apart from the pleasures we derive from laughing at them, we are indebted to them for hours of tranquil happiness. Making fun of them is but a one-sided enjoyment after all, for they cannot answer back again, and are seldom good enough even to turn the other cheek. As butts, therefore, they are failures. You can never calculate how far to go with them. You may offend with a piece of trifling banter after your most cutting sarcasms have passed unheeded. But the stupid man is the backbone of the nation. He is the prophet of common sense. Unlike Charles 11., he never says a witty thing, but seldom does an unwise one. His usefulness in the social economy of the world has yet to be acknowledged, his place in the order of creation to be fixed. Yet such people form the bulk of every congregation, and down to their level sermons must be preached. They constitute the whole body of aggrieved parishioners, and laws must be made to satisfy the requirements of their several cases. They are the voting power of every constituency; they oblige their representatives to name a party and stick to it; they pin him, as they say, to his colors. They insist on defining everything, particularly matters of opinion, and think, when they have given a heresy a name, that it is more than half refuted. Yet they never understand definitions when they have made them, and, though they believe blindly in a form of words, seldom remember it correctly. They are led in politics by cries and are great on uniformity and uniforms.