The Right, the Left, and Economics

From the Wall Street Journal. In which I am not surprised:

Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and I considered the 4,835 respondents' (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics. We also asked the respondents about their political leanings: progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative; and libertarian.....In this case, percentage of conservatives answering incorrectly was 22.3%, very conservatives 17.6% and libertarians 15.7%. But the percentage of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly was 67.6% and liberals 60.1%. The pattern was not an anomaly.

One of the things that I realized when I began studying sound economics was how useful it was when refuting left-wing ideology. Because the reality is, left-liberalism is not based on reason or evidence, but mere emotional plea. The reason why so many leftists are willfully ignorant of economics is because if they had a reasonable knowledge of the subject, they wouldn't be leftists in the first place. And as the current recession that started in 2008 has demonstrated in real time, even leftists with seemingly impressive academic credentials in economics were confounded by the events that unfolded simply because they were inexplicable within their left economic framework known as Neo-Keynesianism.
But I think there is another element to this as well. And that is that Leftists-liberals simply cannot think logically. It is a rarity indeed when one hears a left-liberal politician actually present a coherent argument - and whenever one does it is usually based on a demonstrably incorrect fact or assumption. Also, if one looks at the questions of the survey, most of them are completely logical and could be answered answered correctly by someone who has never even cracked Econ 101. Either way, this study is an absolute darning piece of evidence against the leftist dogma that the democratic party is the party of intellect and sophistication.