President Ronald Reagan once said that “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” As has happened many times before, the reactions to the Uvalde shooting demonstrated that Reagan had a point. When polled, people to the left in the political spectrum consistently believe factually untrue things.
Guns
The parents of the children killed by a madman in Uvalde did not have time to process or grieve their losses before Democrats turned the tragedy into a political fistfight over gun control. In addition to lack of courtesy, it also revealed a stunning lack of knowledge of basic facts. Twitter was filled with statements about guns that bore little resemblance to reality.
People claim that America has the highest gun killing rate globally, but the truth is that the United States ranks number 18 in terms of gun homicide death rate. The more knowledgeable respond to this by making the more accurate statement that America has the highest gun killing rate among developed nations.
That is technically true, but about 90% of those homicides are committed in a dozen inner-city neighborhoods in certain Democrat-run cities like Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Baltimore. If these pockets of gang-related violence are excluded from the statistics, the rest of America has a gun murder rate as an average developed nation.
Police Deaths
When people are asked to estimate how many unarmed black men are killed by police every year, the accuracy of the response is directly related to political affiliation. The more liberal a respondent reports being, the more they overestimate the number of deaths.
More than half of “very liberal” thought that the correct number was higher than 1,000, and 22% thought the number was 10,000 or higher, according to Skeptic Research Center. The actual number was 27 in 2019, according to Mapping Police Violence. Similarly, liberals overestimate the percentage of people killed by police who are black. Those labeling themselves as “liberal” and “very liberal” thought 56% and 60%, respectively. The correct number was 24.9%.
COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats were far more eager to lockdown the economy and wear masks than Republicans. The reason may be found in what they believed about the disease, as 41% of Democrats compared to just 28% of Republicans thought that over half of COVID-19 patients needed hospitalization. The correct number was between 1% and 5%, which 26% of Republicans and only 10% of Democrats got right.
Climate Change
(Photo by Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Many Americans believe that climate change is a significant threat to American well-being, 88% of Democrats and 31% of Republicans, but the facts do not support this view. According to the IPCC, there is no observable acceleration in sea level rise and no trend in extreme weather events.
Even according to the doomsayers, the economic impact of global warming will be minuscule. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that a warming of 7.2°F per century would reduce the global GDP growth by 7.2% by 2100. Thus, even with catastrophic global warming, we will be barely noticeably less wealthy than we otherwise would be far in the future.
The Media
Why do liberals know so much that isn’t so? The Swedish statistician Hans Rosling provided a humorous answer: Chimps are more knowledgeable than journalists because they gave random answers and therefore were correct on average 50% of the time, while the journalists consistently answered false on all crucial scientific questions. He jokingly said that if you want to know the truth, just ask a journalist and assume the opposite is true.
Gapminder is an organization founded by Rosling to give ordinary people and policymakers access to vital statistics. They have polled people on essential issues and found that only 7% of the respondents scored better than monkeys. Rosling’s findings may explain why liberals are so misinformed: They are more likely to believe what they hear in the mainstream media.
