Plug for Bryan Caplan's Book

Even though Caplan’s book hasn’t been released yet, I was reminded of its impending release when one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers wrote this:

Someone like Kos or Josh Marshall will never, ever get this about us – we (Republicans) are an extremely pragmatic group of people who like to win and aren't willing to lose just because liberal bloggers and the Media say we should lose.

I’m not arguing with any points that Sullivan’s reader makes, but the tone of Sullivan’s reader reminded me about what Bryan Caplan wrote in an essay a few months back:

My view is that these are symptoms not of ignorance, but of irrationality. In politics as in religion, some beliefs are more emotionally appealing than others. For example, it feels a lot better to blame sneaky foreigners for our economic problems than it does to blame ourselves. This creates a temptation to relax normal intellectual standards and insulate cherished beliefs from criticism — in short, to be irrational.

A “pragmatic group of people who like to win…” It would be pretty hard to argue against that statement’s rationale.