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Today’s February 19, 2026 Views on the News from the Couch podcast asks the important question: Why do I think the left, littered with smart people and many academics, has more stupid ideas than the right?

Not that the right doesn’t have its own stupid ideas—we absolutely do. I’ve voted for Trump three times, but most of my conservative friends and I are unhappy with the tariff situation.  And we could name a few others.  And we express those criticisms.

My experience is that conservative bad ideas are more likely to get winnowed out faster, while a lot of bad ideas on the left live much longer, with less criticism, and a lot more social pressure to pretend they’re brilliant.

I want to walk through why I think that is—using a couple of lenses: capitalism vs. central planning, something called the Abilene paradox, and how elite media and elite psychology help dumb ideas survive.