Writing in 1516, Thomas More gets to the heart of one of the major problem with our country's present political life:
So there you have a group of people who are deeply prejudiced against everyone's ideas, or at any rate prefer their own. Suppose, in such company, you suggest a policy you've seen adopted elsewhere, or for which you can quote a historical precedent, what will happen? They'll behave as though their professional reputations were at stake, and they'd look fools for the rest of their lives if they couldn't raise some objection to your proposal....And yet we're quite prepared to reverse [the] most sensible decisions. It's only the less intelligent ones we cling on to like grim death. I've come accross this curious mixture of conceit, stupidity, and stubborness in several different places. On one occaison I even met it in England.
Utopia, trans. Paul Turner
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