We are now officially in a country of idiots — where reason and evidence amount to jack — and are going to have to pay the price for our stupidity. We are officially, in the parlance of Stephen Colbert, a nation of “truthiness.”Consider the April 12 editorial in this very newspaper: it argued a decreased number of nuclear warheads would decrease the effectiveness of the American nuclear deterrent. This is absolute nonsense. Is it really reasonable to think that if we reduce the number of thermonuclear warheads we have as a nation to ONLY enough to virtually annihilate all life on the planet 10 to 15 times, we are any less safe than if we had enough warheads to annihilate all life on the planet 20 to 30 times?Further, isn’t it unreasonable to think we need more of a deterrent to prevent nuclear proliferation? The idea of a nuclear deterrent is contingent upon the Cold War theory of mutually assured destruction: we have a weapon that can annihilate our enemy, and our enemy has a similar power. Thus, since we are each assured of annihilating the other if one party strikes, no one fires a shot. However, with the world perception of American imperialism and the empirical evidence of such a doctrine (Afghanistan and Iraq), nuclear proliferation seems more likely a means of defending a small nation from the American military, with or without a nuclear arsenal.Our lunacy also expands to issues like health care. For the most part, one can find a large majority of people who approve of the reforms contained within the new health care legislation when you actually tell them what the reforms are. However, instead of worrying our nation of idiots with things like facts and evidence, we have a debate over non-existent death panels, socialized medicine and excessive intrusion of liberty with the individual mandate.I cannot accurately describe how idiotic the debate is without resorting to profanity, so I shall let you imagine how I would do so: the legislation is ridiculously centrist (a socialized system would be single payer), the insurance companies’ review boards for evading payment for expensive services already serve the purpose of death panels and the individual mandate is a necessity of ANY insurance reform. Without healthy people to lessen the risk, people avoid purchasing insurance until they need it, driving up risk and thus increasing premiums; mandating participation is necessary to ensure costs don’t skyrocket. And for those who still don’t like mandates, perhaps you do not like the freedom of being able to drive in this state: North Carolina law requires you to purchase insurance in order to register your vehicle. So if you object to the individual mandate, you must also object to driving your car in this state.And then we have the crazies who think the Census is part of a government conspiracy to plant microchips in everyone and bring about the End of Days. It is not. As surprising as it may be, the government does do the work to ensure crazy people have a standard supply of electricity to run the computers they use to do research on the evils of government on the Internet, which is an expansion of the government-created ARPANET and purchase a large number of weapons to fight the government, as the government-guaranteed Constitution gives them the right to own. And that’s just a start.If you are able to see the logical inconsistencies in all these cases (and others which, due to space limitations, I could not list here), congratulations! You are likely a rational, reasonable person!Otherwise, welcome to the United States of Truthiness: with irrationality and logical inconsistency for all.