I think it's a combination of a)having absolutely no background in scientific theory (went to yale law) b)a strong religious conviction that influences his thinking and c)an equally strong belief in extreme right wing politics. The singleminded persecution complex and ego-inducing qualities of the last two preclude the need to know something about what he's saying about science before he opens his mouth and acts a fool on TV, makes a movie about something he's pants on head retarded about, etc.

He's pretty clever about law, but dude is still arguing that Nixon is a great man, one of our best presidents and that his tenure left america a better place for having happened, so yeah, not a lot of common sense or ability to digest information that doesn't agree with his theories.

Plus he's pretty old now. Guys can get cantakerous over pretty much anything as they progress in years. It's like we get more and more reasonable the older we get, then reach this apogee at 45 and afterwards start sliding in the opposite direction. The next thing you know we're all loudly arguing for no reason with the guy in front of us in line at the grocery store that nigger isn't a bad word, because is just means "from near the river niger" and we kind of know we're wrong, but goddamnit it, we're sick of people's shit and this guy has a nose ring and we're pretty much sick of that knuckleheadedness too.

Yeah there's a big difference between having a lot of facts at your command and being able to sort through them critically and rationally. Just visit any medical school, or pre-med college major, to discover this firsthand (Rishi excepted, obviously).

No joke: Ben Stein thinks that the nasty, evil Congress directly enabled the Cambodian slaughter by tying Nixon up in those irrelevant Watergate investigations. See, Nixon totally woulda given Pol Pot what-fer and we wouldn't have all these killing fields an' shit.

The fact that Nixon actually escalated the war and brutally bombed Cambodia doesn't seem to penetrate. SOMEhow, Nixon would have kissed it all better, he's sure.

Watch the beginning of the video again. Saying 'you fool!' is part of Ben's specifications.