Partisan self-deception

Apparently there has been a lot of discussion on the right about the falling dollar. Megan and Tyler both have interesting things to say about why most of it is silly from an economist's perspecitve. But Ezra has a good post about the underlying dynamics, and cites a very interesting study that that shows that the more "informed" voters believed more things that weren't true but fit their preexisting biases. This should be a very interesting finding. These discussions also make me wonder how anyone can be so silly as to want to peg the dollar to gold again. Have any of these people studied the depression? I would suggest The Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed as a starter. And how about Ron Paul's book about getting rid of the Fed. Oh my goodness, where do these people get their silly ideas from?