Quote:
|
I used to think that political differences were just due to lack of information or some self serving interest. Many times this is true, but occasionally I have run into people who are as informed as I am, with the same facts, who come to totally different conclusions. How two intelligent people with the same data could come to different conclusions used to puzzle me. I came to realize it was the paradigm from which they view the world that was fundamentally different (...)
|
i have been sitting here for a few minutes in amazement that ustwo has posted something in politics i actually agree with and which i understand as a reasonable position.
i would call hell to see if it has frozen if i thought it existed.
on another note--i find it curious that folk who are not and have not been invovled with operations in iraq are contradicting information from folk who are there about equipment problems. i find it particularly curious that in one case at least the contradiction is based on experience in an unrelated, much different war. nor do i understand how citing the date a report first appeared makes the content of that report "old news" when he presents not even a scrap of information to show that the problem had been addressed.
but whatever--how did the link get set up that if you support the administration then it follows that that administration can do absolutely nothing wrong? that support requires a complete abdication of anything approaching critical thinking? why is it such a problem to acknowledge ANYTHING that even might be problematic about the administration, its policies, its actions in or around iraq, no matter how much information piles up to the contrary?
is there any possible critical mass of information that would cause such blind allegiance to shake even a little?
or is the security that comes from the absolute refusal to think critically part of what explains adherence to conservative precepts for this new, extreme right variant of conservatism.
i know quite a few old-school conservative types, more mandarin sorts, for whom this kind of blind allegiance was NEVER an aspect of being conservative. when and how did this redefinition occur?
the mode of argument particular to contemporary far-right ideology has nothing in common whatsoever with previous types of conservative thinking.
this has two points--one is contained in the above--the other is apparently general paradigm can and do change, and often quite fast--in this case, the new right has managed to redefine the notion of conservative in a quite fundamental ways in the space of less that 20 years. i would imagine that many of the folk who support the bush administration to the complete exclusion of critique--and there are several who have posted above--would nearly come to blows with older-school conservatives, if their written self-presentation meshed with who they are in real life.