Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
i find it debilitating intellectually to waste my time taking conservative ideology seriously, except as a kind of socio-political problem, a kind of social laboratory experiment in the engineering of viewpoints.
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One driving force behind ideological bipolarization is the refusal by people on virtually all sides of the debate to take seriously the positions espoused by their opponents. We all know that there are legitimate arguments against and in favor of pretty much every political position and pretending otherwise is a form of self-deception.
General openness and respect of alternative points of view is a prerequisite for meaningful, civil discussion.
To quote the Philosopher: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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