loquitur

Host, I arrived at my opinions from doing a lot of reading. I have changed views on a number of issues as a result of new information and real life experience. You need to accept that intelligent well-read people can arrive at conclusions different from yours and still be intelligent well-read people.

I tend to have very liberal (in the classic sense) views about most issues, though not all. I also believe in stepping back and taking the long view in assessing events. Finally, I think partisanship is poison. Not only does it interfere with interpersonal relationships, it makes people unscrupulous. It is the mode of thought most conducive to making smart people act stupidly that I have yet to encounter.

That's why you have no doubt found that I'm not in a constant state of outrage, and my views generally aren't partisanly predictable. You might want to ask yourself whether you're doing yourself any favors by not stepping back once in a while to ask yourself whether you are really thinking things all the way through. I have found in life that you never know where you might find wisdom, so everyone's views are worth considering and evaluating - some more than others, true - but it's important not to have your filters pre-set to block information that might be a bit uncomfortable. The world doesn't adjust itself to your comfort levels, though you can certainly adjust your information inputs to maximize your own comfort. It's much more useful to step back and ask whether there isn't something you're missing. It also might combat the apparent hubris of the supposition that those who disagree with your views are stupid or brainwashed or indoctrinated. Remember, those who disagree with you could say the same thing about you, it's just an issue of who is doing the brainwashing and with what tools. [The "you" in the preceding few sentences is a generic "you," not a reference necessarily to you, host.]

See, to me one expansionist totalitarian mass murdering ideology isn't all that different from another, no matter what platitudes the dictator invoked to justify his bloodlust. If you think Stalin and Hitler aren't roughly mirror images of each other, I do'nt know what to tell you.