Grames Posted March 2, 2010 Report Share Posted March 2, 2010 In the first two paragraphs Ayn Rand identifies why politics is so viciously personal, and why there are conspiracy theories. Of course it is still true today, and on the left and the right. It is all in how people think, whether they are attacking Sarah Palin's uterus or Barack Obama's citizenship, when they participate in bad science by forming a circle of biased peer review and when they perceive attacks on bad science as only a personal attack. From The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. II, No. 15 April 23, 1973 Brothers, You Asked For It!--Part II The concrete-bound pragmatist mentality cannot fight for an abstract goal. It cannot fight for anything in the realm of ideas, only against something. To fight for, means to struggle to bring something into existence, which requires the power of abstraction; to fight against, means to oppose something which is there already. But even to fight against an existing idea requires the promulgation of ideas. What can one find as a substitute, which is there already and which—one has been taught—is unaffected by ideas? Men. For many years past, the ideological policy and argumentation of most of the political Right has been one solid ad hominem. Republican candidates me-too'd the Democrats, adding only the claim that they, the Republicans, would do the job better, because they were better, kindlier, more experienced, or more folksy men (thus losing election after election). The crusade of Senator Joseph McCarthy was not fighting communism, but communists; it consisted merely in a campaign of party-card hunting. General Motors did not fight Ralph Nader on the issues, but hired investigators to spy on him, hoping to find material for a personal exposé (and failed). The John Birch Society ascribes all the disasters of the modern world to a conspiracy of evil men. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rebelconservative Posted March 2, 2010 Report Share Posted March 2, 2010 Barack Obama's citizenship, there are some nuts out there, but I don't think you can say that everyone with questions about this is a conspiracy theorist, it is simple matter of Constitutional eligibility. There were doubts about McCain, these were easily settled upon production of his birth certificate. Obama could settle the issue once and for all by releasing his original birth certificate, one must question why he refuses to do this and spends millions on lawyers to prevent its release. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake_Ellison Posted March 2, 2010 Report Share Posted March 2, 2010 one must question why he refuses to do this and spends millions on lawyers to prevent its release. One ends up asking that question only after managing to be dupable enough to buy into this "millions spent on lawyers to prevent the release of a birth certificate" nonsense, without a shred of evidence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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