Liberals are Lunatics

This is an odd topic, but Pro has challenged me, so I will take the opportunity to argue the subject. Pro has provided no opening argument argument or definitions, so I will take his resolution at face value. He affirms "Liberals are Lunatics." lunatic http://define.com... "Affected by lunacy; insane; mad; crazy; demented." or "A person affected by lunacy; an insane person, esp. one who has lucid intervals; a madman; a person of unsound mind. ...The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact. --Shak." [I believe Shak is Shakespeare, as the basketball player is Shaq] I also assume the resolution means "It is fair to generalize that liberals are lunatics, because most are." The question is whether the generality is appropriate. Liberals are not lunatics. They are smart and perfectly sane. The question is why do smart sane people believe weird things. Examples of weird things abound. A few examples: Barack Obama rose to power starting as a community organizer. Liberals vigorous defended the role of community organizer as an important and valid one. Liberals now attack town hall protesters on the grounds that they are organized, and hence not genuine and therefore worthless. It seems like lunacy to deify and attack the same thing. This morning on CNN, Paul Kurtz interviewed White House "disinformation czar" Linda Douglass. Douglass said it was her job to correct misinformation about the current health care proposals. In particular, videos were posted on the Internet in which Obama, before becoming President, advocated single-payer health care system and stated that it might take 15 or 20 years to transition to a single-payer system. Douglas said that the comments were taken out of context, and she had to correct the misinformation. Kurtz pressed for the details of the context; had Obama clarified or repudiated his earlier statements, so that it was unfair to represent what he has said as being the way it sounded? Douglas gave no such context, but rather that the comments were old and hence were not in the context of the current health care debate. She pointedly avoided saying that Obama has changed his position, but rather only that he should not be quoted as saying what he clearly said. That sounds like a lunatic rationalization. This is not lunacy, it is in fact rationalization of a belief system. The fundamental beliefs are overarching, meaning they take precedence over seeming counterexamples. We see this happen all the time among intelligent people who are perfectly sane: 1. Religion is an obvious example. Within any faith, there are countless examples of contradictions and inconsistencies that are fervently rationalized away. For example, in Christianity is a good Christian an ascetic who renounces family, wanders in the desert preaching, and dies a martyr or is a good Christian one who embraces family, community, and orderly values? The extremely coexist. There are many more radical examples of religious rationalization. 2. In economics, Milton Friedman and, say, Noam Chomsky are diametrical opposites. One or the other is dead wrong. For example, productivity increases, Friedman would say that it proves that capitalism increases prosperity; Chomsky says it proves capitalism exploits workers. We don't have to know which one is correct to know that one of them is applying intelligent rationalization. Neither is insane. 3. Conspiracy theorists, like 9/11 conspiracy theorists, rationalize away all contrary evidence. Explosives experts say it would take many hundreds of people many months to prepare a building like the WTC for controlled demolition, but none of the 10,000 occupants and visitors ever noticed anything. this is contrary evidence that must be either or ignored or given the ultimate rationalization, "we don't know how it was done, but it was done." Politics is like religion and many other aspects of society. People seek simple all-explaining beliefs, and they use their mental faculties to defend those rather than challenge them. I think this is a consequence, in part, of the world being too complex to be coped with without simple beliefs that readily resolve many problems. I don't think people will ever get past that. The best that can be hoped for it that some people can come to snap out of "belief mode" and into "analysis mode" upon the occasions when they ought to. In support of my view, I cite the analysis by Michael Shermer in "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time" A book review summarized: "So, why do people believe weird things? "More than any other, the reason people believe weird things," says Shermer, "is because they want to. . . .It feels good. It is comforting. It is consoling." Secondly, weird beliefs offer "immediate gratification." People like weird beliefs because they are simple. Weird beliefs also satisfy the quest for significance: they satisfy our moral needs and our desire that life be meaningful. Finally, he says, people believe weird things because weird things give them hope. " http://www.skepdic.com... Shermer has a video that gives a flavor of his explanation of the thinking process at work in the minds of believers http://www.ted.com... Shermer is talking about science not politics, but the nature of his arguments are applicable to our topic. A primary use of intelligence in humans is to rationalize preconceived beliefs. Intelligent people can build extremely complex rationalizations. Liberalism is the rationalization of overarching beliefs, it's not lunacy. What that means is that it leaves individual issues to be debated on their merits, outside of the warm blanket of total belief. I agree with the general liberal position on some issues, while disagreeing on many more. The resolution is negated.