On balance, generalizations about political ideologies are true

What generalizations are valid?For Pro to make his case, he must tell use what his rule is for distinguishing valid generalizations from invalid ones. He gives us few clues as to what his test is. The best clue he provides is:"And, when a political generality can't lend insight into a person's personality, such as their capacity for tolerance, nor their economic or social views, such as the differences in Libertarian views related to property and cultural egalitarianism, then I can't really gather much accurate info, can I?"So if someone tells Pro he is a Maoist, Trotskyite, Socialist, Libertarian, Liberal, or Conservative, Pro claims he is unable to draw anything useful from that declaration. Whatever conclusion one might draw could possibly be incorrect, so, according to Pro the generalities are useless. I listed many of the possible exceptions to the generalities about dogs: they might not bark, might not chase cats, might not have four legs, and so forth. So saying that a neighbor owns a dog, I guess, says nothing useful to Pro. Think about how different Chihuahuas are from Great Danes. Pro's argument is if the generality does not produce a long list of specific attributes it's useless. Nearly everyone but Pro finds ideological generalities usefulPro tries to argue that political ideologies are different from every other generality because political ideologies are indistinct while other generalities are "black and white." Pro insists that a generally about political ideology ought to describe a person's personality. Pro's demand for characterization of personalities implies that Pro thinks personality traits are black and white. That's not remotely true. Characteristics like "polite" or "extroverted" convey useful information, but they are not precise. Personality tests show trends, but a person might be polite about some things and abrupt about others. The first line of the Wikipedia article on Libertarianism says, "Libertarianism is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the organizing principle of society. Libertarianism includes diverse beliefs, all advocating minimization of the state and sharing the goal of maximizing individual liberty and political freedom." Pro implies there is nothing useful in that. The definition of libertarianism is quite broad, so it doesn't tell us nearly as much as, for example, "socialist." Because it's broad, the article includes seven subclasses. That's typical of ideological generalities. A broad generalization is narrowed hierarchically by additional descriptive terminology.The article on Socialism starts, "Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are publicly or commonly owned and controlled cooperatively, or a political philosophy advocating such a system." http://en.wikipedia.org... Pro must find nothing useful in that either. I think that almost everyone other than Pro would find considerable utility in knowing whether a candidate for office describes himself as a Socialist or a Libertarian or whatever else.How common is it for people to be as perplexed as Pro by generalities? Certainly not academics who study political ideologies. For example, eighteen hours of college lectures are offered on DVD on the subject of "Conservative Tradition." The course description starts,"Preserving the traditions and values of the past and applying them to the future—this is the core of the Conservative attitude. While the development of Conservatism has followed different arcs in the United States and Great Britain, this rich and fascinating political tradition has decisively impacted the evolution of both nations and their grand political institutions." http://www.thegreatcourses.com...College professors understand and benefit from the discourse, as do students of political science and history. Yet Pro rejects the notion that anything useful can be generalized. We've already seen the Wikipedia articles, from which most people would claim to learn useful information. Searches of amazon.com find 5,391 books tagged with "conservatism" http://www.amazon.com... and 8,899 books tagged with "liberalism." There is a vast literature that finds the generalities meaningful.Pro's fundamental error is supposing that a generality is valid only if it produces a long list of unerring data certain to apply to every individual. The nature of generalities is that they provide useful information that does not characterize individuals precisely. That's the nature of statistics is that they describe the group without describing any individual exactly. A lecturer's assertion "After Mrs Gandhi's assassination in 1984, the move away from Indian socialism became more open." http://courses.essex.ac.uk... does not describe any list of particulars that happened, yet the generality is extremely useful in understanding the post-war economy of the country. Ideological generalities are common in the news and in day-to-day political discussions. The phrase "conservative pundit" searched on google as a quoted phrase yields 473,000 hits. Clear many ordinary people find the generalization useful.Virtually all generalizations fail to detail individuals. A physicians book of diagnostic symptoms is unlikely to precisely describe any one patient's case in detail. The physician must fit the patients symptoms to the patterns described. Generalities about ideologies usefully describe tendencies, but rarely absolutes. The ability central to intelligence is to find patterns among potentially confusing data, and to recognize and apply the generalities for useful understanding. Wikipedia and other reference works claim to make useful generalities, I challenge Pro to explain while academics and students of history, authors of at least 14,000 books and the readers of those books, and media pundits of all stripes find generalizations about political ideologies useful, while Pro does not.Pro's ProblemI think Pro has fixated on the lack of specificity in the singe case of "libertarian." For reasons not relevant to our debate, the word "libertarian" is extremely broad, so identifying as a libertarian does not give nearly as much useful information as words like "conservative" or "socialist." The Wikipedia article on libertarianism accurately reflects that, and goes on to the properties of seven subspecies to get to greater specificity. Complaining about that is like complaining that "dog" is useless for not distinguishing a Chihuahua from a Great Dane. Broader terms are useful for some purposes a not for others.When former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination, few people outside of his home state knew anything about him. Describing him as a libertarian was useful in getting us oriented to his political beliefs. We expected him to have opinions more along the lines of Ron Paul than of the other candidates. Few people would suppose his opinions would be identical, but it brings to the forefront of the discussion issues like foreign policy and drug legalization where libertarians tend to depart from other Republicans. That's useful. Something has to explain why virtually every academic, student of politics and history, author, and pundit has no problem understanding and using ideological generalities, but Pro has a problem. The other possibility, which I think less likely, is the basic property of statistics that generalities describe the whole, but not any one individual in the population. The utility of the generalization is that it describes tendencies, conditional probabilities, which allow for ideas to be discussed and tracked as then influence society. It's useful to know where the political pendulum is in is arc.