Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> Josh Cahoon has brought up the deep subject of *why* we believe what
> we believe.
>
> > I wanted Gore to win. I wanted recounts. I thought I wanted recounts because
> > that seemed the fairest way to resolve such a close count. But maybe the fact
> > that I wanted Gore to win...
>
> Join the very small club of those people who will occasionally say something
> that could be used by their political antagonists. "See?", one of those
> idiots might shout, "some of those Gore supporters even *admit* that they
> just wanted Gore to win, and that's why they want the recounts!". Precisely
> the same argument would be equally true if the political polarity of the last
> two sentences was reversed.
Yes, certainly. There is no doubt that people generally leap to opinions
based on desires first, only later to be tempered, changed or confirmed
by reasoned argument, especially when people have made rather large
emotional investments in a given position over a protracted period like
an election cycle.
What is important to look at is what measures one is willing to consider
to confirm their own emotionally vested opinion. For example, there were
many districts across the country where the GOP could potentially have
tipped the balance in their favor outside of Florida. New Mexico, for
instance, went to the democrats by a handful of votes, far closer than
the Florida election, with a few districts exhibiting rather significant
signs of voter fraud, yet the GOP chose to not contest these beyond an
initial recount. The GOP never asked that different standards of
counting votes be used than those instituted on the day of the election.
It never initiated excessive legal proceedings.
For these reasons, public opinion turned in favor of the GOP and against
the Democrats because of perceptions of ethical behavior and lack of
sportsmanship. By persisting in claiming they were robbed of the
election, despite extensive recounts using the same election day
standards by independent organizations, the Democrats don't seem to
realize they lose more credibility, so polarized are they by the
propaganda generated perception that the election of Bush will destroy
the country (likely even more than people like myself felt similarly
about an election of Gore).
The spoilsport antics of the rent-a-riot left wing at the inauguration
and since have continued to help Bush by casting the left as too
immature to lead, and too shrilly extremist to represent the people.
This behavior demonstrates who is truly extreme and who is not. Even
with the defection of Sen. Jim Jeffords, merely months after winning
another term as a Republican, primarily due to the support of the
national GOP and after getting the GOP to support milk price supports in
the Northeast Dairy Compact in exchange for remaining in the party, you
don't see any calls by the party for a recall or resignation. A large
number of his individual contributors in Vermont demanded their money
back, which was quickly replaced by even more money from out of state
liberal sources. When a native American congressman, Ben Nighthorse
Campbell, switched from the DNC to the GOP in 1994, democrats were
calling for his recall and resignation left and right.
So the question is: how far are you willing to go to support your
beliefs before you reconsider them? How much contradictory fact are you
willing to ignore before you start to doubt the validity of your
beleifs? These questions indicate the reasonableness or extremism of a
person.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:03 MDT