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Originally Posted by randolph
Posted on a political forum. 
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Your political orientation says more about you than about the state of society. Your political orientation does not correlate with your intelligence - your ability to analyze and solve problems, it has to do with your values, and values are not rational. Evolution produced liberals and conservatives, which means each have a claim to the validity of their values. If not, evolution would have gotten rid of them. Every ideology has a dark side and a light side. Liberals and socialists are dead on when they attack robber barons and anybody else who amasses wealth by organized theft. But at some point, they become parasitic on people who earn their wealth honestly, because they cannot take the ideological blinders off. Conservatives are dead on when they perceive and respond to external threats and protect the property of people who earn their wealth honestly, but at some point they try to create a permanent hereditary wealthy class, because they cannot take the ideological blinders off. Does any one try, really try, to understand their political opponents? Rarely. Its so much more comforting to call them idiots, or sadists, or masochists, or the embodiment of evil. Its too scary to try to really understand your political opponents - it feels too much like agreeing with them. Anyone who does not wish to trancend the blinders of their own ideology is just another dog howling at the moon, like the original poster. Trancending your own ideology is not the same as discarding your ideology, or adopting that of your opponent. It just makes you sound like less of a fool.
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Ok, let's see if there are any empirical truths. Possibly this: It's never good practice to routinely run a deficit unless it's a national emergency."
No matter what your party, is this ever false?