23 Jun 2020 3:52 pm
By splunch:
What makes a Liberal? An open mind.
That's what I always thought. I land on the conservative side of plenty of issues (not the right-wing side) because it seems to me that the solution to a given problem is to do nothing, or very little, because we cannot always fix things, and sometimes trying to fix things just creates more complexity and more problems. Other times, either a problem is so severe that you have to do something, or there is a clear solution that can be implemented without doing any harm, and you proceed accordingly. Sort of a Hippocratic Oath of policy.
First, do no harm. If you can do some good without making things worse, then do it. I think a lot of left-leaning people can get a bit trigger happy and start throwing out solutions that can wind up making things worse. It's important to analyze problems and the proposed solutions with a critical eye. You LOOK for possible trouble, be a pessimist, work through the unintended consequences and try to account for the fact that you'll probably miss some.
And then, after you've done that, if you still have a plan that you like, and you're willing to accept the compromises you'll inevitably be forced to accept, you can go ahead with your eyes open. Left-leaning people can be just as close-minded and tyrannical as right-leaning people. Liberal thinking is all about finding the best solution, not just the one that comes with the preferred flavor of rationale.
The radicals on both sides are easy to spot. They are both characterized by the same logical fallacy: you can make things better by making them worse. If your car has some bad gas in it you don't light the thing on fire and drive it over a cliff on the assumption that you're going to find a newer, better car once you've done that. This is the kind of thinking you'll find on the radial left and the radical right. The difference is just in the rationale.
What makes a Liberal? An open mind.
That's what I always thought. I land on the conservative side of plenty of issues (not the right-wing side) because it seems to me that the solution to a given problem is to do nothing, or very little, because we cannot always fix things, and sometimes trying to fix things just creates more complexity and more problems. Other times, either a problem is so severe that you have to do something, or there is a clear solution that can be implemented without doing any harm, and you proceed accordingly. Sort of a Hippocratic Oath of policy.
First, do no harm. If you can do some good without making things worse, then do it. I think a lot of left-leaning people can get a bit trigger happy and start throwing out solutions that can wind up making things worse. It's important to analyze problems and the proposed solutions with a critical eye. You LOOK for possible trouble, be a pessimist, work through the unintended consequences and try to account for the fact that you'll probably miss some.
And then, after you've done that, if you still have a plan that you like, and you're willing to accept the compromises you'll inevitably be forced to accept, you can go ahead with your eyes open. Left-leaning people can be just as close-minded and tyrannical as right-leaning people. Liberal thinking is all about finding the best solution, not just the one that comes with the preferred flavor of rationale.
The radicals on both sides are easy to spot. They are both characterized by the same logical fallacy: you can make things better by making them worse. If your car has some bad gas in it you don't light the thing on fire and drive it over a cliff on the assumption that you're going to find a newer, better car once you've done that. This is the kind of thinking you'll find on the radial left and the radical right. The difference is just in the rationale.