I’ve had some time on my hands this evening and read some "conservative" political blogs. Politics is the art of making decisions with insufficient evidence to firmly support one decision over another. Thus, unlike hard science, it is a subject of hot and passionate debate. In addition to lack of firm evidence supporting one view over another, we tend to be socially imprinted with a certain philosophical and political outlook early in live. For a good fraction of us, it is very hard to later re-evaluate views and opinions that we "soaked up" early in life as new evidence comes along. Thus rather than change our political views so that they are compatible with new evidence, we tend to undervalue or ignore evidence that does not support our already held view. Alternatively, we will try to discredit any piece of evidence that does not fit into our world view. The scientific name for this is the Confirmation Bias and it is a source of great misery in our lives. The formal sciences have developed ways of dealing with this human trait, but not everybody that writes about politics or acts in the political arena has formal scientific training. Even if they did, it would still be possible to reasonably disagree about issues. But I have to believe that if more among us had scientific training our political discourse would be based on reason, aka evidence, not pure unsupported opinion masquerading as rational discourse.
OK, an example: Here’s a nice essay about "explaining liberal thinking". Right off the bat, the author makes it clear where he stands on this issue, there is no pretense of objectivity. The author’s definition of liberalism is "childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues." Liberals are like children, conservatives (the author as one example) are the adults that ,so it is implied, can deal with issues unemotionally, based solely on the facts at hand. I think a good percentage of the conservative public holds this view. The first part of this essay is full of generalizations and commonplaces and without a single example or evidence to support his case. It is thus not possible to evaluate the author’s personal opinions in an objective, fact-based manner.
Interestingly, in the author’s world view, liberalism is akin to religion, which presumably means the author is not a religions type. Thus we may find out more about the author’s world view than about liberalism in the first half of this piece.
The second half of the essay starts with this:
Why are so many liberals hostile to the troops? Because the troops tend to be conservative (evil) and because they’re out killing people and breaking things (which would make most liberals feel like bad people).
The author really believes that "so many" ( I guess this is a majority?) liberals are hostile to the men and women that serve in the U.S. military. The author just "knows" this and there is no need to cite references that would indicate that "so many" liberals are hostile to our troops. But is the premise "so many liberals are hostile to our troops" really true? Is there scientific, objective evidence available on this? I do not buy this premise and thus the entire argument is worthless, from my point of view. But the important point is that the author of this article unquestionably believes that liberalism equates with hostility to our troops. Again, I think a majority of ‘hardcore’ conservatives agree with the author on this point because they know it to be true in their gut. They need no further evidence. The fact that many liberals serve or served in the U.S. armed forces is ignored and played down in the author’s mind…these liberal servicemen are…ah… exceptions that prove the rule: Classic Confirmation Bias.
Another unsupported premise and "explanation" follows:
Why are so many liberals unpatriotic? It makes liberals feel morally superior to rant about what’s wrong with their own country. Plus, as an added bonus, people from other nations agree with them and that makes them feel good as well.
I take issue with the premise, in that I do not think that liberals are less or more patriotic than conservatives and the author fails to provide objective evidence to support his claim. Just as well he may have written "Why do so many liberals have body odor? Because they refuse to take frequent showers." Same claim, same explanation. It’s an unsupported opinion, nothing more.
The list goes on. In summary, there is a startling discrepancy between the authors implied claim that conservatives like the author deal with the world on the basis of facts (NOT emotions as liberal do), and the complete absence of verifiable facts in this essay. Only someone who has a strong case of the Confirmation Bias would not notice this paradox.
Time to retire to my very liberal bed. Good night!
