Our token anti-gunner makes a classic cognitive error when it comes to politics:
Why do you think there are such great differences between Republicans and Democrats. My own idea, very unscientific and totally without proof, is that among the Republicans you’ve got the mindless close-minded masses who cannot think outside their pre-conceived notions of how things should be. These are the millions who listen to Beck and Limbaugh and O’reilly for their inspiration. Among the Democrats, on the other hand, you’ve got the open-minded, the seekers, the idealists, folks who are generally better educated and better able to distinguish right from wrong.
Either that, or people who are into hunting, shooting, or who have a gun for self-defense, very strongly value that right and identify more with the party who has a stronger reputation for defending it. It’s always tempting to think of the other side as marching lemmings, and your side as enlightened thinking individuals, but down that rabbit hole lies madness. There’s plenty of political ignorance on both sides of the spectrum, and plenty of places you can find echo chambers, and opportunists telling people what they want to hear. It might not take the same form on both sides of the aisle, but any serious engagement in political discourse reveals MikeB’s assertion to be nonsense.
Yes. The real differences between the two groups is not whether they think. It is how they think and, more importantly, the fundamental principles they use to both initiate their reasoning process and weight the worth of their conclusions.
I once heard it described as when the Republicans were in charge, it was like a room full of old men. When the Democrats were in charge, it was like the kids had taken over the school.
I keep noticing that the Left (as opposed to Democrats and Republicans who are not much different, really) is living in a hazy timewarp, maintaining a set of pre-conceived notions of how things should be and ignoring everything that happened since the 1980’s – like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism.
It’s a cartoon-land of old Spartacus Youth League newspapers, with stories on southern lynchings and Unionization on the march – without ever a hint of church-lead Civil Rights successes, or of Jimmy Hoffa and the gangsterism of unions.
I really like MikeB. He’s so delightfully clueless about stuff, like a small child that believes in the tooth fairy.
“… folks who are generally better educated and better able to distinguish right from wrong.”
Maybe this guy should read “Lies my teacher told me” by Loewen. Surveys taken since WWII show that those who are college educated are more likely to be hawkish, bigoted, and supportive of government actions. As far as “open minded” goes… which side is it that ignores statistics, again?
OK, I admit it…with only a BSc in Chemistry and 2 Masters degrees I am an ill educated gun owner and 2nd amendment supporter. I would challenge any of the weak brained liberals to go through the rigorous education I went through at the hands of the Jesuits. I was taught to think as well as calculate, and it angers me to see people group us into the toothless neanderthal category. Most gun owners I’ve met are very patriotic, well read, and the most pious people you’d ever have the pleasure to talk to. Most gun owners are financially well off, and also know the value of a dollar. Something for the liberals to be jealous of, since this hints of successful capitalism. I believe that the left is trying to demean us, to get the middle of the road voters to think ill of us, and bend us to their weak minded arguments. After all, their tactics are; if you can’t defeat them in argument, just call them names, and give people the idea that they are less than intelligent and thus can’t take care of themselves. Well I for one, refuse to be labeled like this and would welcome the chance to bury these idiots in their own argument.
It’s not “thinking”. It’s projection, pure and simple.
What’s really funny is this guy still splits the U.S. into Republicans and Democrats. Yes, there really are only TWO types of people in this country.
Well, I guess “the woman with the earrings” has finally taken off the mask, and exposed his raw, unadulterated bigotry to the world. I was wondering how long he would be able to maintain the lie, and I guess his self-control finally gave out.
I cannot say as though I am surprised… when bigotry runs as deeply as his does, it must be a pain in the arse to keep it hidden.
Well, I am sure those statements nicely conform to his worldviews. That’s a comfortable position to be in, because everything just makes so much damned sense that way.
In fact, the statements sort of conform to a worldview I once had, before for many years working and living with dyed in the wool urban liberal democrats, and having lived in 10 states and visited at least 15 foreign countries.
Now I pretty much feel that far too often, the descriptor “mindless close-minded masses who cannot think outside their pre-conceived notions of how things should be” applies to people on all sides (instead of both sides) of the political and social spectrum. Sadly, I’ve come to conclude that what makes the world go is not so much which group is right or wrong, but which group wins at whatever the game of the time happens to be.
But one difference that has struck me time and again in America is that more rural, right-leaning social conservatives think they know better, whereas the more urban, left-leaning liberals know they know better. It’s the degree of arrogance that strikes me as a relatively accurate defining characteristic between the “two groups.”
I used to think like that…back when I was about 15. The fact that he still thinks that way is not a credit to his character.
The stupidest thing here is that, in spite of all the time he’s spent trolling gun blogs, he apparently has never read them well enough to know that–to paraphrase Thomas Edison–they are 90% perspiration (i.e., facts and statistics) and 10% inspiration (good old cheerleading for gun rights).
He seems to have no knowledge of the pro-2A scholarship by such as Dave Kopel and Clayton Cramer, nor does he show any awareness of the fact that Lawrence Tribe, a liberal’s liberal when it comes to legal scholarship, was forced to acknowledge a 2A individual right (even though he’s still basically anti-gun).
He gloats about how all those gun deaths are making more converts to gun control every day, even though polls show less and less support for gun control, on virtually every question encompassed by that issue.
He has said that gun rights supporters should be ignored, because Republicans are hypocrites on the Patriot Act–which is like saying that Brown v. Board of Education should be overturned because liberals support denial of gun rights.
I might add that it’s not just on guns that lefties like Mike are severely lacking in logic. They continue to say that missile defense doesn’t work, even though it’s already working; they continue to praise left-wing dictatorships even though their economics have been repeatedly found wanting; they oppose nuclear power even though scientists have been yelling at the top of their lungs that it’s the safest power around (and no, Mike, neither nuclear power plants nor nuclear waste sites are capable of going kaboom); in some cases, like Bill Maher, they even claim, against all scientific progress, that vaccines are a hoax!!! (You probably believe that too, don’t you, Mike? It’s just those rich pharmaceuticals trying to get rich by denying us the wisdom of the witch doctors).
These are some seriously ignorant people. Ignorant as in IGNORING the facts.
“I would challenge any of the weak brained liberals to go through the rigorous education I went through at the hands of the Jesuits. I was taught to think as well as calculate, and it angers me to see people group us into the toothless neanderthal category.”
I agree with you, Bill. It amuses me to have my IQ go down when I admit I’m a gun owner. One moment I’m a genius, the next moment I’m Forrest Gump. Curse those EBRs, draining my mental power! (chuckle)
Also, Jesuits? Man, i thought going for a double major-double minor B.S. was bad.
“There’s plenty of political ignorance on both sides of the spectrum, and plenty of places you can find echo chambers.”
Amen to that.
In the comments on my blog, AztecRed turned it around on me and described the best of the Republicans and the worst of the Democrats, exactly the opposite of what I did.
A token non-answer, with a press to the ever-mindless moral equivalence game.
MikeB continues to build up himself as a strawman we can use for our cause. He has no power on his own, but we can use his madness and hypocrisy to taint the very issues he champions (or at least the ones he champions for the moment given that there has yet to be a concrete law or political idea he hasn’t both praised and damned on his blog, or in the comments he makes).
Of course I’m curious if “Strawman” is the right term, as it appears that every person who preaches gun control in a public forum exhibits the irrationality, and an aversion to logic as he does to one degree or another.
Weather it be a simple internet troll like MikeB, Jadegold, or Markadephia, or a paid lobbyist like Paul Helmke or Josh Sugarmann…or a political figure like Mayor Bloomberg, or our very own President.