Dichotomy: Reasonable versus Unreasonable?

Blogs for Bush:

When you really boil it down, what we have in America isn’t a left/right dichotomy but more of a reasonable/unreasonable split – it is simply unreasonable to think that President Bush knew about 9/11 in advance, or that he tricked America into liberating Iraq, or that American troops are torturing terrorists. Any reasonable person is turned off by people who make such accusations, and that explains why in 2002 and 2004, the GOP vote increased…not so much because the GOP became more popular, but because the GOP remained reasonable. As Swirsky points out, the left just got nuttier – ever more unreasonable.

Everyone needs to sit back and consider the implications of their ideas and conclusions and the assumptions that underly them. This is how ‘reasonableness’ is determined. A general rule is that the more extreme the implications or assumptions the stronger the evidence must be. There is a balance between these three factors, assumptions, implications, and evidence, that determine the quality of a perception in regards to reality. This is the reasonableness measure.

The purpose of sitting back and examining one’s ideas is to see if something is being shoved under the rug, intentionally or otherwise, in order to avoid an unpleasant truth. Does an individual criminal speak for an entire society? This is what those who try to condemn our leaders because of the alleged actions of an individual soldier are saying. Often it seems as if it is known that the implication is too outrageous to become an assertion so it is left as an implication and anything that supports it is emphasized as a roundabout means to promote an agenda that is unreasonable if put on its own two feet.

The problem is that this kind of intellectual dishonesty does not stand on a firm foundation. It is worn away by time and by inspection. Those who desire to maintain it must often build bulwarks and artifacts to keep it standing. These themselves create a monument to the dishonesty that becomes more and more ridiculous as time and inspection reveal its true nature. There is some point at which those who are invested in keeping it standing must either realize the dishonesty and retreat or they will devolve into insanity, in which case they must necessarily be conquered.

It is best for each individual to take care with the balance of assumption, implication, and evidence to weigh their ideas and conclusions and to understand their quality. If that quality suffers, then the adherence to the idea should be weakened. This is called being open minded and is usually considered healthy.