This is perhaps the most significant paragraph I have read in a long time. It captures what I have inarticulately been trying to say for the last several years. It captures the danger of the extreme left and right.
When populists put partisanship before truth, they sabotage good government. When progressives divide people into competing castes, they turn the nation against itself. Both diminish institutions that resolve social conflict. Hence they often resort to coercion, however much they like to talk about justice.
The Economist
Truth matters. Facts matter. The willingness to ignore truth and create facts from fiction will destroy us from within.
As Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The divisive strategy employed today is tearing us apart by race, age, gender, income, wealth, worker from entrepreneur and more.
To what end, some unattainable society based on naive assumptions and ignoring human nature? In any case, do Americans want to give up thinking for themselves, for taking and exercising responsibility by deferring to those who would impose their “we know best” extreme philosophy?
Make no mistake. At one extreme we are talking about those aligned with a Donald Trump ideology and at the other extreme those who accept what Warren, Sanders, Jayapal, Ocasio- Cortez and other extreme progressives see as the new order.
We need a new political party, a moderate party — maybe named the Radical Centrists. .
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I appreciate professional writers who can say what I think more eloquently and succinctly than I. A few wasted minutes on various social media sites suggests that most of those posting seem to belong to one team or the other. They prioritize scoring political points over truth and facts. I prefer what John Stuart Mill wrote: that those societies where the left and right worked together were more successful than those where each group strove to dominate the other and therefore not need to listen to or work with the other side. Which is where we are today.
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Both timely and relevant. Excellent post.
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I believe that there are many reasons why Americans have stop thinking for themselves. A big factor is that the schools have become indoctrination centers. Schools used to teach critical thinking and colleges encouraged the free exchange of ideals. I can tell the story of my grandson who had a scholarship to a liberal college but was an outcast so he quit and joined the army. But instead I encourage everybody to view a PragerU YouTube video with Maria Bello who legally was able to immigrate from Venezuela seven years ago. Maria Bello tells of an essay she wrote about her home country and the professor gave her a 70 because he said the things she wrote were not true. She protested and told the professor that she lived under the socialist rule and everything was true. He said you can’t say those things.
Most people just want to live their lives without any conflict and if it doesn’t directly affect them, they don’t care.
We are very close to losing our freedom of speech. Opposing points of views are being cancelled. “Fact checkers” are denying the truth even with video as proof. George Orwell’s book 1984 is too much like a real play book for want is going on. Big tech and main stream media has become the Ministry of Truth.
A very educated man told me this weekend that he is starting to believe the conspiracy theories as truths. The United States has spent 245 years under the motto of e pluribus unum and now one the political parties want segregation again. Why? What is the end game?
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There is no middle ground for the good of the country. Where one stands on the Vaccination question is, to some degree, irrelevant. What’s best for the country as a whole? I think back to the Polio Vaccine. We all took it. I miss those days. I got the shot. I stopped wearing the mask. Just a week ago, I got the Delta variant. I’m now just recovering. My wife hasn’t yet. I hope that I don’t lose her.
It’s a sad place we live in today’s world.
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