(07-01-2018, 06:59 PM)copycat Wrote:

(07-01-2018, 06:31 PM)mikesez Wrote: Most of us only pay attention to the worst and most implausible things said by politicians of the other party.
meanwhile we excuse or ignore the impossible things said by politicians of our own party and focus on the good things that they say.
only a person who is totally outside of this country could really be a fair observer of which side has a closer grasp on rationality.
Rationality only gets you so far though.
There are always unfalsifiable postulates.
a statement does not have to be universally or undeniably true to be rational.
You may hear a Democrat say something, which is based on an unfalsifiable postulate, such as "spreading the wealth around makes everyone better off," and then you'll say that's nonsense this guy is not in touch with reality. But even though it doesn't make sense to you at a gut level you cannot prove that it is wrong. you can point to other countries it seem to have cried this kind of thing and failed, but these were not controlled experiments and there were many other things going on than the government trying to make a more equitable distribution of income or wealth. also the countries of Northern Europe seem to have tried this kind of thing and made it work pretty well. so as long as what the guy is saying is consistent with the unfalsifiable belief that he holds he is speaking rationally. meanwhile you'll hear people on your side say things like "having the government leave it alone is the best possible thing." This is also not falsifiable and if you don't hold this belief, the things that come after it, like "just let the rich keep more of their money and they'll spend it on making poor people employed" might sound crazy to you. But it makes sense if you've embraced the idea that the less government does, the better.

Who are you trying to impress?

He might be using 50 cent words, but he's not wrong. Logic and philosophy has been under-emphasized in our country for over a half-century. Personally, I think it's a major contributor to "team" politics, but we could make an entirely separate thread about that. Imo, politics should be defined by goals. Unfortunately, we spend more time talking about policies. Only when the goal is clear can we decide if the policies are being effective.

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