Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 19:44:09 -0700 From: Lawrence Sica <lomifeh@earthlink.net> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: George Barnett <george@alink.co.za>, bastill@sa.apana.org.au, Sanjay Bhattacharya <sanbh@gmx.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Everybody's right, nobody's wrong (was Re: blah blah blah) Message-ID: <3D1BCD79.20203@earthlink.net> References: <24620.1025143730@www7.gmx.net> <200206270730.g5R7UFf13214@tierzero.apana.org.au> <010801c21dc7$08892be0$c74608c3@spoem> <3D1B6352.26F669BE@mindspring.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Terry Lambert wrote: > George Barnett wrote: ><snip some> > > One aspect of public philosophy that has always struck me as being > uniquely American is the idea that the other person's point of view > has equal validity to your own, regardless of how ridiculous that > point of view may be. > Don't forget what opnions are like...that is also an american truism... ;) > This absurd notion permits the peaceful coexistance of athiests, > Christians, Muslims, Jews, Shintoists, Moonies, Hare Krisna, > Democrats, Republicans, and any other otherwise fundamentally > opposed and intolerant groups. > > It has also led to ideas such as Creationism, "medical magnets", > "New Math", and the idea that taxation *with* representation is > somehow better than taxation *without* representation, and other > ideas that clearly defy both logic and common sense. > And sometimes this notion allows all these groups to act as one whole for very important reasons. Take the post 9/11 stuff, the muslim blacklash aside. Also take the recent fiasco with the Pledge of Allegiance. It has gone beyond party or creed or race, and is pretty much considered a stupid decision by the judges to say it can't be said in schools because it endorses a "god" > Like the idea that all opposed parties in a discussion can somehow > still be simultaneously correct, merely because the viewpoints are > held by individuals, and therefore must be reconcilable, even if it > is possible to empirically verify that one is right, and all the > others are wrong. > The idea is to find a common ground and go from there. I'd say it has worked more than not. > Socrates once concluded that the human mouth contains 36 teeth > through deductive reasoning alone, when he could have counted them > and arrived at the non-relativistically correct number of 32. In > today's America, we would probably license him as a dentist. > Hey maybe they had 36 back then ;) --Larry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3D1BCD79.20203>