On Oct 5, 11:05 am, Jerry Kraus
yahoo.com> wrote:
> OK, Fred, we're not in agreement. You started out as a Marxist, so
> you've said, and now you've gone to the other extreme, and become a
> doctrinaire Capitalist propagandist. You like simplicity, and you
> like extreme positions. You attach yourself to simplified
> orthodoxies, and preach them with passion and get pleasure doing so.
Actually, what I've always liked is consistency and thinking in
principles. Contradictions do not exist in reality. They therefore
should not exist in your thinking - not, at least, if you want your
thinking to be in accord with reality.
>... It seems to me
> that absolute in faith in religious, political and economic
> orthodoxies -- of the type you seem to be inclined to -- causes wars,...
True, sometimes it does. For example, the American Revolution based on
the absolute commitment to liberty. A great many colonists thought,
like you, that it was "more complicated" than that and were against
the revolutionists. Events however eventually showed many of them that
they were mistaken. The issue in fact, fundamentally, was very simple.
Tom Paine wrote a tract about it and called it, appropriately enough,
"Common Sense". And then, of course, there were those "absolutists"
like Patrick Henry who famously declared, "Give me liberty or give me
death". I guess you would call him a damn fool for standing on
principle.
There were also many Americans who thought that the issue of slavery
was "more complicated" which is why it remained constitutionally
protected and why various compromises in the subsequent years
attempted to reconcile the two sides - pro-slavery and abolitionists.
But inevitably all compromises failed because the principle involved
is really...very simple. Ultimately it could only be resolved by war -
in this case, sadly, a bloody and highly destructive war.
> Fools like
> yourself enjoy stands on principle, and do and lot of damage with your
> "principles". You are welcome to them. I prefer reality.
Except, of course, it is inevitably reality which confirms the
correctness of the principles and the great damage which is caused by
denying them.
Granted, grasping the principle and what it entails can be difficult -
complicated, if you will. Sometimes that's understandable, sometimes
not. But events eventually make the issues - and principles - clear.
Fred Weiss
