Opinions

You are entitled to your opinion, when you put forth your opinion into the marketplace of idea it is not you that should be attacked, rather your opinion. In turn you refine and defend your opinion. This is the dialectic art of arriving at the truth, it would be very naive of me to think that everyone will agree with what I think, when someone, like some has often done, challenges me on the facts I put forth, or on the conclusion I have drawn, I must go back and insure that I have my facts correct, and the logic I used to reach my conclusions are sound. One’s worldview will always color one’s opinion, but it should not blind you to reality.

One must start from where ever one finds one’s self to be, and pick each decision as best of their capabilities as they try to move from where they are to where they want to be. If you have chosen to be a champion of a cause, just as I have, our causes may different, mine being Libertinisms and dispelling error as I see it, while you may be the cause of the less fortunate in the world, or to get someone elected. You cannot enter into the fray of ideas with a thin skin; you must strive to improve both your rhetoric and logic in order to get your opinion a fair hearing in the marketplace of ideas.

When we try to convince others of the rightness of our cause we use rhetoric to do so, when we frame an argument we use logic to build its structure. We cannot let ridicule nor ad hominem attacks deter us from championing our cause. Our feeling are of no consequences, our arguments stand or fall upon the logic and rhetoric we use to present them.

I do not believe that anyone has ever found a missing link as to what the horse was before it was a horse. In matters of faith proof does nothing to dissuade only to reinforce what one already believer, one will always pick the facts that reinforce their beliefs and reject the ones that go counter to that belief.  . My God is a God of revelation, if He does not reveal Himself to you, you cannot see Him, He elects who will believe and disbelieves in Him.  In this I am a bigot, as many people are in their beliefs, my mind is closed to any counter argument, you cannot persuade me not to believe.

If this attitude was held only in what we call matter of faith than the conversion of other's opinions to more reflect your own would, indeed, be a matter of  looking at the facts, framing an argument, and delivering it.  The other would either see the errors of his ways or in his argument convince you of yours.  Alas, for many of us,  see our worldview as divinely revealed and beyond the touch of logic.  The true believer, the fanatic, the foot soldier of the cause.  His truth is the only truth, and he knows it is true because it is the Cause.

He is not the leader of the cause, the leader gives him the direction he has been looking for, a cause that give him, in his eyes, meaning.  His faith in his cause is unshakable, he is steadfast, and reliable.  The only opinions that count or the opinions held by the cause.  What is the cause?  Is it a good cause, an evil cause, it does not matter to the believer as long as he can be convinced it is the right cause. External propaganda converts him to the cause, and internal propaganda keeps him blind to any other way of seeing the world.  He only talks to people who agrees with his cause, will not have a conversation with anyone who hold a different opinion, they are at best misguided, and at worst an evil member of another cause.

Left Causes:  Progressiveness, Socialism, Communism, Gay Rights, Occupiers, ACORN, etc.

Right Causes: Christianity, Tea Party, Right to Lifers, etc.

There is no reconciliation possible between the left and right causes, and only traitors betray their cause.

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Rexx