I don't understand

[moogle1]

Ron Paul's a pretty agreeable guy. I think he's a pretty hard guy to hate. Most of the people I talk with about his politics end up agreeing with a lot of what he stands for.

I mentioned to a group of friends today that they should vote for him. Alena heard this and shrieked "NO

Comments

Stealing

[anonymous]

Stealing is normal today. It seems like everyone would have a problem with someone stealing from them. You have about 50% of the nation getting a check from the government. Some of it is owned honestly but the rest is welfare. People love to steal money out of your paycheck.

Re: Stealing

[rinku]

If you ever mention Ron Paul in a blog entry, even on LJ, you'll likely get people coming out of nowhere to comment anonymously on it. That's just how it works, he's so popular that his very name draws people out of nowhere like a magic spell.

[rinku]

It's actually more nuanced than you present. People who think like this Alena person are collectivists -- literally, metaphysically, they believe that people think better as a whole than they do individually, that the crowd or committee is smarter than its constituents, that collective decision-making works better than individual decision making. The evidence shows me that this is not the case, but I do think that's the root cause of what they believe, and it's not obvious to people which is true unless they think about it for awhile, we aren't born knowing that the individual should take precedence over the group. Those that believe in collectivism, I mean really intuitively believe that the good of society is more important than each person's good, would naturally want the government to spend as much as possible, so that group decisions are maximized and individual decisions minimized.

[rinku]

[krylanna]

It's because they spend too much time at Walmart, and watching Jerry Springer, that Jaywalking segment on the Tonight Show, and reading Barrens Chat in WoW.

It sounds like a joke, but I'm totally serious. One person will look at throngs of stupid people and say "Wow, we shouldn't let large groups of people make decisions for everyone else because many of them are stupid." Another person will look at the same throngs of stupid people and say "Wow, we shouldn't let anyone make an important decision for themselves because they are most likely stupid." The hope is that the stupid people in the group will at least be smart enough to yield to the ideas of the most intelligent people in the group, which doesn't always happen; they yield to the ideas of the most charismatic people in the group.

Globalization and mass media mean that we are now subject to the largest throngs of stupid people ever in recorded history. So naturally people are going to be more polarized on the subject.