Sanity Rally has a huge turnout
Ari Melman
Issue date: 11/5/10 Section: Ed-Op
To all those who cling to your guns and religion, remember "Do unto others as you wish be done unto you." To all you elite, university-bred, socialist liberals, remember to build a better society always through teaching, never by sinking down to a lower level. Everyone is ignorant in most areas of life. We rely on others to tell us which way to believe, and once we learn a position, we will defend it to the death. Unfortunately, that makes us susceptible to bad ideas. Most of us, from the country boy to the Harvard gal, never learned how to be appropriately skeptical. The rules of skepticism include:
An idea must be falsifiable - Your ideas must be open to being proved wrong. If you have to reject evidence in order for your claim to still be right, then that claim is wrong.
A claim must be supported by facts - Emotion is good. Emotion moves people to the polls and makes us care. But emotion or gut-based claims that live in a world of their own are dangerous. They can lead people to hate others for no reason other than their skin, their sexual orientation, their relaxant of choice or their family of choice. They can lead parents of autistic children to hire facilitated communicators that promise to channel the autistic child through a keyboard, and then send the caring parent to jail on sexual-abuse charges.
A claim must be built on existing knowledge - These can be seen in many of the radical Republican victories, including Pennsylvania's very own Senator-elect Pat Toomey. Toomey, who represented Pennsylvania in the House from 1999 to 2005, has testified against pay-as-you-go rules that force Congress to pair tax cuts with government services cuts, saying, "While PAYGO is a well-intentioned rule, its implementation should not come at the cost of preventing economy-stimulating tax cuts." Toomey was elected despite the basic economic knowledge that if we continue to spend while cutting our income flow, then we'll wrack up greater and greater debt until we pull a Greece and go bankrupt.
An idea must be falsifiable - Your ideas must be open to being proved wrong. If you have to reject evidence in order for your claim to still be right, then that claim is wrong.
A claim must be supported by facts - Emotion is good. Emotion moves people to the polls and makes us care. But emotion or gut-based claims that live in a world of their own are dangerous. They can lead people to hate others for no reason other than their skin, their sexual orientation, their relaxant of choice or their family of choice. They can lead parents of autistic children to hire facilitated communicators that promise to channel the autistic child through a keyboard, and then send the caring parent to jail on sexual-abuse charges.
A claim must be built on existing knowledge - These can be seen in many of the radical Republican victories, including Pennsylvania's very own Senator-elect Pat Toomey. Toomey, who represented Pennsylvania in the House from 1999 to 2005, has testified against pay-as-you-go rules that force Congress to pair tax cuts with government services cuts, saying, "While PAYGO is a well-intentioned rule, its implementation should not come at the cost of preventing economy-stimulating tax cuts." Toomey was elected despite the basic economic knowledge that if we continue to spend while cutting our income flow, then we'll wrack up greater and greater debt until we pull a Greece and go bankrupt.
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Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Ellen Taylor
posted 11/05/10 @ 9:04 PM EST
The problem with the talking John is that people actually are polarized. They are not able to discuss politics with each other in a civil way and he helped create this animosity. (Continued…)
Glen
posted 11/07/10 @ 10:39 AM EST
I too attended the rally. I must say, DC was unprepared for this...to say that he least. Arriving at the Metro station in East Falls Church made that very apparent. (Continued…)
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