Well, no, I meant "ideologies". A political philosophy is meant to
be something considered. When I say ideology, I mean the network of
beliefs, desires, prejudices, presumptions into which we all feed any
new bit of information to work out how to view it. We all do it.
You can't live entirely without an ideology. But so far as possible,
we have to make ourselves conscious of it, and not let it dictate to
us, and not let it blind us to facts. So someone is who anti-war
should try their hardest to find merit in the opposite position.
Someone who is pro-war should do the same. And by weighing and
balancing, and reading reliable sources, we stand half a chance of
reaching a rational belief. It's hard to do it with so much
conflicting information flying around, but worth the effort, I would
say.
Sarah
At 4:16 PM -0600 01/17/2003, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I agree completely that it shouldn't matter who is advocating the
war, although, as a practical matter, I can't imagine some
politicians *ever* advocating it. And yes, we should look at the
matter with clear vision, although I wouldn't go so far as to say we
should drop our "ideologies" (I would have said, "political
philosophies and beliefs"; that's a little less inflammatory).
Whatever we call them, they're part of who we are.
