Gautam Mukunda wrote:
If not pissing people off is an important concern of yours
I'm wondering where you read this in Doug's words... I'm reading quickly, but the Doug's premise seemed to be that we ideally decide what is the right thing and then do our best to build a coalition around it. It seems to me that when one chooses to be guided by principle (doing what one believes is the right thing), one is abandoning concerns about who might be unhappy about it.
As for repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, that bit of discussion seemed to stay entirely within the realm of logic. But I suspect we'd hit closer to reality if we brought up the way that is is human nature to repeat the same mistakes, no matter how much intellectual analysis we've done. I believe you made an allusion to that characteristic in yourself as you mused on why you continue to engage in these discussions... ;-)
To me, one of the lessons we learned, but didn't learn well enough not to repeat, is the lesson of the Gulf of Tonkin incident -- we're still willing to sell a war to the country with on exaggerations, if not outright lies.
I don't know if you agree with that particular one, but surely there are lessons from Vietnam that we learned but didn't learn, in the sense that we know better (intellectual) but do it anyway (behavior). Right?
I know better than to state my opinions as facts, but I do it anyway. I know better than to use sarcasm here, but do it anyway. And so on.
Nick
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