Re: [PEN-L] For Doug: What I Learned In Skool Today - It's Mean to Ignore the Median

[raghu]

I think its even more basic/fundamental than that. As we know by now,
all fact/data is "theory laden". One obtains, filters and analyses data
always within and using a theoretical framework.... When are working within the framework you can
be entirely honest (as you point out) and valid in your reasoning
without being in any way aware of the [ideological] commitments of the framework.

Yes indeed. We all do. The crucial question is one of flexibility. 
Keynes (is reported to have) once said, "When the facts change, I change my position. What about you, Sir?"

Of course to Karl Rove, Keynes would be a "cowardly flip-flopper". The current Masters of the Universe, i.e. GW Bush, D Cheney, B Bernanke, S Miller (CEO, Delphi), when faced with unconfortable facts would prefer to pretend the problems are temporary, then cook the books and hope it will go away. I am sure all these gentlemen truly want world-wide peace, prosperity, democracy and well-being (and American leadership but in a uniformly prosperous world who could object to that?)

These people truly cannot imagine why everyone in the world does not agree with them and see their vision and embrace their ideology. That's why they have to believe that "there is such a thing as evil" and such other nonsense.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8614

How do you even have a dialogue with such congenital idiots who are so arrogantly sure of themselves?
-raghu.