WHO'S RIGHT AND WHO'S LEFT?

Back in the early days of TV, there was a friendly little show on called "Ozzie and Harriet."

It was about family and the issues families often had to face.

One of its features was when the two sons, David and Ricky, got into arguments.

Invariably they dissolved into: "Oh yeah?!" "Yeah!" "Oh yeah?" "yeah!" which went on until Ozzie stepped in to put a stop to it.

That's very much like the ongoing arguments between conservatives and liberals.

Each side says, "It's like this." The other side then responds, "No it isn't."

Then the argument goes: Is, too. Is not. Is, too. Is not. etc., etc. ad infinitum.

Even when facts are presented, they are subject to interpretation (called "spin") by one side or the other.

Liberals look at snow, and blame it on the fact that the Great Lakes have not frozen over, leaving the moisture in the air to produce snow. Then when the lakes DO freeze over, they go back to their previous set of facts, and just change the name of the phenomenon to "climate change."

The fact that the data over the last 15 years has been deliberately manipulated, rearranged, made up and corrupted makes no difference to them at all.

Conservatives look at snow and see that it is usually the result of cold, rarely happening in the Temperate Zone in Summer, and conclude that global warming is NOT taking place, as we are in a record setting cold snap.

Now the phrase "climate change" is disingenuous, at best. "Climate" has always been defined by science text books as "The cyclical change in weather that occurs in a given area." Recently it has become a substitute for "global warming," and is said to be man-made.

Climate is and always has been. Climate change is and always has been. Climate change took place before mankind burned his first log.

Must have been carbon emissions from some alien life form in those days.

So why don't the liberals just concede that they were wrong and move on to some other crisis to emphasize?

Liberals operate from an ideological position that requires mankind to be the culprit for all of the world's woes, while asserting that man is basically good if you give him/her enough education.

They are totally incapable of seeing the contradiction of their beliefs, because their pride dictates that contradictions do not exist.

Now before you go off all half-cocked, we conservatives aren't that much better, only marginally.
We don't do a very good job of stating facts, largely because we have such a limited ability to express ourselves and our truths in a kind of English that makes sense.

So we say, "Is not!" or "Is, too!" instead.

How do we solve this problem.

One way would be to pay attention to me. I try to adequately research what I write about before I write about it, only occasionally waiting until after I write about it.

I'm nearly always right (politically speaking).

Now I already hear you screaming, "Joe, you are so opinionated. You always think you are right."

In the first place, that is a misinterpretation of what I just said. "I said I'm nearly always right." That is because I am a right winger, therefore, I end up on the political right of issues.

(See, you thought you caught me.)

Actually, I DO think I am always right.

Make me a list of the positions you hold to that you think are wrong, but that you insist on holding anyway.

Go ahead...I'll wait.

How long is your list?

We could decide troublesome issues with a vote, after all, this is a democracy, right?

Premise: The Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow (almost sounds like a song).

Let's vote.

Pretend that one group out-votes the other 2 to one that the sun will NOT come up tomorrow. They present their arguments eloquently: The sun went down. The sky is no longer blue. The stars can be seen. There is NO immediate evidence that the sun is going to come up tomorrow or ever again. The fact that it always HAS come up in the past is discounted as irrelevant. We cannot see it, therefore it is gone.

Then the sun "comes up."

(Of course, we know that the sun does not "come up," the earth just rotates until this half of its inhabitants can now see the sun).

What we need here is some good, un-manipulated, un-corrupted science that will tell us why the sun has "behaved" the way it has in the past and why it is likely to continue to behave that way in the future; science that is not agenda based but that is based on physics.

In the political realm, what we need is empirical data that definitively proves that one system or another works or does not work. We need the same kind of good, un-manipulated, un-corrupted data that demonstrates what actually works: how and why.

The best we have is a sort of hodge-podge of history, math and economics that leaves far too much to imperfect human analysis. Not only that, it is written and re-written to suit the whim of whatever group is trying to prove what.

Without exception, every society that has ever existed before the one(s) we have today has failed.

It would be helpful to know why they failed, but we can't agree on that.

So what do we do?

Again, just check in with me and I'll be happy to tell you.

Recognizing that you probably won't do that, we are left to continually squabble about who is correct and who is incorrect.

Surely a person as intelligent as you can see that I'm right.