RateItAll: The Opinion Network

I've seen no evidence that indicates liberal (centrist) politicians are any less misanthropic than reactionary Republicans (or most leftists, for that matter).

After all, it was Bill Clinton who militarized our local police forces.

For the most part this isn't a dumb move, just remember that even good people do bad things.

For the most part, the average person is basically good. I think the problem I have with the left on this, particularly the extreme left, is the belief that people who have proven they are not basically good only need a warm hug and a second chance to be a good person. Take a rapist or child molester and give them a second chance and they are most likely to use it to rape or molest again.

Outside of extreme cases, I believe it's not so much about who is basically good but what defines basically good. When it comes to helping people a lot of us have the same end goals, we just have different ideas of how to get there.

A stunningly bizzare listing. . .I find those who want a nation based on Protestant Christianity wrapped in the guise/lie of being a republican find that the human condition (and our cultural interpretation of it) is more important than anything- (which doesn't quite equate into being 'good' but isn't separate either) The worst fringe elements of leftism believe in the inherit inability of people to manage or handle issues of equity. . .the worst fringes of the right believe that people are 'good' but basically need to live life the way their doctrine/theology believes. . .I don't find the listing helpful or accurate in any way. . .

This is really a boneheaded mistake and has cost dearly in the past. Humans are animals and have animal instincts. Civilization, religion, culture and other processes help to tame the beast. Time and time again, the leftos get the vapors over this slogan. People on the right are not immune from this fallacy when infected with Wilsonianism, which of course, is a loony, progressive carryover from the turn of the 19th Century. (Get rid of Saddam Hussein, for instance, and everyone in Iraq will have a love fest.)

So the left thinks people are good and the right thinks people are evil? I don't think so; there are people with both schools of thought on the right and the left.

In some ways, I tend to think like the "conservatives" on this particular issue, I'm afraid. I personally am not a "bleeding heart". Even though I like to think human beings are capable of great nobility and altruism, it's not been on display too often throughout human history. For every Albert Schweitzer, there are a thousand Pinochets. For every Gandhi, there are countless Mansons. For every anonymous citizen who "does the right thing", there are millions more of the callous and indifferent variety. Whether we're talking about the Holocaust, or the Spanish Inquisition, or what the English did to the Irish, or the Americans to the Indians and the slaves they kidnapped from Africa, or what Idi Amin did to his people, or Stalin to his, or Pol Pot, or Papa Doc, or Catherine De Medici, or Pinochet, or Mengele, or Kang Sheng, or Lavrenty Berea, or Manson, or...the list of barbarism goes on and on, distressingly endless. Sometimes when we characterize a particularly repellent human action as "animalistic", it's an insulting disservice to animals. They don't act as human beings do. They don't kill pointlessly, as humans do; they don't inflict the atrocities on their own kind that we human beings inflict on each other. Yesterday, I was told by a relative in north NJ about a local news story where a man sodomized his 2-month old son to death, blaming his actions on alcohol and drugs. What animal does that to its young? I do think that human beings need to continually strive towards being as civilized and progressive as we're capable of, but sometimes you read or hear about a story like the one I just mentioned, and you have to wonder whether any of it is worth it? Then again, what's the alternative?

I just don't see this as being exclusively owned by the left. This is an aisle-crossing bit of idiocy, in my opinion.