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February 12, 2008
Confused Americans for Truth - I Have a Secret About Secret Prejudices
An online Newseek article about prejudice begins with the following paragraph.
Some experts argue that even the most politically correct among us may harbor unconscious prejudices against ethnic groups, women, gays and others. Can these dark impulses shape our actions?
Now, I think you can get some experts to believe just about anything, but in this case the single expert in question-- William von Hippel of the University of Queensland-- has a valid point. Humans are chock full of incorrect feelings. For example, J. Kelly Nestruck feels that catblogging is lame, and Michael Medved feels that we can trust John McCain.
If you or I have an incorrect feeling or a hidden prejudice, we can make an effort to overcome it. It's a tricky business, because feelings have been around a lot longer than critical thinking, but as higher life forms we have the capability of recognizing bad emotions and tamping them down. Religion helps. Christianity is chock full of lessons about overcoming anger, the most famous one involving the proper use of cheeks.
Liberals, however, see the world in a very different way. To them, incorrect human emotions are a sickness that can be treated by things like sensitivity training or social programs. While a conservative looks for checks and balances to channel human activity toward the common good, a liberal wants to put superior people in positions of power where they can bring about fairness and equality for the rest of us. If these superior people are afflicted with hidden prejudices, then the whole system falls apart. Ultimately, liberalism is doomed to failure because even the most enlightened human beings are fallible creatures subject to dark, hidden desired.
Some experts argue it, so it must be true.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Tue 9:13 AM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (0) | More Confused Americans for Truth | Tags: blogging Christianity conservative emotions J Kelly Nestruck John McCain liberals Michael Medved philosophy prejudice psychology
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