Carnage on Gaza border as Palestinians shot dead by Israeli

don't be obsessed with WW2, Holocaust , or anti semitism.. not of them are valid to the situation and none justify the murder of this young nurse. What makes me think this girl's murder is ok with you? hmm...

 

It's not 'okay with me'. I loathe nationalists/tribalists of every sort, because the logic of tribalism -- Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, Serbian nationalism, Croat nationalism, white nationalism, black nationalism, you name it ... leads to sickening incidents like this, (1) when the nationalists get power, and (2) when they have a territorial dispute with another tribe. [If your tribe is geographically isolated on its own little piece of territory and all your nationalism means is a way of driving out the colonialists so local exploiters can take over, then it's pretty harmless, at least in terms of genocide.]

If you want more sickening incidents, not always involving pretty young girls, so not always grabbing our attention, look to the incessant inter-tribal butchery in Africa, or how Tamils are treated by the Buddhist Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, or how the Muslim Rohingyas are treated by the Buddhist Burmese ... and several pages could be filled by the horrors European tribes have inflicted on each other, and on others.

But nationalism/tribalism is where we're at, at this stage of human history. The nation-state is a relatively new invention, just a few centuries old, and it's now in the process of disintegration. This will be a long and bloody process.

But the more people there are who see that our species can have a different, and much better, future ... the better it will be.

It's a terrible irony of pitiless History that the Jews, who, because of their material situation as outsiders, were (and still are) pioneers in trans-nationalist, humanist thinking ... this pioneering, admirable people were driven by the Nazis to become like the rest of us. Or many of them were.

And it's also an irony that their current nationalist reflex -- which includes labelling any critic of the Israeli state as an 'anti-Semite' -- is lifting up rocks from under which the real anti-Semites are now crawling and standing up, using valid criticism of Israeli actions as their camouflage. As we see here.

 

@Doug1943 - your reply shows that you believe the Palestinian Arabs' narrative about an ancient Palestinian non-Jewish nation as rightful owners of the land. It really blows my mind that honest, intelligent people would believe such a narrative simply because it's being repeated ad nauseam, without asking for solid proof. One factor is of course the modern trend - heavily influenced by the marxist propaganda of a power thirsty USSR battling the US, France and UK for greater influence and dominance in the Muslim world - of considering all the non-white, non-European-like peoples of the world as eternal victims of European greed, some sort of pure genuine angels unable of wrongdoing as long as their actions are perceived as opposing Western mindset.

Before continuing this discussion, I'd like to have the premises firmly established. Therefore, I'll ask you to provide evidence for your belief in the existence of a Palestinian non-Jewish nation and their ownership of the land. Historical evidence, of course, not "Moses was a Muslim" or "Jesus was a Palestinian" kind of trash that masquerades as proof for the Palestinian narrative these days.

Nations leave traces in history. Some of these traces are material: public buildings, rulers' palaces, protective walls around cities, inscriptions on buildings and walls, pottery, coins, warehouses, houses of worship, written documents regarding legal and other matters, trade or political agreements with surrounding nations mentioned in the other nations' documents. Other traces are spiritual: founding myths, cult of ancestors, stories about great heroes and leaders of the past, poetry, songs. Strangely, the pro-Palestinian narrative never mentions even a corner of a shadow of a shred of a document, or the name of one past ruler, or at least a founding myth that predates the Balfour Declaration.

Until I see such proof as detailed above, I can't possibly continue a discussion based on unproven premises.

 

Funny how Google is both your best friend and your worst enemy.

Let's see what Google revealed about the event in your post:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...oman-shot-during-protest-dead-near-gaza-fence

The situation seems pretty clear, then, according to the AFP report published by the Guardian: the young paramedic was shot in the chest while running for cover from teargas.

But is it? Clear, I mean.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/pales...and-killed-100-injured-in-gaza-fence-clashes/
https://twitter.com/AsafRonel/status/1002644195193049089

Well...was she shot in the chest while running for cover, or was she shot in the chest while attending a wounded protester? Questions, questions...

It gets better (or not, depending on one's appetite for riddles).

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/gaza-medic-killed-israel-was-shot-back

The mystery is deepening: was she shot in the chest while running for cover, was she shot in the chest while attending to a wounded Palestinian, was she shot in the back while helping treat and evacuate wounded protesters? Dilemmas, dilemmas...

 

There's no riddle, she was murdered by an Israeli terrorist who'll be celebrated for their bravery as usual.

 

and Israel of course has been destroying the history of the Palestinians as she ethnically cleanses them and continues to this day.

You believe that the people of South Africa for instance did not deserve their land because they were colonised. You believe the land of South Africa belonged to the British and the Dutch and that Black South Africans, being nor quite up to whites and living on their land in a different way than whites had no right to the land that their people had lived on for eternity. That is the difference between you and those who disagree with you. As part of a 'race' who have taken over another people's homeland and thrown them off that land, you believe you and not they have the right to that land. You are incapable of seeing the people who you ethically cleanse as having any right to the land their ancestors have lived in for hundreds if not thousands of years. To you they are more like cattle who can be put off the land as Europeans colonise it.

As far as ownership of the land that was far greater than you suggest. People failed to register their land because of taxes and even those who were renting had been renting at a nominal feel for generations, put down through the family.

 

There's plenty of desert for all of them. The difference is that the Israelis have worked theirs into something useful, while the Palestinians spend all their time ranting and sabre-rattling.

 

Zionists were a very small part of Judiasm. Indeed most of them had given up Judaism but like Hitler believed they were a 'race' and so should like other Europeans Colonise their piece of land. There is no humanity in allowing people who in the past your people have harmed to harm another people. No one gives you any brownie points for that. You are still oppressing people because you believe they are less human. You simply are giving as your reason for supporting inhumanity towards another people that in the past your people were inhumane to them. Israel is an extreme right ethnic nationalist State. To believe that all Jews are like that is its own form of antisemitism and that is what you would need to believe if you believe you should allow the neo zionists to act, as they are, with inhumanity towards another people because of the inhumanity your people have shown towards Jews in the past. If you do support the action - that is the ethnic nationalism then you set the scene for it returning against the people you claim you are supporting.

Do you for instance have any idea how few Jewish survivors wanted to move to Palestine when the first poll was held in the Displacement Camps. I cannot at the moment remember the exact number but it was something like 12%. Most Jews were not extreme right ethnic nationalists and it took years of Zionists not allowing them to go anywhere else and telling them they were traitors if they did not go before they were able to get these holocaust survivors to go to Palestine and die in 48.

You can read about that all here. Researched and written by an Israeli Jew

To you people who have valid criticism of Israel are antisemites. This name calling has been so overused that the word antismitism now has no meaning which itself creates a danger of genuine antisemitism again getting a hold. While the old time white nationalists do not support Israel believing that belongs to the 'race' who are the indigenous people. the ones being imprisoned, killed and ethnically cleansed while their land and resources are taken - the new alt right are very supportive of Israel. Israel is after all an ethnic/supremacist nationalist country. Just what they want and will almost certainly be deporting their own Jews to when/if they get control and as far as the US is concerned that is what they will be doing whether they are alt right or Christian Right. By supporting ethnic nationalism in Israel you set the scene for harming Jews in the West.

 

Alexa: you seem to be arguing with someone else, not me. Although we would definitely have things to argue about, I can only argue for positions I believe in. I don't think you actually read what I wrote.

Pisa: 'nations' are human creations, not timeless entities. They are historically contingent, reflecting one stage of human development, and will eventually pass away. [Yes, the time will come when there will be no more Jews, no more Arabs, no more white Europeans, no more Africans. The spread of science and the inexorable workings of the world economy will grind up the tribes and fuse them, and a single human culture will supersede all the tribal supersitions and parochial customs of the present. But don't worry ... not for many generations yet.]

The word 'nation' confuses our thinking. I use the word 'tribe', although it's not really adequate either, to describe a group of people who identify with each other, and could form a nation state, whether or not they have their own state at the moment. Sometimes the word 'nation' is adequate, but often it's not. (For instance, the Catholic/Protestant dispute in Northern Ireland, or the Tamil/Sinhalese dispute, or the Rohingya/Burmese dispute.. should we use the word 'nations' to describe the contending parties?)

The Jews were such a group, and had their own state over two thousand years ago. Then they lost it, but kept their identity. Now they have made a 'nation' in Israel, where there had not been a Jewish state for two millenia. The Arabs were largely pre-national, and have only compacted into 'nations' in the 20th Century, but pretty fragile ones at that. The same can be said for the sub-Saharan Africans, where we see different tribes, all holding the same national passport, slaughter eacher other periodically.

The Palestinians can now be considered a 'nation', and, in any case, were in what is now Israel in far greater numbers than the Jews were, regardless of the state of their national consciousness.

But I couldn't care less whether Jews, or Palestinians, can meet various tests for historic nationhood. If the Palestinians had met every test you propose, do you think the Zionists who landed on them would have given a hoot? As they saw it, they were jumping out of the window of a burning bulding -- one they had contributed so much to creating, but never mind -- and Palestine was the only place to land. (If the Arabs had had wise leaders, the fleeing Jews would have been welcomed with open arms, because they would have brought the invaluable gifts of modernity to the Arabs, and the Middle East would now be a giant Singapore ... but why should the Arabs have been any wiser than the rest of us?)

What matters is to resolve, with a minimum of human suffering, the current situation in Palestine/Israel. Israel's existence is a fact. The historic circumstances which brought Israel about, while interesting, are no longer relevant. The existence of the United States, on land taken from the Native Americans, and also from the Mexicans (who had taken it from their Native Americans) is a fact. The existence of a large number of Palestinians, in wretched conditions, who consider themselves a nation and who want a state, is a fact.

Tribalists -- hard-core Zionists, hard-core Palestinian nationalists, anti-Semites and Muslim-haters of all stripes -- don't care about finding a compromise solution. All they want to do is recite the (no doubt true) litany of crimes of their enemies.

Well, human beings are primates, and we're pretty nasty. "Treat every man according to his deserts, and who should 'scape whipping?"

So ... don't worry about "deserts" -- we all deserve whipping -- but worry about how to arrange things so that we can get on with living. This means a secure Israel and a secure Palestine.

 

Can I see some proof of that history, Alexa? Can I see some proof of the destruction of that unproven history? Can I see some proof of ongoing ethnic cleansing, like how many people are ethnically cleansed, in what places, when, where are they now if alive, you know, some real data as opposed to just statements?

Do yourself a favor: stop telling me what and how I think. The "demonize and dehumanize your enemy when you're out of real arguments" approach, otherwise known as ad hominem, is a logical fallacy. Your posts are usually full of it.

Oh, and introducing a totally off topic subject to put your opponent into defensive rather than honestly discussing the topic is known as red herring, also a logical fallacy. Please keep in mind that I really don't like fish.

80% of the land was Ottoman property.

How does one know whose land it was and for how long, if there are no documents to prove ownership? Can I claim that my family owns one of the haunted Scottish castles for 30 generations, but we never registered it to avoid paying the staff? Would anyone believe me without any documents to prove my claim?

Read some accounts about Palestine from people who were there and saw it with their own eyes, like Tristram and Mark Twain. The desolation they describe doesn't fit the narrative you're supporting one bit.

 

Please explain.

 

I mean that the Jews had contributed enormously to Europe -- start naming European philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, musicians, and you'll see that the Jews contributed to human advance far out of proportion to their numbers [why this is so is an interesting question, but one for another discussion]. After WWI, Vienna became a world capital of intellectual achievement: in philosophy, music, mathematics ... then the Austrians murdered all their Jews, and now it's just a collection of pretty buildings.

And then the Europeans turned on the Jews, just as the early Zionist founders predicted they would. They were too clever, too successful, too much in the forefront of moderninzing trends that threatened old elites. (Both successful in business, and at the head of various Leftist movements.). Anti-semitism is the socialism of fools, as someone put it. The building they had contributed so much to creating, became a death trap. (I don't think this was inevitable, by the way. But, that's again another discussion.)

For various reasons -- mainly to do with Cold War ideological necessities -- only the Germans got the blame, but in fact, murderous anti-Semitism was widespread in Eastern/Central Europe, and there were plenty of Frenchmen who happily turned over Jews to the Nazis. So the Jewish survivors, many of them, wanted to get out. As the great Marxist Isaac Deutscher put it, the ground was burning beneath their feet. They didn't think, "Aha, let's go steal someone else's country." When you're jumping from a burning building into what appears to be a safety net, you don't think about the people already on the ground. They just got on the boats and headed for the only place that would, maybe, give them shelter. That's why there was, for a very long time, so much sympathy for Israel, including on the Left. Mainly gone now, of course, and those highly-skilled IDF snipers will no doubt destroy what little remains.

Partitioning an area between two different tribal groups was nothing new: it had happened in Ireland 25 years earlier, it was happening in India at the same time, millions of Germans had driven out of their ancestral homelands a year or so earlier, Greeks had fled Turkey and Turks, Greece after WWI, when Armenians were driven out of Turkey (with the Kurds doing the driving) ... the aftermath of great wars is a time of mass forced transfers of population. (Tribal diversity may be strength in the addled brains of naive lefties but in fact it's always a fraught situation.)

So I don't care a toss about the competing claims of Jewish and Arab tribalists: who was there first, whose gods 'gave' them the land, who has been a better steward of it. We need clear-headed thinkers to work out, given current realities, what is the least-worst deal for everyone involved, which is going to require both sides making sacrifices. And the rest of the world ought to be willing to sacrifice something as well -- mainly, money -- since it's in our interests that the Middle East not become the cockpit of a major war. (Although a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East would at least have the virture of incinerating a lot of hateful people on both sides, but unfortunately, it couldn't be made selective.)

 

What history be that, alexa?

...Everybody agrees that the current affluence of Israel, its modern infrastructure and economy were developed by the Jews. The Palestinian Arab narrative is that as the ancient, indigenous people of Palestine they feel dispossessed and they deserve to take over Israel’s riches. Jewish claims to their heritage in the land of Israel are supported by abundant archaeological artifacts and historical records.

Meanwhile, there are no records to support the Palestinian narrative. In history, art and literature there is no trace at all of any Muslim people referred to by anybody as “Palestinians.”

In fact, before the State of Israel was born, the term "Palestinians" was used by the Jews to refer to themselves and their organizations. “The Palestine Post”, the Palestine Foundation Fund, Palestine Airways, and the Palestine Symphony Orchestra were all purely Jewish enterprises.

We first hear of Arabs referred to as "Palestinians" when Egypt’s President Nasser, with help from the Russian KGB, established the "Palestine Liberation Organization" in 1964. It was only during the 1970s that the newly minted “Palestinians” began to promote their narrative through murder and assassination. The Arabs have justified their attacks as acts of the indigenous people struggling for national liberation...


Excerpts “From Time Immemorial” by Joan Peters. You should read it, alexa, the book is full of fascinating facts

 

Mark Twain’s comments On Palestine in 1867 are probably the best known: “….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere.”

Empty, desolate space. It’s a fact that vast majority of “Palestinians” are the descendants of the relatively recent Arab economic immigrants, who came to Palestine, following the Jews, Jewish capital and economic opportunities.

Given the complete absence of any historical record to the contrary, we can authoritatively say that the “Palestinian people” never existed until they were invented in the 1960s as a tool for continuing the Arab war against Israel.

The claim that “Palestinians” are the indigenous people of Israel and that most of the present Palestinian Arabs have lived in these lands since time immemorial is a total fraud

http://m.jpost.com/Blogs/Why-World-Opinion-Matters/Are-Arabs-the-indigenous-people-of-Palestine-402785

 

So: if a people are living somewhere, but are not very advanced, so they haven't developed their land very much ... other people have the right to come and drive them away and take the land?

An interesting theory. And, of course, a perfect description of how humans have operated for millenia. A perfect description of all the states of the Americas, plus Australia and New Zealand. And you can leave out the 'not very developed' part: all that matters is, are the invaders stronger? (The Mongols were not more developed than the Arabs they overran, just stronger.)

The accompanying theory -- my ancestors were here two thousand years ago, so now it's mine -- is also interesting: better hope the Apaches and Navajos don't hear about it. (But of course, it's overridden by the first theory, which is the only one that really counts: who is stronger? All the rest -- the blood-and-soil, Mein Vaterland exhortations -- is mystical fluff, designed to bewitch the superstitious,or appease the uneasy consciences of those who aren't entirely happy with the "It's mine because I am stronger" argument.)

It's all irrelevant. Jews exist in the Middle East and have a state. (And in many ways it's an admirable one, one the Arabs ought to imitate.). Palestinians exist and want a state. Don't threaten to destroy the Jewish state, and don't prevent the creation of a Palestinian one.

 

@Doug1943 - pink fluffy idealism aside - we humans are what we are and there's no point pretending we could be what we are not - the whole Palestinian issue is but one battle of the big war pan-Arab nationalism ignited after WWI. Looking at the big picture, it's easy to see that Arabs got the biggest part of the former Ottoman Middle East, including some 80% of the original Mandate entrusted to the British for the Jewish national home on the basis of the San Remo Treaty, leaving a stamp sized piece of land for Jews. But Arabs want it all.

Jews could, following the same line of thought, ask for a state in every one of the places where there were big Jewish communities for a long time, starting with Iraq which harbored a huge and prosperous Jewish community for 2500 years, long before Arab invasions. If Turkey could do that in Northern Cyprus on "but the ethnic Turks are majority here" grounds, and if Arabs can do that in Palestine on "but we own land here" grounds, when neither ever had a state on the coveted territory, then what's stopping the sizable Pakistani community in UK from asking for their own state there, or the sizable Turkish community in Germany from asking for a Turkish state there, or the sizable Jewish community in the US from asking for a state there.

I'd settle for Switzerland myself. Give us Switzerland and we'll let Americans live.

Actions have consequences, you know.

 

Here’s another interesting theory on how the ever exploding Arab population in Palestine came to be:

“..in the Jewish settlement Rishon l’Tsion founded in 1882, by the year 1889, the forty Jewish families settled there, had attracted more than four hundred Arab families.... Many other Arab villages had sprouted in the same fashion.”

(Joan Peters - From Time Immemorial)

 

Good post. I have also read that the flourishing farms Jewish settlers built the region were attractive to the landless Arab peasants. The country was virtually abandoned as Mark Twain points out long before the Jews arrived. It was Jewish success on the land and promise of work that brought Arab settlers to live near the Jews.

 

Here's another confirmation why the Arabs have alway, and continue today to flock into Judea and Samaria, and settle around Jews:

"Palestinians working in Israel or in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are paid more than double the wage earned by those employed in PA-governed areas.

A survey conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) during October-December 2014, funded by the European Union (EU), shows that Palestinians who work in Israel or for Israelis, are paid more than double the wage of those employed in the Palestinian Authority (PA)-governed areas of Judea and Samaria, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports"

https://unitedwithisrael.org/palestinians-earn-more-working-for-israelis-than-in-pa-survey-shows/

 

Pisa: of course you are correct. Or rather, your logic is correct. If a given area is populated by a large number of people who want to withdraw it from the state that it's in, and create a new one, then, everything else being equal, why should they not be able to do so? (Talking 'shoulds' now, not 'cans'.) [My ancestors tried this in the US nearly a hundred and sixty years ago. Didn't work out. But they had neither 'should' nor 'can' on their side.] Sounds like a strong argument for the Palestinians in the West Bank.

We can wind ourselves up in marvelous semantic knots over this issue: 'should' they be able to, if they have a distinct culture, different from the state they're now in? Or speak a separate language? Or have been there more than X years. Or have improved the place more than the majority culture would have? [The Marxists have filled whole libraries with debates on 'the National Question' -- the only thing Stalin ever wrote which seriously ventured into theory was a pamphlet on this issue, under Lenin's guidance, religiously studied by some addle-brains yet today. One conclusion they arrived at: US Blacks were a nation and should get a large part of five Southern states -- there were maps drawn showing all the counties where Blacks were a majorty. But as my ancestors found out, 'should' always needs a 'can'.]

In the insane years of the late 60s and 70s, Chicano [as they were then called] nationalists wanted to carve 'Aztlan' out of the US Southwest. (The logical thing would have been to demand its return to Mexico, but they were, quite rightly, ashamed of Mexico. So they invented their own fantasy Zion.) But should succumbed to can, not to mention that it was just a phantasm of a bunch of college boys, since the last thing Mexicans living in the US want is a reproduction of Mexico in their new home.

Where the demands for a separate state are not just adolescent fantasies, they run up against something that's a mixture of 'should' and 'can': few of these places are populated only by those who wish to separate. Usually, you have interpenetration of peoples. Where one people is well outnumbered, and can be subdued, or driven out, then it's that which usually happens. And if the driven-out ones were colonial masters, no one cares. Who even knows what a pied-noir was, or gives a hoot about those wicked Afrikaaners?

What we've got left are the hard cases: where both sides are strong enough so that they can keep fighting for a long time: Northern Ireland is a case in point. So is Israel/Palestine. And waiting in the wings are the minorities -- national minorities? -- of India and China and Russia.

The least worst option, in my opinion, is to physically separate the contending tribes, giving each their own state. (Surely the Greeks and Turks on Cyprus should just agree to a division of the island, with each merging with its home country.)

How I wish the Jews could have -- not Switzerland, but Southern California. It could become an 'ancestral homeland', just by scooping up all the dirt and transporting it -- it's not the latitude and longitude, but the dirt, that has the Magical Powers, isn't it?. (I selfishly want the US to benefit from transplanted Israeli intelligence and enterprise. To hell with the Swiss, those calculating bankers who stood on the sidelines of both big European wars instead of jumping in on one side or the other, thus scorning the opportunity for each of their villages to have monuments to several generations of its young men. Let them earn their own Nobel Prizes and form their own successful IT start-ups. Although I have to say, you Israelis are 'way too left wing for me in most things, but you have to take the bad with the good..)

But you are where you are, and no one's going to dislodge you in the next few decades. It's not a 'should' question, it's a 'can' question. However ... the 'relationship of forces', as the Russians put it, does change over time. Israel needs to be secure not just today, but a century from now. That's why the Palestinians must have a state.

Dutch: I see you quote Joan Peters' book. Have you read any critical reviews of it? If not, would you like to?

 

Certainly, if it is a positive one.

 

Why would you want only to read a positive review? If the book has errors, surely you would want to know about them?

 

There aren’t any that worth reading. Here’s a typical review of FTI

”Shockingly amazing look into the REAL Palestinian mind-set and how the whole world has bought into the lie perpetrated literally from "time immemorial". Most countries who choose to turn a blind eye or deaf ear, do so because of the money involved in "Big Oil" (deals w/Arab countries). This book takes the words straight from the horses' mouth as it were, concerning reasons for the erroneous "Arab rhetoric" concerning the Jewish people. When the Jewish people couldn't be defeated militarily, a conscience effort was made to destroy the credibility of the Jews through "lies" because they were well aware of the hatred already prevalent throughout the world against the Jews from "time immemorial". Because history isn't taught in our schools, and when it is, it has been revised, most people will never know that Israel NEVER belonged to the Arabs. Jerusalem always has belonged to the Jews and always will! I'm grateful that this book is available to anybody seeking "truth"!”

 

That does seem like a worthless review ... barely literate. It's almost hard to know if it's a positive review or not, the writing is so bad. Doesn't do the book credit.

I personally believe that most of us approach political questions with our mind firmly made up. There is literally no evidence that could make us change our mind. We just seek evidence that reinforces our own viewpoint, or that we can use as ammunition in political debates. This is just human -- reality is complex, and there is ALWAYS some evidence that is not favorable to our viewpoint, so we just ignore it, as not relevant.

Which is a shame. I'm a strong believer -- now, not in my youth -- in the approach of one particular fellow, who should we always entertain the proposition, "What evidence would make me change my mind?", and that we should positively seek out any disconfirming evidence for our views, as painful as this might be.

So that's what I try to do. (Now ... not for the first third of my adult life, when I was a pretty serious Marxist, and never read any serious critiques of Marxism.) Also, I hate to be beaten in an argument, so I try to have read the other side's stuff first, and be ready to answer them.

Now I personally don't care whether the Palestinians, or the Jews, were ever in Palestine, or how many were there at any particular time, or what they have done or have not done to plant trees, etc. So the arguments in Joan Peters' book -- the ones I have seen quoted, as I have not read it -- are not relevant to my views. But, if someone does believe her thesis, they should really read one or two competent critical reviews ... plus, perhaps, some of the ensuring debates.

However, this is an eccentric, minority view. I don't think I've ever persuaded even one leftist to read the Bell Curve, for instance. They've got their views, and they don't care about any contrary facts. A shame.

 

A sensible post, Doug - thank you. You're correct, of course; our political believes are formed during our youth, and it takes nothing less than a life changing event for us to sway from them. And yes, like yourself I too avail myself to the information from both sides of the issue, before venturing forth my opinion.

Cheers!