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Posted on 02/19/2008 2:43:24 PM PST by forkinsocket
What do you think is more dangerous? Terrorists getting their hands on a biological weapon that can be smuggled into the country or another hurricane like Katrina? Which is the smarter way to keep Social Security solvent? Raise the retirement age or raise taxes? How can the current economic crisis be averted? Give Americans cash to spend or slash mortgage interest rates to restart the housing market?
As millions of Americans gather to vote for presidential candidates in tomorrow's Democratic and Republican primaries, what they are really being asked to do is make a number of policy choices.
The problem is that most people do not fully understand the implications of these choices. Everyone agrees a biological attack is to be avoided and a hurricane should be properly managed, but unless you know how large these risks are relative to each other, you do not know how to allocate resources.
How do we form preferences when we do not fully understand complex issues? We fall back on heuristics, or mental shortcuts. New research suggests the most powerful of these is to find leaders with whom we feel cultural kinship -- and then follow whatever they recommend.
"It is much easier to look at someone and say, 'What are those person's values -- are they like mine or not? If they are like mine, I can trust this person to come up with policies that are in my interest because they share my values,' " said Donald Braman, an anthropologist at George Washington University Law School. "This is what happens in a lot of politics."
In an intriguing set of experiments, Braman, Yale University law professor Dan Kahan and others show that people reduce complex policy matters to a question of personal values.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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The mouth breathing mentality of the mob never ceases to amaze me.
I think people are actually afraid of freedom, and the responsibility of thinking for themselves.
Because the MSM tells them to?
The term sheeple comes to mind.
Terrorists, who will probably sneak across the border because ICE has been ordered not to do its job.
Neither. No one is entitled to the money earned by another. Give them a cashout equal to the amount in their “account” and eliminate it.
Neither. Cut taxes permanently.
Liberals simply vote for the candidate who promises the most government control, no matter what it costs because they figure that someone else will be paying for it.
Yes, but that doesn’t explain ‘Conservatives’ and their current episode of stupidity.
WE are not voting for policy choices, we are voting for the person who will do the least damage to our way of life. Once they are elected, they don’t care. I listed to one SD state why he would cast is vote for HRC, even if Obama has the most pledge delegates. His words “I have a responsibility to give my vote for the best person for America, to make the right decision.” Does this need any explanation? No it does not. We don’t matter to these ass$%^&*#.
Stupidity is right. How could they be so badly duped by the media and John McCain? Really shakes my faith in the intelligence of the American people.
Or of the integrity of the electronic voting system.
The fatal combination of stupidity, ignorance and delusional ego?
To say nothing of a total misunderstanding of "democracy", and "rights".
Conservatives didn’t select McCain. It was “moderates” who did that but we can blame ourselves for not getting behind a single conservative early enough. Now we can either get behind McCain or watch Obama or the Beast become the next president.
But we can also pray the the Beast uses her influence with the super delegates as well as bribes, extortion, and coercion to “steal” the nomination from Obama. In that case, it is highly likely that Obama will leave the ‘Rat party for an independent run with Blomberg as his running mate and money man. And with the ‘left vote split, we can seek a conservative candidate for the right. That would make a heck of an race, a four way race for the first time in US history.
That would be totally cool. I’ll be praying my brains out for that!
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