That’s exactly what my friend said when I pointed out that the high numbers of blacks in prison is accounted for not by racism but by their high rate of committing crimes. He claimed the FBI statistics on who the perps were was corrupted, despite it having been gathered from victims. He refused to accept the data because it disagreed with what he believed, instead of changing his belief to fit new facts.
To my mind this is profoundly unconservative. We’re the ones who base our system of belief on facts, not on wishful thinking. What the world is like, not what the world SHOULD be like. When new facts show our beliefs to be incorrect, we change our beliefs. Or at least to my mind we should.
Why are conservative states much more likely to be “takers” and liberal states more likely to be “givers?” Don’t know, though I suspect there are a lot of reasons that could be laid out.
But unless you can come up with a convincing reason why the data is corrupted, I think it is inappropriate to claim it is false simply because you don’t like the conclusion.
I was being more or less facetious in my post #226 when I said "But you know the feds lie about everything".
But I will say this, the days of blindly accepting anything the federal government says at face value are looong gone for me.
In fact, the first things I think of when I read a statement from the federal government is "What are they covering up or spinning?" and "Who benefits from this?"
If there are no unbiased facts to back up a statement or document released by the federal government there is no reason to accept it as valid. The government does not automatically get the benefit of doubt for the simple reason they have done nothing to deserve our trust.