Introspection

If I come across as pretty confident that I'm open-minded and not merely proceeding from a knee-jerk hatred of Bush, it could be because of my level of introspection.

At least once a week, sometimes more often, I sit down and ask myself "Is it possible I'm wrong? Is it possible that everything I think I know about President Bush, his Administration, and the neoconservative movement is incorrect, and the country is actually NOT headed in the wrong direction?"

My wife can tell you, this is not a painless or quick process. She's been through it with me on several occasions. Ultimately, after throwing away everything I think I know and starting back in trying to find ways in which the right wing talking points could be correct (or largely so), I find no way to make that fit the facts as I believe I know them.

My question to everyone out there (on both sides of any issue) is this: Do you do the same thing? Can you honestly say you've sat down, done your best to clear your mind of preconceived notions of what the left and right represent, and taken a clear and careful introspective examination of your beliefs and how they match up to the facts?

My suspicion is that most of you have not. My guess is that very few people take the time to reexamine their beliefs from time to time to make sure none of their foundational assumptions, postulates and theories have been disproved, removing the underpinnings of the argument.

I'm pretty confident that I've examined my arguments, and that I continue to do so regularly. I'm confident that my position on the issues is the one which most closely fits the facts as I know them, and that I can tell the difference between a source which is repeating opinions without any justification vs one which has some substantive and genuine proof cited.

Can you say the same about your argument? Or have you built your entire argument on a shaky foundation such as "my party is good, the other party is evil, therefore President Bush is (a hero/the antichrist)"?

That's why I consider myself an independent, not a member of either major party (or any minor one). I don't have a "my party", so I know I can't be proceeding from the automatic assumption that one is the party of goodness and light and the other of evil and darkness.

Liam.