Cog,

I think I’ve realized what it is about you that I find fascinating.

As we grow up, we hone our judgment skills. It starts before we are five ….an awakening of our gut, so to speak. We learn through millions of large and small, important and not so important experiences that we need to make judgment calls ….many times out of self-preservation. At it’s essence, it’s a skill useful to survival of the species.

Every now and then I encounter someone who seems uncomfortable with the whole process, and I wonder why. I see it a lot with liberals; they are hard pressed to make a judgment call and then own it …. they tend to waffle and obfuscate and do the dance. Your loophole comment up above reminded of that. It’s like in the face of evidence (not necessarily conclusive, but strong), one will still cling to the equivocating, wiffley-waffley position instead of just planting their feet.

My question to you is this: At what point does this process begin, what supports it, and what are its benefits? It is just a matter of having a preference for a continuum that has infinite shades of gray, is it born out of a devotion to ‘seeing as many sides as possible’ to any given issue (for the sake of fairness?), is it a safety net of sorts?

I am genuinely curious.