re: #120 000G

OR you could try to simply argue your case and educate them (including fighting back against lies) in order for them to change their opinions. Your point assumes that there is no legitimate or efficient way of convincing people of something. Which is demonstrably false.

No, that means that your case, or at the very least an opening to it, is palatable enough that people will listen to you. It’s when you happen to be right, but no one is listening to you, that you have to change tacks and package the argument in a better way, rather than declaring that because you’re right, you get to assume the mantle of educator while treating everyone else as a student.

re: #121 000G

Everybody is related to everybody else “through concatenation”. One human species.

Not even mentioning all of the unearned privileges (or complete lack thereof) persons receive that are solely attributable to where, when and to whom they are born.

I disagree. We are all individuals and our relationships are things we choose and can revoke at will. And just because a privilege is unearned does not mean it is not deserved. If I choose to give something that I earned to my children, it is theirs by right even if others lack for it, and shared humanity is no argument for taking it away.
re: #122 Obdicut

And it would only not matter what ideology you picked if “Does this ideology prevent you from being tricked?” was the only metric for deciding between ideologies. It’s not.

Fair enough, but the other metrics have led me to decide on capitalist libertarianism.

I’m pointing out that your belief that a ‘me-first’ ideology makes you less vulnerable to exploitation is foolish. Your response is to claim that you know what you’re doing— which may or may not be true, since it’s hard to imagine a person putting up with the ‘imperfection’ of the GOP’s massive anti-science campaign, their economic lunacy, and their general obstructionism. I find it more likely that you actually approve of those imperfections, than honestly see them as such.

A) Why is it foolish? Wouldn’t an ideology more geared toward the good of the self than the good of the others naturally want to eschew control than the reverse? B) I don’t consider the Republican economic policy lunacy, nor do I consider their obstructionism of what I see as unwarranted strikes on liberty a flaw, nor do I see their anti-science campaign as anything more than being against science-as-ideology. I’m against their departures from ideology—George W. Bush increasing the size of government or George H. W. Bush raising taxes—and I’m against their use of religion as ideology and their anti-sex and anti-drug positions, but I find the imperfections of the Democrats more dangerous and debilitating.