My (white conservative pro-Bush Republican) friend the other day made a great point; he said at lunch "it doesn't matter the color of his skin, you vote for the ideology not for the outter shell."
Grab a horizontal rope by its center and raise it. Those two flaying and fraying ends are called the left and right wing. They flay in the wind because they "vote for the ideology". Centrists don't vote for a political agenda because logic does not use ideology when making a decision. Therefore centrists in mass numbers last November voted against the neo-cons, their corruption, and an unjustified war based only in an ideology. Centrists grasp reality - which is why the center of that rope is higher on an intelligence scale. Meanwhile, those two frayed ends are banging on one another as the wind blows because their conflict is only about ideology – only about the wind.
An independent obtains facts from numerous perspectives; which sometimes come even from extremists. As both Ronald Cherrycoke and Urbane Guerrilla demonstrate, such extremists know using a political agenda - their ideology – what they are told to think from Rush Limbaugh, et al - rather than learn from history, reality, science, and the numbers. For example, Urbane Guerrilla posted extensively about his knowledge of Vietnam back in Aug 2005 in a discussion entitled “Understanding terrorism”. UG never even read the Pentagon Papers. But UG knows. His ideology includes ‘evil communists’ rather than first learn perspectives.
Ronald Cherrycoke even posts this extremist myth:
Besides Lee Hamilton commision agreed that Saddam had some ties to terrorist Al-Qaeda included.
Why didn't he cite a source? He knows using ideology. Ideology is sufficient as fact?
Centrists learn and then also learn the 'whys'. Even more important, a centrist wants numbers. Ideologues don't even care ‘why’. Subjective reasoning is too often sufficient. A political agenda machine told 'brown shirts' what to know. Extremists knew Saddam was evil even though Saddam was an American ally. Extremists just know; that latter fact be damned. Even Islamoterrorism is cited as proof.
If Islamoterrorism is to go away, its sponsors must be finished off. Islamoterrorism doesn't happen without the say-so of Islamic governments or government entities. It keeps transpiring, for a somewhat far-flung instance, that Indonesian Islamoterrorists have covert ties with the Indonesian military. And just how many Islamic nations/governments are on the list of terrorist sponsors?
Classic ideologue reasoning; not what an informed American would say.
Ideologues demand that we hold the rope horizontally rather than in the center. So that extremists can be equal? Why? They could not bother to first learn – a prerequisite for intelligence? One could not even read the Pentagon Papers and yet knows all about Vietnam? One promised to discuss Thomas Barnett’s book
on 9 Nov 2006. Then realized Barnett promotes “nation building” which extremists oppose. So he quietly stopped reading it. Only extremists would refuse to learn of things opposed to their ideology.
Meanwhile, a real patriot asks embarrassing questions, pushes out the envelope, constantly questions, demands numbers, has little need for a political agenda, and always wants to know the ‘why’. A patriot sees a world chock full of perspectives and has little tolerance for ‘black and white’, ‘good and evil’ concepts from ideology.
Grab that rope by its center. Notice how its extremist ends flay in the wind. Only an extremist uses ideology to vote.