Friday, August 27, 2010

Truth and Totems

Follow-on to my post of Wednesday.  Some thoughtful additional words about thought processes, from a thoughtful blogger.  Maha posts:

I’ve written before that righties tend to interpret events through myths and symbols rather than facts. Just so, I think they also tend to regard documents such as the Bible and the Constitution more as totems than texts. The documents are cherished as icons of whatever it is they think America or Christianity is, not for what they actually say.

And if you understand that, you can see how it isn’t inconsistent for them to, say, claim they believe in religious liberty while forming a mob to stop the building of what they think is a mosque. “Religious liberty” is something iconic to them, but they don’t understand or appreciate how it is applied to real-world situations.


The link to Ultrarunning? Probably none, just wanted to rant some more in a more thoughtful way about the so-called “Mosque at Ground Zero” and how people have checked their minds at the door.

 

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