Pay No Attention to the Facts Behind the Green Curtain. . . .

1. 69

   AnnCeeposted 15 years ago

   Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains
   
   It�s one of the great assumptions underlying modern democracy that an informed citizenry is preferable to an uninformed one.
   
   �Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,� Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789. This notion, carried down through the years, underlies everything from humble political pamphlets to presidential debates to the very notion of a free press.
   
   Mankind may be crooked timber, as Kant put it, uniquely susceptible to ignorance and misinformation, but it�s an article of faith that knowledge is the best remedy.
   
   If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens. If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight.
   
   In the end, truth will out. Won�t it?
   
   Maybe not.
   
   Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information.
   
   It's this: Facts don't necessarily have the power to change our minds.
   
   In fact, quite the opposite.
   
   In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
   
   
   http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas … re?mode=PF

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2. 88

   lovemychrisposted 15 years ago

   I've been trying to tell you that, but you don't believe me!
   Maybe you'll believe Andrew Napolitano:
   
   "What President Bush did with the suspension of habeas corpus, with the whole concept of Guantánamo Bay, with the whole idea that he could avoid and evade federal laws, treaties, federal judges and the constitution was blatantly unconstitutional — and in some cases criminal," Napolitano said. "They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted. For torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. I'd like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you're under oath, lying is not a crime."
   
   Napolitano added that "the evidence...is overwhelming...that George W. Bush as President and Dick Cheney as Vice President participated in criminal conspiracies to violate the federal law and the guaranteed civil liberties of hundreds, maybe thousands, of human beings."
   
   You all just stubbornly would not budge in your support of Bushco!

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