Believing What You Like

On the way home tonight, NPR continued it's attack on the Bush Administration because the CIA has "proved them wrong". Daniel Schorr seemed to have his nose even higher in the air than normal and his pronouncements more arrogant than normal if such a thing is possible. The Bush Administration is just not "reality based" according to ancient Daniel.

I think we have another "liberal fundamental here". The "National Intelligence Estimate" (NIE) prior to the Iraq war called WMD in Iraq a "slam dunk". While I might be far more prone to think that "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" than Daniel, I assume his assessment is that the pre-Iraq war NIE was "100% wrong".

In 2005, the NIE on Iran gave the same level of confidence that Iran had an active and aggressive nuclear weapons development program. Now, in 2007, they have done a complete 180 and concluded the opposite with the same level of certainty. Only THIS TIME, Daniel and the left seems 100% willing to accept their conclusions. Apparently in no small part because they feel this is is "bad news for Bush", but hopefully in at least a bit because it is hard to not consider this "good news"-but for the "reality based", I'd argue with the IMPORTANT caveat "if it is correct".

Conservatives tend to believe in individual responsibility, the need to make the best choices we can, and generally that "what we do makes a difference". We tend to do stuff like build things, invest in things, stick with jobs, educate ourselves; "lasting things"-at least on an earthy scale. We tend to believe that consistency IS an issue, but realize that any sort of "intelligence", even the kind that seems "most certain" is at best "an indication".

All human action must be taken with FAR less than the whole picture in view. Pronouncements like Daniel's about "reality" say a lot more about the pronouncer than any corner of what is real. Any person that invests in markets has put their money where their prognosticating mouth is and been proved wrong-and usually right as well. They understand that "predicting the future" is an imprecise activity, but one that millions of people have been able to do to at least their financial benefit for many many decades.

When consistency is no issue and emotion is more important than reason, it is MUCH easier to "believe what you want to believe". If you like to ignore the recent track record of NIEs and bite into this one, you know that you can take the opposite tack next week based on how you "feel" and all your liberal buddies will be just fine with that. If one believes that the world is all "random and unfair and consistency IS NOT an issue", then it is perfectly rational to not accept responsibility for your own decisions, but on the other hand, saddle your favorite scapegoat (Bush) with 100% responsibility for everything.

Oddly, most conservatives tend to believe in something transcendent, usually religion, of which liberals tend to accuse them of "believing what they want to believe". The interesting thing is that the conservative "wishful thinking" tends to come with some "rules" that liberals despise. Worse, it always puts the supplicant in "less than the prime position" and DEMANDS some sort of consistency. Demands that are the antithesis of liberalism