I never really post in this forum

[Jdanz]

i'm a politics student at a US university, i don't feel like having people draw conclusions about how i see the world by getting any more specific.

I was trying to avoid writing a paper, so i started browsing through some threads.

I think there are some really smart people on this forum but almost no discussion. People are very good at looking up statistics that compliment their point of view but have no real interest in any sort of discourse.

It seems abundently clear to me that neither "right" or "left" is correct, and that some combination of the ideals which they espouse is far more effective then the over simplification that lies in either ideology in vacuum.

Just to point to an example we often see debates about what is more important security or privacy, but clearly both are important and the job of politics (and people like us talking about politics) is to constantly be redrawing the line in the give and take relationship between these two ideals.

I don't really expect any sort of consensus nor does any reasonable political figure, but is it really all that hard to understand that neither side is completely ignorant of reality, and that the principles and ideals that both express have some value, and that our political process is one that seeks to find an equilbrium between competing yet still worthwile goals.

I know the idea that we're all working towards the same cause is really not the flavor of the month, but reading the threads on anachro capitalism and the vietnam war, there is absolutely no discussion. It's simply people arguing with absolute assurity things that are patently ambigous.

The vietnam war in some aspects was both a deterent and an incentive for further communist movements. I have absolutely no idea why the idea that the issue is not clear cut is so anethma to the clearly very well-informed and intelligent people in that thread. You can argue/discuss exactly how and why it was more one or the other, but in my opnion it's fairly disengenous to come down with absolute authority speaking on what is clearly not an issue that can be so neatly resolved.

I don't really have too much to say other then i wish some of the people fighting so bitterly in this forum would realize that the reason there are such divergent opinions on the many issues discussed here is that there is no economic/political doctrine revealed from on high. The best system of government yesterday is not what it is today nor what it will be tomorrow, i myself nor anyone else here, has the "answer" and again IMHO we'd be far better served discussing the merits and disadvantages of different systems then zealously arguing which is Right, because clearly none of them are.

In our non-static world we have to allow for the evolution of ideas of governance, and certainly comming at our myraid problems from a too rigid perspective can only hinder our ability to do that.