Are we allowed to be wrong?

I have a love hate relationship with Politics. I have said that before. I also have a love hate relationship with prosperity.

We as Americans love our toys. I love my laptop, and I love my DVR. I love the free market that allows us to develop and have these toys.

I believe that products that are not dangerous, or fraudulent should be legal. I would never want a lot of the products that we see on infomercials. They should be allowed to be sold to those who would.

Does the same freedom exist for ideas? Should it exist for ideas?

I saw an email forwarded to me comparing GW Bush to Hitler for about the 9 millionth time. Do we have a right to make that comparison? Constitutionally we do and should. The question is do we have the right morally to? I think not. Along those lines I don't think we as conservative have the moral right to make similar comparisons of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Why might you ask? We destroy the language, we destroy our civility, we destroy our ability to converse as civilized people. To make this comparison about any political leader, is to ignore all of the evil that Hitler did. It brings evil down to a level of dislike. Evil is what it is. I can think of no leader in our country that I can call evil. I can however think of many I disagree with vehemently. To associate them with evil is to bring evil down to a common place level.

If all it takes to be evil is to be wrong in someone's eyes, any of us can be called evil. If I punish my child severely, and find out later I was wrong, am I evil? I may risk ending the love my child feels for me, but I am not evil. People are not always correct. If a teacher fails a student and discovers they were incorrect in the grading of a paper, they are not evil. There are certainly consequences of their actions, but that is not evil.

We must as Americans reserve terms like evil, terrorist, etc. for true examples of these words. When people compare leaders to truly evil, when they use the word terrorist in describing a leader, they blatantly tear down the language. I read a lot of these errors in these blogs on this site. Here is a start. I think Atheist Mike Newdow is wrong. I think he does not represent the best interests of his family not the country. I think Howard Dean is wrong about just about everything he speaks of. I think Scientists who degrade religiosity as mythology are wrong and a bit arrogant. That does not make them evil. Saddam Hussein is evil. Hitler was evil. Osama bin Laden is evil. He may believe in his behavior, but he is still evil. See the difference? Lets preserve the language, and maybe have some discussion on the points we disagree on.

How can 67% be so wrong?

In an interview with an oil executive Jim Lehrer asked about a survey that showed around 67% of the people surveyed believed that the oil companies were significantly responsible for rising oil prices.

This is of course ridiculous. How can so many people be so misinformed? Are we stupid? I don't think so.

One reason is a political class that sells to its customers, us that a particular group of people is responsible for each and every problem, and they above all can fix it if we only trust them to do it. The House of Representatives is about to vote on a measure that sets penalties for 'price gouging'. I put that in quotes, because my sense tells me that at some point if given their way any profit will be called price gouging. Let me say this clear, Price has a significant role in supply. As price increases quantity demanded goes down. This is law in economics. It is happening. Fox news reports this phenomena. This is not shocking, it is economics.

Another explanation is the dreadful level of education about economics. Public schools when they do teach economics, teach it from a liberal-leftist point of view. Teachers should teach subjects not indoctrinate!!

Major media sources report from a agenda point of view. Bernard Goldberg details this expertly in his book Bias.
They subscribe to a bias for bad news and anything that fits their world view. That world view happens to include the belief that corporations that make large profits are bad.

What do corporations do with huge profits? They don't redistribute them to their owners. They may redistribute some of it in the form of dividends. They may pass some of it along to the management and workers in the form of bonuses. Nothing is wrong with either of these practices. The vast majority of profit is invested in making more profits. In the case of oil companies that includes many things such as exploration, oil refining capacity, alternative fuel technology. These are all good things. They money that is given to employees, managers and stockholders also gets circulated to the private sector. I defy anyone to tell me where that is wrong!!!!!

Oil companies make somewhere in the area of 7 to 11 percent net profit in good years. Compare this to retail which return 15 -20 percent, banks that return in the 20 - 30 percent range. These numbers are not out of line.

So how can so many be so wrong? Sometimes it is just easier to blame someone that to admit that you just have to live with a bad situation. That doesn't make it true.