No wonder the socialist hate this guy. Progressives have no rational argument

[kidkaos2]

Originally Posted by EmeraldCityWanderer

Actuall, quite a number of people have gone through his ideas and evaluated them. Even back to 1972 with the Spiro Latsis study. Just because you ignore them, doesn't mean these things don't exist. Any more than a tiger doesn't exist even when a child closes their eyes, sticks their fingers in their ears, and yells really load.

You're providing a link to a piece by Paul Krugman as an analysis of Milton Friedman? Seriously? You had the kernel here of a valid point, but your link kind of destroys it.

If I'm debating something with a liberal, I never ever provide a link to Fox News to support what I'm saying. It doesn't matter whether valid information is in the link. I'll find some other link that contains the same information.

Going to Paul Krugman for an objective analysis of Milton Friedman is like going to Microsoft for an objective analysis of Apple. What do you think a Ford executive's conclusion is going to be about whether you should buy a Ford or a GM? Even if the bare facts are right, the commentary is worthless as evidence of anything.

Some ideas were good, some were bad, some simply didn't work when they were tested (such as Chile in 1982 with the monetary crisis). What Libertarians have made of Friedman...there is no rational argument against because their idolization is not rational in the first place. It is certainly not rational to ignore 40 years of debates and critiques of a persons theories, and call anyone who disagrees a socialist. That is good evidence the person is a wingnut.

And yet we irrational libertarians are supposed to believe that Obama is an honest hardworking man even after the IRS, Benghazi, cash for clunkers, Solyndra, bombing Libya, fast & furious, if you like your insurance you can keep it, etc and any criticism of him is simply racism.

[katygirl68]

Originally Posted by pnwmdk

I doubt the IQ / gullibility linkage. Rather, I think it's a combination of things:

1. Learning style - if you learn by reading a book, without needing experience, then you're used to accepting what you read as factual. You make things into a premise without ever testing the validity of said premise.

2. Lack of principled belief. If you have no principled grounding, you can far more easily be talked into things that would be rejected outright by someone who carefully measured things against principle.

3. Acceptance of moral relativism. Conservatives are often criticized for having only "black and white" views, with no gray. This isn't particularly true. Rather, they generally have a much narrower area of 'gray' with very solid black and white areas. But rarely do conservative people get involved in cults or terrorists, or otherwise, because they reject things out of hand, that violate the clear lines of right and wrong.

It may be more urban legend or perhaps stereotyping, but I also think that highly educated ( liberal arts education, for instance) people have willingly lowered their self defense barriers - they think themselves smart enough to "play with fire and not get burned", so to speak.

The university paper I linked to does state that it's highly educated people with less spiritual or religious backgrounds that tend to be more open to cults. Obviously, someone who is raised in the church tends to view a cult leader differently than someone who isn't from a religious background.

Someone with street smarts as opposed to book smarts tends to be more cynical and not as easily lead. Maybe the word is less naïve.