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Friday, April 12, 2013

Doublethink 1


This to invite your contributions of your favorite example of doublethink to this list.  Here's one of mine:

There are people who believe that government spending cannot possibly promote economic growth.

Many of the people who believe this also believe that Franklin D. Roosevelt did not "get us out of the great depression".  They believe that what got us out of the depression was the boom caused by all of that money that was spent on military equipment for WWII.

6 comments:

  1. Tom 1 - There are some who advocate gender and race neutrality in all things and yet they seek to achieve the neutrality goal by granting privilege based on race and gender. An example would be government contracts awarded based on points. Frequently the contract evaluation process awards, by rule, up to 20 points (out of 100) if the company is female or minority owned.

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  2. Tom 2 – Infinite Tolerance – There are individuals and groups that believe that tolerance is sacrosanct and has no bounds. One example: In today’s world there is a faction (however small or large) of Islam that thinks their GOD would visit death on anyone that is not Muslim. The “Infinite Tolerance” group would insist that everyone tolerate this belief. I put the “no limits tolerance group” in the “double think” category because they are intolerant of others who believe that tolerance, of necessity, must have limits.

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  3. Tom 3 - Individuals or entities that claim to believe in the rule of law, but hold that laws contrary to their sense of fairness should not and need not be enforced. A current example would be the existence and tolerance of “Sanctuary Cities” in violation of current immigration laws.

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  4. Interesting point. I include myself in the category that thinks spending for the sake of spending will not get you out of a recession or depression. And yet, the US did indeed come out of the depression after massive borrowing and spending for and during WWII. I will have to give this some thought, but I do know that the US emerged from WWII as THE world’s greatest industrial power from whom almost everyone else bought almost everything. Perhaps the WWII expenditures were, serendipitously, one of the best infrastructure investments in history.

    I would contrast this against the recent (just short of $1T) stimulus spending where it is difficult to point to spending that resulted in significant infrastructure gains.

    I will give this some more thought.

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  5. Religion is rife with doublethink.

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