But yes, better to try and learn the facts. I believe people think what they do because they honestly have arrived at said conclusion. The trouble is resistance to conversation and evidence to the contrary of what they already think.

To whit: Benjamin Rush, 1787 said:

"The rights of mankind are simple. They require no learning to unfold them. They are better felt, than explained. Hence, in matters that relate to liberty, the mechanic and the philosopher, the farmer and the scholar, are all upon a footing. But the case is widely different with respect to government. It is a complicated science, and requires abilities and knowledge of a variety of other subjects, to understand it"

From: Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty. A Histor of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. Oxford University Press, 2009, 21.

I don't want my life and my country made the victim of a demagogue and his uneducated followers. We've already had a taste of that under Bush, where education and intellectualism were put under foot by "instinct" and "feelings".

Let's put a premium on education and do the politically incorrect thing by slapping down ignorance.

In the words of Odin himself, "Talk sense or be silent" and

"The ignorant booby had best be silent

When he moves among other men,
No one will know what a nit-wit he is

Until he begins to talk;

No one knows less what a nit-wit he is

Than the man who talks too much."

It's bad enough that members of Congress don't bother to read a bill and then comment upon it, but then you've got the millions of people who vote these people into office on the basis of ideology.

We're seeing what happens right now when one party attempts to govern through knee-jerk reactions and the automatic gainsaying of what anyone else says. Bush elevated "feelings" over intelligence and knowledge and the whole Republican Party now seems to embrace an anti-intellectual point of view. Pretty sad when somebody who actually knows what they're talking about is an "elitist" – especially since most people have a chance to know what they're talking about if they'd simply put forth the effort, or if it wasn't denied them by their religion/ideology.

I always loved Moynihan and I love that quote.

Unfortunately, the idea that changing your mind is a weakness and not a strength has taken hold in the popular imagination. It's the kiss of death for a politician. I really think we need an Edward R. Morrow moment, somebody willing to stand up and stop the nonsense, somebody who will admit to changing their mind and then actually defending it instead of denying.

I agree too that America's treatment of the Native American peoples bears a closer resemblance to the genocide of Paganism than to the Jewish holocaust. First of all, America wasn't trying to exterminate the natives; it was trying to "elevate" or "improve" them by turning them into good little Christian farmers. And we can blame the corruption of those in charge of the reservation system for much of the evil that was done.

The premise that underlies public opinion polls, call-in radio shows, and letters-to-the-editor pages, is that everyone's opinion–whether informed, uninformed, misinformed, tendentious, biased, or intentionally duplicitous–is equally worth listening to and should, in some sense, be accorded equal weight. The idea that people should refrain from commenting on matters about which they know nothing is perceived as being "elitist."

Consider the typical "man in the street" interviews that one reads after the Supreme Court has issued a controversial ruling. Virtually none of the interviewees will have read the text of the ruling, nor will they know anything about the facts of the case, but they will feel free to hold forth about it nevertheless.

IMO,Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it very well:

"You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts."

Humanity's consciousness and sense of what is acceptable and not acceptable has shifted, grown and changed over the years. To try and put one framework over all of that is just…well ignorant. Yes, sure maybe it can temporarily give us insight into one particular issue but…the whole of humanity and it's progress? Please.

I think one of the worst things we can do is cut ourselves off from further learning and education. Digging in one's heals and saying, "No way I'm not budging." is to be a stubborn idiot. Yes, values and principles are important. But when the facts and evidence roll in that show there is a better way or that one's precious views of something is incorrect, I think living in the real world and in the truth (as in what we currently know as fact) is far better and healthier for humanity. It's how we grow.

The monotheistic worldview is of an extra-cosmical god who is the absolute good and the Universe he created, which is constantly turning bad. From this stems the "Judgement Day" theory, a time when we are told, god will destroy the earth and take the true blue monotheists with him to heaven.

Polytheists can't make sense of this stuff. Why should this powerful and glorious Universe be something bad, and why should our earth deserve destruction when hope and the will to create a positive legacy are always with us?
But since the earth and the Universe itself is dispensable according to monotheism, global warming isn't really an issue with them. The earth is going to be destroyed anyway on judgement day, so why bother for the future?

As for Marxists, as you said – it is something I once pointed out to a Marxist in a letter, myself – class struggle defines history. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Sociology is too complex to be watered down and have its answers arranged in the "class struggle" pattern. But then, if you follow a totalitarian ideology to which deistic and atheistic monotheism belong, your belief system doesn't leave you with much of a choice.

Instead of comparing the Native American tragedy to the Hebrew holocaust, I rather compare it to the polytheistic holocaust of the European continent, when polytheism was forced out of the pages of history, by belligerent monotheists.

The loss of land and lives that befell the polytheists of Europe, was to be repeated with the Native American people.

I sometimes think about it and am amazed. Have you ever considered it? Four continents were lost to monotheism; Europe, North America, South America, Australia and the nation-state of New Zealand.
Asia and Africa were the only two continents, where polytheism was allowed to survive in clusters.

Will schoolchildren around the world, ever get to learn about the holocaust of our polytheistic ancestors?