Argument

I am continually amazed and perplexed (I will probably begin a lot of posts like this) how we frame arguments. It seems that if someone disagrees with your point of view, you call them names and question their intelligence. That is all that must be done in order to win the argument. The Left is the best at this. They cannot fathom why anyone would vote for McCain/Palin. So they call them idiots. This is intellectually lazy and, yes, hypocritical. Hypocritical because they claim to be the more “intelligent” party yet use nothing like intelligence to discredit the Republicans.

This is the same argument Bush used to get us into Iraq. His administration could not fathom why anyone would want to attack America. He lumped everyone that disagreed with us into the Axis of Evil. Iraq was therefore “the same” as Al-Qaeda. ATTACK! I believe he had other motives to attack but he did use this argument from the start.

This leads me into the question, Is there any such thing as the truth? Or is the concept of truth just an amalgam of our experiences and points of view. Is it true that people that like McCain/Palin are idiots? No. I disagree with there decision, but I have to know how they arrived at it to disagree and argue against them.

Case in point. The recent Georgian/Russian bruhaha. This is a current event and we still can't agree on what is the truth. Who initiated the violence? Who was "morally" correct in retaliating? Weren't both governments punishing a "separatist" state. Georgia in Russia's mind, South Ossetia in Georgia's mind.
Now imagine trying to dissect an historical event. Let us take the Civil War for instance. How in the world do we think we can make conclusions about the motives and truths of that period? We can only make guesses in my view, anything else would be hypocritical.

Beginning

For a long time now, I have been trying to find a good way to begin this blog. I haven't found one, but here goes.

I realize the title is a bit inflammatory but it was not meant to be. I feel we, as humans, are all afflicted by this virus. (Virus actually implies that we can cure ourselves from it, so I think that is a misnomer too. All we can do is minimize it's effect.)

So, what is this blog about? It is about my thoughts on the world as I see it. Nothing less, nothing more. It will primarily focus on economics and politics. My outlook is from a beginning libertarian, Austrian economics perspective. I am continually amazed at the clarity Austrian economics brings to economic issues.

The more I learn and think about the world the more interesting and perplexing it becomes. The more I learn the more conventional wisdom looks less like wisdom. The more I learn the less I know. That is why I need to write it all down, just like so many others. That is also why most of my posts will be in conversational form. I have more questions than answers. Hopefully, you will find something that interests you.