We need more openness

We need more openness. Leaders of the free world need to admit that they consort with torturers for other political ends, but they need to both make public what those other political ends are (so that they can be judged as being worth the costs) as well as allowing condemnation of those human rights abuses. This would not be hypocritical. Hypocrisy is when you say one thing and do another, not when you justify what you are doing in terms of a tricky balancing act. Openness, openness.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/us-and-uz.htm

Gauss & Whacko? Larouche

LaRouche publications often contain references to obscure, but nonetheless probably quite valid, academic dissertations, presumedly to give the impression that the other (conceptually unrelated) political claims have some basis in credibility. It doesn't work.

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2002-18/bruce1/gauss1.html

I hate dogmatism...in other people

Opposing self-righteousness is easier said than done. How do you denounce dogmatism in others without succumbing to it yourself? No one embodied thispitfall more than the philosopher Karl Popper, who railed against certaintyin science, philosophy, religion and politics and yet was notoriously dogmatic. I once asked Popper, who called his stance critical rationalism, about charges that he would not brook criticism of his ideas in his classroom. He replied indignantly that he welcomed students' criticism; only if they persisted after he pointed out their errors would he banish them from class.

- John Horgan, in an op-ed editorial in the New York Times, 12-12-2004