Some Hard Questions

Doesn’t everyone have sound factual and/or logical foundations for their viewpoints and the intellectual confidence to consider and respond to reasonable questions? Or do some people just uncritically parrot what others say?

What’s objectionable about civil questions or threatening about honest, open debate?

Are subject-changing, vulgarities, mockery, taunting, name-calling, silly repetition and witless sarcasm honest forms of debate?

Do people who speak the loudest, fastest and longest have more to say – or less?
Do politicians who answer questions that way have more to share – or more to hide?

Must America default before the loud, fast talkers in Washington stop using trivial distractions to avoid addressing existential problems?

How does IRS abuse of conservative groups, Justice Department criminalization of reporting or NSA cataloguing of American phone calls and emails square with a view of government as "benevolent?"

Because the IRS singled out and targeted them, can grassroots groups like Tea Parties really be irrelevant or dead, or do the politicians, bureaucrats and media who dislike and/or fear the grassroots just wish they were?

Would the administration’s foreign policy be more coherent, aggressive and successful if all of our foreign enemies were conservative Americans?
Isn’t it troubling that an administration which has leaked classified information for political purposes is also prosecuting leaks for political purposes?

Why, post-9/11, when a fledgling NSA surveillance program was launched, did the American left declare Republican President George W. Bush a lawless fascist, but, since the scope and domestic intrusiveness of the program have expanded almost exponentially under Democrat Barack Obama, now agree with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that "Everyone should just calm down."?
Shouldn’t concerns for civil liberties cross ideological and party lines?
Is it simultaneously possible that terrorists are so smart that government must violate citizens’ constitutional rights to "protect" Americans, yet so stupid they never suspected NSA surveillance of phone calls and emails? In that context, is leaking NSA domestic surveillance a security problem, a public service – or something else?

Aren’t the laws Edward Snowden may have broken rather minor compared to the surveillance laws and the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution which the NSA has clearly violated?

If an administration’s abuse of power undermines the trust necessary for our system to work and weakens America’s structure, isn’t that a kind of treason?

If Congress and government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac encourage guaranteed housing loans to unqualified borrowers, more-qualified borrowers to overextend themselves, and huge numbers of foreclosures result, can government’s motives really be altruistic? Is it possible that such policies are just poorly conceived, foolish and destructive?

If, as predicted, average life expectancy continues to rise, Baby Boomers swell Social Security and Medicare rolls, and the worker/beneficiary ratio progressively declines, without reforming them, how long can taxpayers depend on those programs?

Will Americans who, for decades, were indoctrinated by public schools, colleges and popular culture with the notion that big government solves all problems reevaluate government’s role in their lives? If they do, to whom or what will they turn?

Doesn’t a free society require respect for a wide variety of opinion and speech, even on controversial issues like race, immigration and abortion?
Are the forces of "tolerance" and "diversity" becoming progressively less tolerant of anything other than ideological homogeneity?

Is "ideology" something only the other side has? Would an admission of ideology somehow annul one’s sense of rectitude or righteousness? Or do some people just rely on those and similar "senses" to deny that they are ideologues?

Over time, does associating exclusively with groups of like-minded people allow commonly-held views to become more extreme, render participants incurious about the opinions of others, diminish self-awareness and encourage an exaggerated, but unearned sense of moral superiority and, eventually, ignorance?

Do such associations make some people more emotional, more easily manipulated by charismatic ideologues and, accordingly, more dangerous to those they dislike or with whom they disagree? Are we able to draw any conclusions from the words and ideas in and the tone of their rhetoric? Can we take any lessons from history?

When questions upset them, how many people consider the possibility that their anger and frustration are fed only by an embarrassing inability to answer them to their own, much less to others’ satisfaction?

http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/07/some_more_hard_questions_worth_pondering_jerry_shenk.html#incart_river