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To: campg

News is news and opinion is opinion - there should be no merging of them.


22 posted on 02/16/2014 8:09:44 PM PST by Gabz (Democrats for Voldemort.)
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To: Gabz
News is news and opinion is opinion - there should be no merging of them.
That assumes that people can be objective. You show me someone who says he is objective, and I’ll show you someone who is not objective about himself. To expect news to be free of opinion is to expect water to flow naturally uphill.
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.

The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors. And as we cannot always be satisfied merely with being admired, unless we can at the same time persuade ourselves that we are in some degree really worthy of admiration; so we cannot always be satisfied merely with being believed, unless we are at the same time conscious that we are really worthy of belief. As the desire of praise and that of praise-worthiness, though very much a-kin, are yet distinct and separate desires; so the desire of being believed and that of being worthy of belief, though very much a-kin too, are equally distinct and separate desires.

The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. -  Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments


55 posted on 02/17/2014 1:14:58 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion ("Liberalism” is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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