>What bugs me, to further the example, is when folks
>begin to make speculative, subjective, often
>pseudo-psychoanalytic claims about Bush to make
>arguments against his policies, e.g., he's a dummy who
>uses words funny, he puts his faith in the Lord, he's
>greedy and doesn't care about people, he's an
>alcoholic and therefore fiscally irresponsible, he
>wants to "avenge" his father in Iraq, etc.
Why are those things "subjective" and the projected balance of the Social Security system 45 years from now "objective"? We know almost all these things to be true: there are transcripts of Bush's incoherent speaking style, plenty of evidence of his crude Christian faith, his indifference to people (e.g., his mockery of the doomed Karla Fay Tucker), he was an alcoholic and it's clinically established that alcoholics frequently exhibit certain personality traits, etc. Why is that a lesser form of knowledge?
Doug