All or Nothing Thinking.

In the recent US election a candidate named Rich Lott ran for a US House seat in northern Ohio. During the course of the campaign photographs will him wearing a Waffen SS uniform appeared. Rich Lott said that he took part in historical reenactments, and it turns out that he had done so repeatedly, and from different eras including wearing a uniform as a US World War I serviceman and a Union soldier in the Civil War. This did nothing to sway the liberal outrage that a nazi was running for office.

During the extended lead up to the passing of the health care bill, in which Obama asked directly for input from all sides, compromised on many portions of the bill, and eventually cobbled together a compromise which provided health insurance through private insurers to tens of millions more American citizens, Obama was regularly labeled from the right as a socialist, and from the left as a coward. Millions of people truly believed that this compromise bill was an attempt for a left-wing conspiracy to gather as much control as possible in order to run every aspect of Americans' lives.

During the Bush administration, after Bush had gone through the legal process to be confirmed as the winner of the 2000 election according to the rules of the election many people thought, and still do, that Bush stole the election. After declaring war with the approval of Congress, I personally knew of people who were seriously worried that Bush was the figurehead of a new world order and would find some excuse to declare martial law in the USA.

While in a debate about health care in the USA, after having mentioned that the French have a health care system that costs less money, is liked by its citizens and results in better health care I was told that if I didn't love it here I should leave.

While discussing the re-introduction of wolves to the Idaho wilderness in which a hunter went out with a group of dogs trained to go out and find bears and tree them, came across a pack of wolves which then killed several of the hunters dogs I was accused of saying that if wolves settled in a rancher's lands he should no longer be able to raise cattle. My point had been that if you take packs of dogs into the wild and have them harass predators there's a chance the predators will fight back.

These are all examples of all or nothing thinking. All or nothing thinking divides the world into groups, and these groups become mutually exclusive. If you have a characteristic, let us say that you are in favor of legal abortions, then all or nothing thinking puts you into the group "liberal" and then decides that you are also in favor of legalizing marijuana, against church-run schools, and for increased taxes. In such circumstances what is a libertarian to do? It can be very difficult and time consuming after having made a point to then go through the long process of disabusing people of all the things that they then think I must believe.

All or nothing thinking has the huge advantage of being simple. Your decisions are made for you. You can go through life confident in the correctness of your positions and the idiocy and evil nature of those in the other group. The alternative is to listen to what people actually say, to take each piece of what they say as independent ideas, to think of people as individuals. The alternative is hard work that requires real thought and leaves you very often with doubt about situations. The benefits of the alternative to all or nothing thinking is that the world becomes populated by people rather than friends and enemies.