On thinking...or lack thereof...

People nowadays. Seriously! Apparently people have no clue how to actually think through things anymore, and understand subtleties. Everything is knee-jerk reaction to 5 second sound bites and inflaming headlines (the articles for which they obviously don't bother to read, and if they do, the content is so overshadowed by their emotion toward the misleading article they might as well not have read it, for all the rational thinking they do about it). Case in point: http://www.facebook.com/yahoonews/posts/10150646348471037 If you actually read the article and listen to what Dr. Paul says, you see that he is making a clear distinction between the Federal Government vs. the States and the People. He is not against helping your neighbor at all. He is against stealing from some people and borrowing from our enemies in order to inefficiently and stupidly muck things up worse, all in the name of "charity", not to mention upholding the Constitution! In this, he is well in line with conservative (real conservative, not neo-con) thought throughout the course of our Country's history. Perfect example: Davy Crockett But to read the comments on the FB post, you would think that Dr. Paul had advocated the death penalty for people who give to victims or something. People just spout off a gut reaction to the completely inaccurate headline, and make all kinds of judgments and assumptions about Dr. Paul with absolutely no information whatsoever. (This is obvious to those of us who actually know his policies and have studied the thought behind them.) Ugh! For example(s): 1. Many of the commenters say, "He would accept Federal Aid if it was him!" Um...no he wouldn't. And they say, "Congressman vote themselves pay raises all the time, and he wants to be on the President's salary, and..." blah blah blah. They don't realize that he has voted against every pay raise for himself and fellow congressmen, that as President, he would take the salary of the average American (currently approx. $39K/yr. -- which is less than I make, by the way), and that he has consistently returned unused monies from his congressional budget back to the Treasury. Also, he is very thrifty with his own money and his campaign's money as well. The man practices what he preaches. 2. Many of them say, "He wants to send it for Foreign Aid, but not for Domestic?" Um...no, he doesn't want to do that either. 3. Many of them say, "He would be singing a different tune if it were his district!" Um...clearly they didn't even read the article or see the actual interview, because he made a direct comparison to his own district, which is a hurricane zone. He said he been elected time and time again, in spite of hurricanes like Ike, which ripped through his district, because of, not in spite of, his stance. He understands FEMA's stupidity.