Picking emotion over logic = the loss of civil rights/liberties

[Pushed To The Left]

I have seen multiple posts here about a man who was sentenced to 20 years for apparently looking at cartoons drawings of child molestation. From a purely emotional level, I can understand why many would like to lock him up and throw away the key. However, no actual children were violated in this case. If you look at it with no emotion, you realize that this man is one sick puppy, but should not go to prison for looking at offensive cartoons. South Park recently depicted "Chef" propositioning children..should I go to prison for 20 years because I saw that episode? Murder and rape are on the same level as child mosestation legally..should those of us who watch violent movies and TV shows be put away for 20 years? The problem in this country is that, too many times, emotion wins out over logic when people vote and when laws are passed.....and the rest of America pays the price. Here are some other examples:

Flag Desecration Laws/Amendments. Most people find the burning of the flag to be disgusting and offensive. It might FEEL good to see somebody taken away in handcuffs after doing such a thing. But when we take emotion out of it, and look at the issue with logic, we realize that the 1st Amendment is there to protect all speech...even unpopular speech. However, the far right will use this as a "wedge issue" and use emotion to intimidate others into supporting this awful Amendment. Too many Democrats are supporting flag desecration legislation, probably because they are afraid of offending voters who base their views on emotion rather than logic.

"Marriage"/anti-gay Amendments/Laws: You will never hear a truly logical reason to oppose same-sex marriage. Most of it is based on either prejudice (the opposite of logic) or purely religious reasons. Nobody is telling the right wing they have to agree with same-sex marriage or go against their own religious beliefs. But it isn't right to take away the rights of an entire group of people because of how it makes you FEEL. If you look at the issue with pure logic, you'll see that there is no reason that somebody who is personally opposed to same-sex marriage can't still stand up for the rights of others to choose to live a different way. However, most politicians will shy away from supporting same-sex marriage because they are afraid of offending purely emotional voters who will call them "anti-family".

Separation of church and state. The right wing preys on emotional voters by telling them their religion is "under attack" whenever a church/state issue comes up. "They're trying to take religion out of the public square!" But if you analyze the situation logically, you'll see that those that support church/state separation are trying to prevent the government from establishing one religion as the law of the land. They are protecting religious freedom.

Foreign policy: People of all political beliefs are against terrorism, and anybody who tells you differently is lying to you. However, the right wing has labeled anybody who doesn't agree with the Iraq War or the Patriot Act as being "soft on terrorism". This scares other people into falling in line. The truth is that most people who don't agree with the Iraq situation simply wanted to go after Bin Laden and Al Quaeda more directly. Those of us who oppose torture simply do not want to see innocent people tortured. But the right wing will use fear to get people to support their agenda. A lot of '04 Bush/Cheney votes were based solely on fear. Fear is a powerful emotion, and in 2004 it overcame the logic of many people.

[lostexpectation]

1. conscience V emotion

something that struck me about the Neil Young interview ther other day (even though I still feel he a bit confused about why were in Iraq), was the interviewer gave him a loaded question about Bush bashers being emotive and Neil came back and said it was about conscience,

The media always downplays libs by saying their emotive I say we trumpet "conscience".

[jody]

2. The right to keep and bear arms is a basic civil right, self-defense. The

Democratic Party Platform says "We will protect Americans' Second Amendment right to own firearms, and we will keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists by fighting gun crime, reauthorizing the assault weapons ban, and closing the gun show loophole, as President Bush proposed and failed to do." See http://www.democrats.org/pdfs/2004platform.pdf

[benEzra]

3. Excellent post.

You could also add the following to that list:

opposition to medical marijuana (we don't have a problem with the medical use of morphine, my 7 y.o. son has been on postsurgical morphine many times; why should the cannabinoids, drugs with fewer side effects, be treated so much more harshly?).

supporting warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detention without trial, or other civil liberties violations because somebody uses the word "terrorism" as a justification.

harsh restrictions on lawful users of sudafed in hopes that it will slightly inconvenience meth traffickers

hysteria over nontraditional looking civilian rifles ("assault weapons") even though all rifles COMBINED account for less than 2.8% of homicides


H.L. Mencken was right when he cynically stated that "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."