Is Trust a Reasonable Default Position?
Dear Diane,
"Unpopular Mandate: Why do politicians reverse their positions?" by Ezra Klein in the June 25th New Yorkerintrigued me. First of all, he reminds us that even politicians do it a lot—Example No. 1 being their position on the healthcare mandate! But what he's tackling is that much of it is not simple opportunism, but sneaks up and soon becomes sincerely held. Not only by politicians, but the rest of us, too
His central argument is that it rests in part on a common human quality that is not wholly bad: the much-maligned "go along with," groupthink, et al. We can't all be experts on everything on which we have an opinion or about which we must exercise judgment so we call our neighbor or daughter (e.g., about this week's primary in
"Unpopular Mandate: Why do politicians reverse their positions?" by Ezra Klein in the June 25th New Yorkerintrigued me. First of all, he reminds us that even politicians do it a lot—Example No. 1 being their position on the healthcare mandate! But what he's tackling is that much of it is not simple opportunism, but sneaks up and soon becomes sincerely held. Not only by politicians, but the rest of us, too
His central argument is that it rests in part on a common human quality that is not wholly bad: the much-maligned "go along with," groupthink, et al. We can't all be experts on everything on which we have an opinion or about which we must exercise judgment so we call our neighbor or daughter (e.g., about this week's primary in