Ah, yes. Another answer to Robin's question is that our society is
permeated with the Dogma of Democracy, and the Dogma of Democracy
is that any randomly chosen citizen's opinion about a political
issue is exactly as valuable and likely to be "true" as anyone
else's opinion of that issue. Therefore, each of us can expound
and hold forth on our political opinions without any shred of
epistemic responsibility, and since this is the attitude that
everyone else takes, thanks to their democratic religious beliefs,
I end up mirroring this attitude toward my opponents in debate.
So ultimately, as with so many other stupidities, it comes down to
a question of religious belief.
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/