I fail to understand how I cannot create a simple statement without you somehow feeling that the logic is just too much for you and obviously a great deal of additional data and brainsweat has to be integrated into it.

"The sky is blue."

"Well, it depends. What shade of blue? There are a lot of colors that can be called "blue." Are we sure everyone sees the color blue the same way? Is the blue of our culture the same as the blue of other cultures? And, when it's dark, they sky isn't blue, is it? So saying it's blue can't possibly be right. And what about cloudy days? Of course, the sky might still be blue behind the clouds, but who knows for sure? Who could possibly be certain? And isn't the whole idea of pinning the sky down to one color overly simplistic anyway? And then, there's the blind, and colorblind. Referring to the color of the sky at all is an obvious insult to these poor people who can't see for themselves. Have you ever notices that when you say a word like "blue" over and over again it starts to sound funny? 'blue...blue...blooooooo...' "

One always has to be able to listen to other points of view, but considering alternatives is not the same thing as assuming that all alternatives are equally valid.

At some point, taking this idea to extremes, one becomes a complete airhead, unable to decide if anything is right or wrong, good or evil. Of course, this is what evil people want you to be like. Good people, on the other hand, are penalized by this viewpoint.

We were exposed to this from many sources after September 11. We had to understand the terrorists, and try and figure out why they would do this. It was considered incorrect to label their actions "evil."

I posted a link (don't know where now) about a student, educated in the dogma of "who are we to judge," who had to stretch her mental capacities to the limit to eventually declare the crashing of airplanes into civilian skyscrapers as an evil act.

This attitude, like I said, plays into the hands of real evil, and cripples the good.

To declare that the Palestinians have been "forced" into the deliberate murder of harmless civilians as the only possible way to make their point is ludicrous. We have all discussed here many nonviolent alternatives that would not only save lives, but would probably be orders of magnitude more effective in gaining their political goals.

I honestly don't know what the radical Palestinians are thinking. It is obvious that they run the show, and the poor Palestinian shopkeeper who just wants to make a living and be left alone has long ago been left by the wayside as irrelevant. Logic of any kind has long ago been left behind. I don't know how they think inviting genocide is going to get them anywhere. Israel is currently being held on a short leash by the U.S., or Arafat would be a corpse already, along with a considerable number of his comrades. At some point the leash is going to snap, and Israel will erase its enemies like it has many times before.