Common Sense, Conservatism, Parties and Other Meaningless Words
By Russ Minary | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” —Inigo Montoya, “The Princess Bride”
People use words like common sense or conservatism. Here’s the problem: either words have precise meanings in certain contexts, or they mean precisely nothing. In this article, I’ll put some definitions around a few words – to create some objective truth for a dialogue among reasonable people. Good people can disagree, but so can bad people.
First, common sense is a false premise. People often say, “Well, that’s just common sense!” But they can’t precisely define the term they just used. Thus, they provide no truth for what they suggest is truth which makes no sense.
If common sense did exist, the majority of p...

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