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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (49309)	8/6/1999 7:33:00 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Free thinking does not mean one is completely original. Free thinking means one is not constrained by the mind control of some type of group think- be it religious, political, or social (note- it does not necessarily mean one need be non- religious, or unaligned politically- but it does mean one evaluates every position for oneself, and that one swallows nothing without digesting it intellectually as an individual.) You identify (obviously) as a neoconservative. You have even chosen this as your name- you have chosen a name which is not an individual name but a group label. It is no wonder you would have difficulty understanding free thinking.

To: Neocon who wrote (49309)	8/6/1999 8:45:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Neocon, I am sorry you took umbrage at X's post, because she spelled out precisely what I meant to say, if a little more bluntly than I ventured to. <g> I did not call myself a "free thinker," by the way, but a "nude dancer." (I give you credit for that one.) As I said in another post to you, that description fits a "free spirit" who is "unencumbered by received opinion." There are a number of important differences between the expressions "free thinker" and "free spirit," one of them being that the former is often employed with specific reference to religious views (not political ones). The other point I meant to stress is that I do not identify with any group, political or otherwise. And I do not consider my political views, such as they are, the most important thing about me, so I would never even think of choosing a moniker like LibDem, for example. (And I am not even talking about the abuse I would be likely to get on SI for doing so. <gg>) You on the other hand, say: For those who know what the moniker indicates, I am saying that I am an ex- leftist who largely voted for Reagan on defense grounds; that I embraced capitalism as the best means of achieving broad economic prosperity; that I am concerned with the decline of the West; and that I am an enemy of the Buchananites... I know all that, and that is why I asked my question in the first place, which was: ...I wonder why you personally seem to find it necessary to stick a label on yourself, to the extent that you even use a moniker that identifies you in terms of your political "camp." In other words, I was not asking you what the moniker meant, but why you identify yourself in terms of the specific political orientation of a specific political group. I am sure there is a lot more to you than your politics... Joan