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

To: Edwarda who wrote (50225)	8/14/1999 2:47:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 108807

<All I shall say here is that I agree with Chris. However, your crack about the Cato Institute is unwarranted and undermines your own credibility.> Edwarda, the Cato Institute is a libertarian/conservative think tank closely associated with the Republican party, and funded by special interests including large corporations which have something to gain from unbridled, unregulated free market capitalism. Here, for example, is a url to an article written in response to the Littleton shootings supporting the gun industry published by the Cato Institute, called "Loaded Guns Can be Good for Kids". I wonder how the Jewish children in Los Angeles who were gunned down last week would feel about this article. Certainly, we can see from it that the Cato Institute supports the gun industry and has a partisan political opinion: cato.org And here is an article outlining the fact that the Cato Institute is funded by the large pharmaceutical companies which would benefit from less FDA regulation of new drugs: citizen.org Certainly, if you hold political positions which are conservative and libertarian, pro-gun industry, pro-tobacco industry, etc., it is reasonable that you may like what the Cato Institute has to say. It is clearly a right-wing lobbying group, however, not a lofty group of intellectuals seeking the absolute truth. It is entirely reasonable that people holding other political positions might have opinions that differ from yours, and that rational and intelligent human beings could reliably and accurately make justified comments which argue against the Cato Institute. Certainly, demeaning negative comments by referring to them as "cracks" is insulting. It is quite clear to me that anyone who is a TRUE libertarian in the purest sense would not make a statement that having an opposite position undermines credibility, since libertarianism in the ideal sense is respectful of--even protective of--differing points of view.