Rally to restore sanity

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Rally to Restore Sanity
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Will this restore sanity in America? Probably not, but it's a valiant attempt.

Will I, at least, take it down a notch here? No. But then, I've never called anyone Hitler. And I've certainly never bought into loony left-wing conspiracy theories, no more than those of the right. I see a much bigger danger to our country on the right, but that doesn't mean that the left doesn't have its own crazies. (But the extremist right pretty much controls the GOP these days, while the extremist left has almost no power at all in the Democratic Party, or anywhere else in America. That's why I don't blog about it much.)

The bottom line is that I'm a skeptic. That means I pay more attention to evidence than to ideology. In scientific issues, like global warming, I accept the consensus of scientists who specialize in that particular field. They may be wrong, but they've got a far better chance of being right than anyone else. And if they are wrong, the consensus will change.

With other issues - economic, political, social - I look at the evidence to tell me what has been shown to work and what has been shown not to work. Inevitably, it seems, that leads me away from the GOP. It does not always lead me to the Democratic Party, although that's the only real alternative. But generally, it does. (Some things, like New Age alternative medicine and anti-vaccine hysteria, seem to be adopted more by the left than the right, but not entirely.)

And I'm all for restoring sanity to America. I just wish I knew how it could be done. Reason clearly doesn't do it, nor does evidence. When we've come this far down the road to crazy town, what can bring us back? Well, maybe celebrities can do it. We Americans seem to be, er,... crazy about celebrities, for some reason. So maybe Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert can use star power to turn us around. It's worth a try.