What Are Your Belliefs?

Ultimately it comes down to what you believe.

There is an incredible struggle going on in this country for your beliefs. Fox News, MSNBC, and countless Internet Bloggers are writing a blizzard (like this one) of appeals to your belief structure.

It is not hard to understand why it is so hard to know, "What to believe?"

Empirical evidence is a place to start. There is empirical historical, social and economic evidence to back up many of the political and economic appeals to belief.

Unfortunately the closer you get to present time, the more conflicting the empirical evidence is. This occurs naturally, because historical perspective adds veracity to belief structures.

For example, in the latter part of the twentieth century the struggle between capitalism and communism was the premiere belief struggle in the world.

Today, in 2011, we can look back at how communism in the USSR failed, and was trashed in the rest of Eastern Europe. It appears that communism lost to capitalism.

Except for China of course, where a blend of communism and capitalism is beginning to conquer the economic world. The empirical economic evidence seem to be proving that a blend of both economic belief structures is the most competitive.

There was virtually no one in the twentieth century, who predicted this. But the evidence seems to be bearing out that a blend of capitalism to encourage invention and innovation, and communism to bring government regulation and overall planning, works!

The same could be said in foreign policy. Take Iraq for example. The United States poured trillions of dollars into Iraq to "establish democracy", with few results. Moreover, America disregarded her economy, cutting taxes while spending enormous sums to "nation build" in Iraq.

Today, we are counting down the days until the United States pulls ALL of its troops out of Iraq.

And what did we gain, empirically?

Vietnam is probably far enough in the past to use empirical historical and ecnomic evidence to determine if the foreign policy that dominated the 1960s and 1070s was justified.

Clearly, 55, 000 American dead and millions of Vietnamese dead were not worth it.

Vietnam is a blended economy. It is copying its foremost rival, and traditional enemy China in world economic behavior. It has shown no aggression to its neighbors, discrediting totally the "dominoe theory" that led millions into battle against the "Communist Menace".

Empirically there was no menace. And, Vietnamese were right who said it was a war of national liberation, not communism versus capitalism.

It seems that the more ideology pushes an agenda, the greater the odds empirical evidence will prove that agenda was dead wrong.

Hitler for example pushed the agenda that the Jews were responsible for the Great Depression, and his brand of fascism would create a "thousand years" of German hegemony.

Clearly empirical hisorical evidence has disproved his agenda and theories at the cost of millions of lives and trillions of dollars, marks; etc.

So beware of ideologues! Take Newt Gingrich for example, who declares that Muslim Law is out to conquer the world. We need a crusade against Shariah Law his agenda says.

So, if he is elected, his belief structure, which has trouble with empirical evidence from the beginning, would plunge the United States into an idelological war with a legal system that hardly anyone can define, or find for that matter.

It is what you believe, but try to find some valid evidence empirically..

Otherwise you fall victim to demogogues!