{"id":1562,"date":"2007-06-08T22:50:27","date_gmt":"2007-06-09T03:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=1562"},"modified":"2007-06-08T22:50:27","modified_gmt":"2007-06-09T03:50:27","slug":"the-politics-of-ptbarnum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=1562","title":{"rendered":"The politics of P.T.Barnum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In more than one instance I have watched followers of the hard left partyline get hammered by their own people for disagreeing with anything their overlords posit. <\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, it&#8217;s not only considered acceptible but nearly mandatory that conservatives question- and in the case of this horrid immigration bill, attempt to counter- the actions of their party leaders. <\/p>\n<p>The idea of thinking for yourself and making up your own mind is &#8220;supposed&#8221; to be the exclusive property of the left, but IN the left, you can only make up your own mind if you end up agreeing with the party line. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;there&#8217;s a sucker born every minute&#8221; applies nowhere more thoroughly than to people who would believe that more government is good, that higher taxes are good, that government controlled anything is good. <\/p>\n<p>Questioning authority is the only way to behave- and you have to question the authority <em>you most trust <\/em>first. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In more than one instance I have watched followers of the hard left partyline get hammered by their own people for disagreeing with anything their overlords posit. On the other hand, it&#8217;s not only considered acceptible but nearly mandatory that conservatives question- and in the case of this horrid immigration bill, attempt to counter- the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}