Calling fears irrational is wrong. That is where your argument first starts to fall down. Each person has rational reasons for their fears. Some have a fear of heights, perhaps because they fell from a high spot or they have vertigo or because they know of someone who fell from a tree. Someone without these experiences or knowledge might not be afraid of heights. Someone else may be afraid of being called stupid, perhaps because parents or others ridiculed them as children, while someone else may not care. Just because you or I do not know what their rationales are does not make them irrational. They are generally well reasoned and/or logical to the person.
Well, no, my argument doesn’t “fall down” merely because persons attempt to justify their fears by rationalizing them. The question still can be asked whether or not any particular fear is justified, in reality, by the likelihood of the feared eventuality coming to pass.
Yes, there are poisonous snakes or spiders, but someone who is afraid to do anything at all because they think a spider or snake awaits them around every corner does not have a strong rational case to support their behaviour.
A good rational reason for a fear is whether there is a strong probability of the anticipated event actually occurring, otherwise the fear is not rationally justified, whether the person sees it that way or not. There are irrational fears where the fear is NOT rationally justified.
However, there are many ‘irrational’ fears that lead to public policy, the second place your argument fails. There is currently a thread in these forums about TSA rules. Do we really think that everyone is hiding bombs in their shoes or soda bottles, that 9-year-olds are terrorist threats, that nail clippers will allow you to hijack a plane? Yet we have an entire organization dedicated to making and enforcing such policies because a large majority of the population are afraid of another 9/11. People often complain about government rules and regulations, yet most of them are in response to one or more of the public trying to prevent something they were afraid of.
Well, there you go. Are you claiming that public policy ought to be determined by all those silly and irrational fears that move people? I would suppose that with some serious thought a set of criteria for determining which fears are rational and which are not could be developed. Now there still might be grey areas such as whether people sneaking bombs on airliners is a threat serious enough to warrant heightened security.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t suppose that your fear of the Berlin Wall would necessarily be a good reason not to make access into the United States along its southern border of greater concern to the federal government. I mean, if it costs actual citizens hundreds of thousands of jobs lost to illegal immigrants, that would be a stronger reason for securing the border by building a wall than the fact that the Berlin Wall gives you the willies, no? Or are you seriously proposing that your discomfort with the Berlin Wall should outweigh the loss of employment for tens or hundreds of thousands of naturalized citizens, as the determining factor for whether a wall ought to be built?
You may want to use something along the lines of ‘a fear I don’t personally understand or share’. This makes it sound less like you are trying to insult the person you are disagreeing with. Irrational, whether you mean it to or not, demeans the person you are disagreeing with by suggesting that they are not logical or reasonable. You might want to ask why the person thinks they way they do instead of immediately telling them that their fears are wrong and unreasonable. Otherwise, many just give up discussing things with you. I know I often take myself out of discussions in these forums when I feel that I am being told I am stupid, not a good Catholic, irrational, etc, because my opinion does not fit with someone else’s opinion.
Why you feel the way you do, though a legitimate question in its own right, is not of importance with regard to the topic at hand – which is whether Trump’s proposal to built a wall has any merit.
It isn’t that your fears are “wrong and unreasonable,” it is that they have nothing to do with the question of the legitimacy of Trump’s proposal, so your putting forward your fears as a serious reason for anyone to dismiss his proposal just misses the mark because it is irrelevant to answering question.
Again, determining whether his proposal is sound has nothing to do with fears that might rise up in our imaginations, but to do with actual determinations regarding probable consequences. What will the tangible results be as a consequence of doing so as compared to not doing so. This has nothing whatsoever to do with anyone’s fears but to the determinable consequences of either option. That is how public policy ought to be determined, not by whether fears – either rational or irrational – are quelled.
It isn’t about whether people will FEEL safer or FEEL better, it is about whether people will actually BE safer or BE better off.
I suppose this is the major difference between Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats focus on how the feelings of people are affected, while the Republicans focus on how the people will actually be affected. Telling, really.
