I&#x27;ve always been a believer that smart people can come to very different conclusions on how to do things.<p>Just look at the number of people who fall within the Alan Kay camp of mutable state vs those who like Haskell.<p>Look at those who think Lisp should have ruled the world versus those who believe Prolog just never had a fair shake.<p>There&#x27;s a bunch of issues that reasonable people can reasonably disagree on.<p>Granted when it comes to politics I believe all motivation is hidden because ture radicals can&#x27;t win the vote by coming out and telling people they plan a revolution. They have to claim to be only slightly off center, then continually reframe the issue till people begin to see things their way.<p>Guantanamo Bay was a great example. If you&#x27;d asked Congress &quot;do you want to authorize a secret camp to torture dissidents just offshore from the continental USA?&quot; then they would have said no. Yet now that the camp exists, the question has been shifted to &quot;Do you want to close our black-ops torture camp, and move all those people with grievances (legitimate or not) against us to <i>your</i> home state&#x27;s prison system?&quot;<p>Now even Congressmen who hate torture feel unwilling to go down in history as the one who let &#x27;terrorists&#x27; into gen-pop, even if in fact our prison system is perfectly capable of handling dangerous individuals (like all the homegrown terrorists we have).