Why is changing your mind scorned so in politics?

[Swede]

If you get new information,not changing your mind is stupid or even criminal.

[Lannes]

1. Because you get accused of being a" flip flopper"

Bill Maher said once that he would prefer politicians that had the guts to change their minds.He put it alot better than I did,you had to be there.

[SammyWinstonJack]

2. It's only scorned when a Liberal does it.

Flip flopping ya know. When bush does it, it's ignored or spun in a positive light. :crazy:

[meppie-meppie not]

3. Exactly! And it's just that hypocrisy that drives me nuts...gggggrrrrrr

[RandomKoolzip]

4. Bingo.

Republicans can spin all their past opinions all they want and never get called on it. And Bush gets praise for being "resolute."

But if you're "resolute" in insisting on driving a bus full of schoolchildren off a cliff (metaphorically, of course), I'm thinking that maybe that kind of stolidity isn't such a good thing.

[Lannes]

6. True

Should have pointed that out

[applegrove]

5. It isn't 'changing your mind' that is so scorned. It is that "thinking was

involved". That is what is being scorned. The process, the act, the action, the verb, the people who change their minds are often thinking & considering.

That is what the neocons & the freepers & the Rovebots want to stop.

[Alcibiades]

7. it's that darned fact/value distinction...

...there is, indeed, nothing wrong with changing your mind when new facts come into evidence. Generally, however, in a limited information environment, the politically smart thning to do is to reserve judgment until more facts become available.

Of course, the real problem in changing one's mind is that it may represent a change in one's principles. Our current model of political maturity assumes that rational adults have fixed values and that we have unlimited information, which therefore transforms changing one's mind from a question of facts into values.

Yoyu can question our current understanding of what it means to be a politically mature person or where the distinction between facts and values lies (or even if it is a useful distinction at all), but if we take these things as given, then Kerry--and every other politician--was right to defend himself against charges of flip-flopping. Indeed, he should have gone further and made Bush look like the flip-flopper.

[Old and In the Way]

8. It's a positive attribute, actually.

Changing your thinking, based on new/better information, is a sign of a progressive enlightenment. We'd still be in the stone ages if mankind did not adapt his/her thinking to new information and ideas.

Religious fundementalism, in their embracement of faith-based concepts like Intelligent Design, are determined to march us back to the Dark Ages, while the rest of the world passes us by.

[LostInAnomie]

9. It is supposed to show that you will switch your ideals...

... when it is politically convenient. That you are willing to do anything to get elected and stay in power.

It really only effects Democrats though. If we switch one of our positions we are portrayed as flip floppers who are cynically using faux values to fool voters.

Repukes don't have this problem though. The minute they switch a position they lauded for becoming enlightened, and their knuckles seem to drag the ground a little less. The only people it turns off are the absolute wing-nuts.