Quote:
Originally Posted by Jibninjas
That's interesting. I would say they are underrated. If your ideology supports, and even advocates, violence against peaceful people, isn't that important?
Not really. It probably makes very little difference to the world what Sally believes about politics. It makes a lot of difference what politicians and government leaders believe, but Sally is probably close to irrelevant. It's also plausibly true that Sally didn't make a significant cognitive or moral error in reasoning in coming to accept Nazi ideology, since most people rationally reason very little about political ideology and instead accept the views of the people they know.
I generally view a person's
actions as most important in analyzing whether they are a good person, not their beliefs. Beliefs are morally relevant primarily in what actions they cause, and political beliefs are generally not thick enough to affect more than a narrow segment of people's actions (this is also why I don't think politics usually functions like a religion, since most religions have a much greater impact on beliefs on people's lives than their political beliefs).