Editor, The Beacon:

I was fascinated with the letter to the editor titled “The absence of reason – Part 3.” It is indeed amazing to see the repetitive use of the words — reasoned, unreasoned, rational, antirationality, etc. — all used in the total “absence of reason.”

Analytical reasoning involves “a statement or fact that explains why something is the way it is, why someone does, thinks or says something, or why someone behaves in a certain way.” The repetitive use of those words, standing alone, is not persuasive of anything!

Jonathan Swift (the author of the classic Gulliver’s Travels) offered this sage advice on this subject almost 275 years ago: “You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.”

That, of course, is simply a polemical statement asserting that for some people, on many controversial political, social, religious, etc., issues, their unverified opinions are simply baked in with no wish or ability to change their views in a reasoned manner. Even more fundamentally, it illuminates the difference between a dialogue (an exchange of heartfelt views) and a debate (being a sincere effort to convince someone of your position).

Unfortunately, the writer doesn’t provide either a meaningful dialogue or the basis for a debate, and the closest we come to understanding his position is the unsupported statement that “retreat from reason appears to be from the rural areas and elected representatives in Congress who spend their evening hours watching the tube (Fox News) and the ‘reruns.’”

Whatever the intended meaning, that graphically illuminates his political bias, while being clearly devoid of any attempt to support his position in a reasoned manner!

Joel T. Strawn

Orange City