"Believing the true believers"

Thomas Sowell has a close encounter with a member of the "reality-based community":

When the propagandizing activities of educational institutions were recently criticized in this column, a defender of these institutions sent an e-mail, claiming that there was nothing wrong with pushing particular beliefs, if those beliefs were correct.

Violating my New Year's resolution to stop trying to reason with unreasonable people, I replied, asking if this man would feel all right, if he were a member of a jury, to vote after having heard only the prosecution's case or only the defendant's case.

His reply was that he would -- if the people presenting one side of the case were people he knew and trusted.

Bizarre as that might sound, it is by no means as unusual as it might seem, even though most people who act on that basis do not spell out such a reason to others -- nor probably even to themselves. They don't say that they believe people on a particular issue because those are people with whom they feel simpatico. But that is often how they act.