I'm not one to advocate shortcuts to thinking. In an ideal world, each opinion should be evaluated on its own merits, without prejudice, and given its fair due. But in an age of information overload, this can be quite a time-consuming business. With so many opinions vying for our attention, and so little time to evaluate them all, it is entirely forgivable to let some fall by the wayside. Thankfully, with enough experience, one can learn to recognise patterns in opinion-making, and rapidly identify and dismiss those opinions of inferior value. In this way, it becomes easy to ignore the opinions that have been received and passed on wholesale, without any actual thought having intervened.
Sometimes, this can be as easy as identifying a single word. There are certain turns of phrase which immediately mark the writer out as an unthinking mouthpiece for various pathologial tendencies; writers with such contempt for reason as to make all further argument pointless. Here I attempt to classify such phrases under the tendencies they represent.
| Sociopathy
bleeding-heart do-gooder nannying nanny state islamofascist | Paranoia
PC brigade PC police PC patrol scientific establishment politically correct politically incorrect witchhunt | Anti-Intellectualism
naysayer so-called "experts" boffins eggheads closed-minded open-minded elitist | Creationism
only a theory unguided evolution ID theory the evolution controversy |
More suggestions are always welcome.