reason vs. the unreasonable

Been catching up on my Vox Day reading lately...man do I miss his stuff. Like this short quote from a post on the impending decline of feminism:

...but then, if they were capable of thinking straight, they wouldn't be feminists in the first place.

Simple yet profound. This same line of reasoning works for adherents of many other ideologies and worldviews as well. When debating anyone, one must always keep in mind how the other person arrived at his or her viewpoint in the first place. Presenting a logical argument to someone who doesn't really understand and has little use for logic isn't going to get you very far.

For me, this brings to mind times in the past when I've argued various points with liberal friends. I would get dumbfounded at how they couldn't or refused to follow simple lines of reasoning, such as why we must deny some of our own wants and those based on the concept of personal responsibility, but I would eventually find myself thinking the same thing every time. If they did think through their decisions and take their own beliefs to their logical conclusions more often (or at all), they probably wouldn't be liberal.

As someone I know once put it so eloquently, you can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. So, so true.