[Tigbit]

If people only write what supports their views, how do you account for people critiquing their views - or even changing them? The implication seemed to be that people have their minds made up and are not interested in actual discussion and debate - where you run the risk of having your ideas proved wrong.

They may not be all that certain of their idea but have nothing else to go on. So they sieze upon someone else's that they like better. Let's face it, George Washington never did chop down a cherry tree (or was that an apple tree?). Someone liked the idea and the rest is in your American history books. At that time the people needed heroes, those that were honorable, those they could look up to and lead them. How would it have sounded... "Well, George Washington is this guy, see... who... well as a kid he... hmmm... did nothing special." So someone comes up with a story. OH! You know "Casablanca"? There's another one... in the movie Bogart was supposed to say "Play it again, Sam." But he never did. Not in the original script or in the movie. Yet people siezed upon it because it likely sounded good at the time and be damned the truth, anyway. There were tonnes of commercials years back where they used Casablanca as a theme and used that very same line! I think I rmember one of them being a small bulldog saying that line.

Anyway, I've rambled enough