WHAT JOHN LOCKE WROTE WAY BACK WHEN...

(h/t Atrios)

I was reading this article about neo-liberal war strategy and I completely agreed with this passage:

The war in Syria, barely a week old, is already backfiring. It is pushing ISIS towards Kurdistan and has led to a reconciliation between ISIS and the local al Qaeda affiliate. U.S. strikes have hit critical grain supplies and killed civilians on several occasions. The broader strategic incoherence is so wretched that bitter, black comedy feels like the best response.
The only reason we're doing this at all is obviously because of the ISIS beheading videos. Roughly 200,000 people have been killed in Syria's civil war, including many American journalists. But the beheading videos of two Americans, coupled with shameless fearmongering on the part of the mainstream media, seriously influenced public opinion.

Here's what Locke pointed out in 1659:

Tis our passions and bruiteish part that dispose of our thoughts and actions, we are all Centaurs and tis the beast that carrys us, and every one’s Recta ratio is but the traverses of his owne steps. When did ever any truth settle it self in any one’s minde by the strength and authority of its owne evidence? Truths gaine admittance to our thoughts as the philospher did to the Tyrant by their handsome dresse and pleaseing aspect, they enter us by composition, and are entertained as they suite with our affections, and as they demeane themselves towards our imperious passions, when an opinion hat wrought its self into our approbations and is gott under the protection of our likeing tis not all the assaults of argument, and the battery of dispute shall dislodge it? Men live upon trust and their knowledgis noething but opinion moulded up betweene custome and Interest, the two great Luminarys of the world, the only lights they walke by.

SOURCE: The Idea of the Self, Jerrold Seigel, p. 91