blogs.discovermagazine.com
To those practiced in the law, motives are limited: one is not indicted for mixed motives, but according to one offense against “the people.” But historians and ordinary people are not so fortunate as to be able to pin down often complex motivation, such as sibling rivalry or Oedipal/Electral urgings welling up from the unconscious that may affect crimes against the truth.
Political and psychological motives, however reduced by some politicos, are examples of complexity. Sophisticates frown at long-distance diagnoses of mental states. This no-no is often characteristic of liberals, who often elevate feelings over (rational?) considerations, such as science/materialism/empiricism or religious values including “family” loyalty. (This latter complicates the heated debate over “immigration,” both legal and illegal.)
Conservative resistance to what passes for “feminism” may be added to this list; i.e., the flap over Joe Biden’s “touching” objected to by many women, as if the female objectors must be “feminists.”
Is it not obvious that politicians and/or citizens of both Left and Right both plump for “unity/”the American people” as if this collective entity should have the same motives? What ever happened to individuals or to good or bad institutions?
The Clare Spark Blog 
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