This evening, I had a conversation with two people on Twitter. We ventured into ideology. I made the following statement:

https://twitter.com/jeh704/status/586747968935440384

And yes, I truly believe that. It’s way more important for me that people of whatever ideology (political, religious, but in this case political) use reason to make their argument than spout some polemic that I can look up in a dictionary.

I received this response:

Thanks Skep! You’re one of those people I truly respect. A person that doesn’t judge anyone based on anything other than their actual words; And their actions.

It’s essential to me, as a skeptic, yes, even as a conservative, that we not pretend to make judgements based on someone’s stated ideology, but only on what they actually say. More importantly, what they do.