not really... you're saying people should be more open-minded. So you're condeming CLOSE MINDEDNESS. WHOA!

As a republican,I see this often. I personally don't feel it's fair to have an opinion myself if I am not willing to listen to other's opinions,but Iam normally not altered in my views by listening to their opinions.

no, just trying to put a little lie in the person

If you think about it long enough then yes.

I cannot appreciate close-mindedness, so I have to say: maybe?

I think you are correct. ITs like prefacing your comment with "its a none fact" you are actually expressing your closemindedness. To be open minded you have to be willing to listen and try to understand and most importantly change your view if convinced.

In all honesty, I meant 'republcan' as conservative and more narrow minded in fear of change, I used it as a property of it's definition, but that's just how I felt appropriate to introduce myself.

Silly contentless, referenceless abstractions used only in an imprecatory sense are utterly meaningless, and just become lables of approval or diapproval. "Open Minded", like "Tolerance", "Progress", "Change", and "Freedom", has become just this. Without specifics (i.e, without discussing specific freedoms, or specific things to be tolerated, or particular changes, or progress towards what, or specific ideas or perspectives to be considered) you're not really talking about anything; you're just attempting to cast your adversaries as bigots and cretins, and your allies as smart and enlightened. In terms of a quality or characteristic of a person, "be open minded" is used in two ways: 1) THE CORRECT WAY: be willing to consider and try new things, see things from other perspectives, evaluate old theories in the light of new evidence, consider new ideas and programs when the old ones are not working well, etc. That does not mean it is wrong (or "closed minded") to reach a conclusion. One can fairly consider and evaluate the worth and claims of "being closed minded" and rightly (and open mindedly) find it wanting. A person who does so, and consequently tells a closed minded person to be open minded, is no more closed minded than the mathmatician who tells the child 2+2 does not equal 22; it only equals 4. 2) THE POSTMODERN WAY: you must throw away and repudiate everything you've lever earned to be absolutely true and totally embrace and advocate PoMo/PC rhetoric, values, policies and goals without thought or analysis. Denounce everyone who does not as stupid, bigotted, "closed minded", and evil. Unfortunately, the latter appeals to people who don't like to think but do like to be fashionable. Thus when they encounter someone who is genuinely open minded (in the original sense) and has studied and hunestly evaluated all the data around an issue, and consequently reached an informed conclusion that is at variance with current faddish beliefs, the intellectually lazy but fashionable twits invariably accuse him of being "closed minded". Just one of life's little ironies.

I actually don't remember ever saying that. However, I might have in the past. You're right, though.

The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly. -Ogden Nash, author (1902-1971)