I think it’s probably true that some political disagreements come down to differing preferences and values. It doesn’t strike me that the majority of policy debates which account for much of the noise that passes for ‘political discourse’ can be seen as debates over fundamental values and preferences however.
A significant amount of political debate seems to revolve around what at least appear to be questions of fact about how to best achieve certain broadly agreed upon aims. I tend to think that a lot of politics and political debate is best understood not as a search for truth but as serving other goals not related to the surface appearance but the more thoughtful and better intentioned participants in the debate do generally seem to believe that they are to some extent debating a factual matter, albeit one that is not as clearly settled by the available evidence as the question of evolution.
I think it’s probably true that some political disagreements come down to differing preferences and values. It doesn’t strike me that the majority of policy debates which account for much of the noise that passes for ‘political discourse’ can be seen as debates over fundamental values and preferences however.
A significant amount of political debate seems to revolve around what at least appear to be questions of fact about how to best achieve certain broadly agreed upon aims. I tend to think that a lot of politics and political debate is best understood not as a search for truth but as serving other goals not related to the surface appearance but the more thoughtful and better intentioned participants in the debate do generally seem to believe that they are to some extent debating a factual matter, albeit one that is not as clearly settled by the available evidence as the question of evolution.