1. Show what premises is the author using?
2. Show what conclusions does the author come to?
3. Does the passage contain any errors in reasoning?
Either one believes that there is no reason for believing any political doctrine or one sees some reason, thus shaky, for the commitment of politics. If people thinks that political doctrines are void of content, that person will be fairly content to see political debates go on, but will not expect anything useful to come from them. If we suppose the other case, that there is a patriotic justification for a political belief, then what? If the belief is that a exact political position is true, then one ought to be intolerant of all other political beliefs, since each political "position" must be held to be false relative to the belief one has. And since each political position holds out the promise of reward for any probability of its fixing social problems, thus small, that makes it seem rational to select it over its alternatives. The trouble, of course, is that the people who have other political doctrines may hold theirs just as strongly, making strength of belief itself invalid as a way to evaluate the rightness of a political position.