Posted on 06/02/2014 3:57:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
Non-lawyers often ask me, “What is the best way to argue with a liberal?” This is silly, because there is no best way to argue with a liberal. They're beyond argument. You might as well argue with your terrier. Take it from someone who argues with his hideous terrier all the time.
But if you do choose to argue with a liberal, understand that your purpose should never be to change the liberal’s mind. You're not going to change the liberal’s mind. Instead, if you choose to argue with a liberal, you should do it for one of two reasons – to either win over people who have not yet made up their minds, or to support people who already have begun to understand the truth.
The truth is that conservatism is an ideology that is in accord with natural law and basic human decency, while liberalism is merely the summit of a slippery slope leading down to the hellish depths of collectivist misery.
Liberals aren’t going to like to hear this manifest and demonstrable truth. So you’re going to get called “racist,” “sexist” and “homophobic,” even if you’re a conservative black lesbian.
What you are not going to get is an argument. An argument is a collected series of statements designed to establish a definite proposition. Arguments involve the presentation of facts and evidence from which one draws a conclusion. Implied within the concept of an argument is the potential that one might change his conclusion. But liberals start with the conclusion.
They don’t change their conclusions based on the facts and evidence; they change the facts and evidence based on the conclusion they want. This is why a 105 degree day is irrefutable proof of global warming, while a 60 degree day is irrefutable proof of global warming. As is a -20 degree day.
Liberals are only concerned with argument, or what superficially appears to be argument, as a rhetorical bludgeon designed to beat you into submission. They aren’t trying to change your mind. They don’t expect you to agree with them. They don’t even care whether or not you grow to love Big Brother.
They just want you to shut up and let them run rampant. If you understand that, you'll be fine.
There are two basic tactics to choose from when responding to a liberal pseudo-argument, defense and counterattack. Without getting too detailed and infantry-nerdy on you, think of defense as simply preventing a loss. You're holding your ground. The counterattack, however, lashes out to seize the initiative and defeat your enemy.
Both have their uses. When you defend, you are generally responding to the pseudo-argument the liberal is making. A liberal will start advocating some nonsense and you reply to what he says. You may choose to use examples of liberalism's many failures to illustrate how collectivism is a prescription for disaster. For example, some pinko starts crowing about how eight million suckers signed up for Obamacare. A good defense might involve raising the question of how many of those eight million have actually paid for it.
But the problem with defense is that it treats a liberal "argument” with a respect it doesn't deserve. You dignify liberal silliness with a response when all it deserves is mockery and contempt.
This is why I prefer to counterattack. When you counterattack, you ignore the proposition offered by the liberal and refuse to respond on the liberal’s preferred terms. In fact, you don’t even need to address the same subject the liberal is talking about. Your goal is not to undercut the liberal’s assertion. You're going to counterattack to undercut the liberal himself.
There are many good reasons to choose the approach of treating the liberal like he is a terrible person with terrible ideas who seeks to impose a quasi-fascist police state upon America, including the fact that it's all true.
Let’s try a counterattack battle drill. Some doofus with a “Capitalism Is a Patriarchal, Cisnormative Hate Crime” t-shirt starts babbling about “privilege.” The undecideds start listening, their jaws drooping slightly. Some of the more conservative ones are silent, not wanting to be labeled racist by some geek whose grandfather came from Oslo. You need to act. So you causally inject the question, “Hey, why are you an eager and active member of a political party that made a KKK kleagle a beloved Senate Majority Leader?”
Then you mention that you’re a member of the party that fought slavery and didn’t turn hoses on civil rights marchers. Then you finish by announcing, “Well, I’m going to stand with Dr. King and judge people by the content of their character.” It’s optional whether you then get up, scream that the liberal should have issued you a trigger warning about his racism, and leave.
But be careful – the liberal may totally spit in the next latte he sells you.
Some people might question whether this kind of Alinsky-esque tactic means we are stooping to the liberals’ level. Except the liberals’ level is six feet underground, where the victims of collectivism lie buried. Anyone not willing to take the fight to them simply empowers their liberal fascist fantasies.
If you're trying to win an Oxford Union debate with a liberal, you’ve missed the point. This isn't about the Marquess of Queensberry’s fussy little rules. This isn't about some sort of extended-pinky exchange of ideas over a fine glass of port. This is about fighting for our way of life and our fundamental rights against the intellectual heirs of Stalin, Mao and Hitler.
Attack. This is about winning. First prize is freedom. Second prize is tyranny.
Bump
“Don’t bother me with the facts, my minds made up”.
Exactly. One of their favorite tactics is the red herring. They'll try to go off on a tangent, and eventually wind up on another subject altogether. This leaves you and those who may be listening confused, and puts the Lefty in control. Don't let them. Focus on the subject at hand. Use phrases like, "Stick to the subject", "One thing at a time", or "What the hell are you talking about...we were talking about (fill in the blank)."
Also, don't use big words that the typical Generation.commer won't understand. We conservatives have a tendency to want to show how smart we are...resist this urge. We want to talk to people, not at them. If your argument goes over their heads, they'll lose interest and walk away.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
“You waste time arguing with people who have been brainwashed by Communist professors and the state-run media. Life is too short to waste on fools.”
I agree completely. I pity the interviewers on TV who out of fairness have to give them time to espouse the party-provided Talking Points.
It’s usually about as productive as explaining baseball to a cat.
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To be honest, I don't have the energy for that, I am very much focused on trying to exclude people from my sphere of getting along on this earth who are intransigent and who suck the joy out of my life. It's just not worth the negativity. It's like the Bible says .... Matthew 10:14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. I take the time to state my case - pro God, pro life, pro traditional family & marriage, pro 2A, conservative, anti big government, etc. at which point they are upset/enraged to the point of being screaming meemies, and then I shake the dust (& them) off my feet and move on.
But know this people. It takes training and temperament to "debate" with a liberal. You have to realize going in that while you have facts and reason on your side, they have emotion, their positions are built on faith (not grounded by facts/reality), and they have no limits - you will be insulted. Don't take it personally, it is not you, it is them.
Spot on, and a brilliant post!
Liberals aim at the complete destruction of society, morally, economically, intellectually...Detroit is their poster child. They don’t engage on a fair or rational basis, as you said it’s all about bludgeoning their opponents to shut up.
I was reminded about the recent college debate nonsense, wherein some liberal students decided that the rules of debate were “racist”. They ignored the rules, went over the time limits and didn’t even address the topic, they changed it in fact, yet these students actually WON!
Counterattack is the best defense.
My cat understands baseball. She just prefers soccer.
Except the Republican Party leaders think -- really, truly believe -- these people are rational and can be negotiated with. Experience and history say otherwise!
The second half of this is that we have an absolute responsibility to raise our children not only with traditional values but also understanding why those values are superior to liberalism. Each of my kids can articulate why socialism is bad, why following the Bible is good, and (as absurd as it may seem to even think this needs justification, it does) why individual freedom is good. Liberals kill their own children, and they will die out if we deny them successful access to our kids.
I work for the USPS. I have done so for over twenty years. When I first signed on, management was fond of saying that the USPS was the second largest employer on the face of planet earth, being beaten out by only the People's Liberation Army of Red China. It was horribly inefficient, and rife with waste, abuse, and outright fraud.
They no longer make this claim, but the waste, abuse, and outright fraud is still ongoing, largely because, like anything in government at any level you care to name, (local, state, or federal), there is absolutely zip-point squat, to the doodly power, by way of accountability. Government entities are very good at ducking accountability, it is what they spend most of their time actually doing, while the supposed 'public mission', what they were purportedly created for in the first place, rates a poor second, or even third. Since that is 'the true nature of the beast' things will not change...
the infowarrior
Same here. If they dare to being up a subject, I first ask them what they know about it. In all cases, they are grossly under-informed or not at all engaged in the topic. It then becomes easy pickins’. But I do not waste much time with this maroons.
Care to guess who she voted for? (Hint: Both she and her husband drive SUVs - one of which she uses to drive the 75-ft distance from her garage to the top of her driveway in order to retrieve her mail. Yet she lectures me in my 40-mpg compact about global warming.)
True, but that's not the worst of it. Republicans negotiate as though Democrats were honorable people.
It depends. A lot of the time, your target is not the lib, your target is the audience the lib is talking to.
And while you are very unlikely to convert a lib in any given conversation, you may find yourself planting seeds of doubt in his (or more likely, her) brain.
“cemented mindset”! That’s the phrase. Just fun to take a little hide from em and then move on. I can tell within a few seconds how any discussion will end with a libtard. They are the only thing that is transparent.
“Except the Republican Party leaders think — really, truly believe — these people are rational and can be negotiated with. Experience and history say otherwise!”
I used to believe that, now I think only conservative Republicans aren’t in bed with Dems.
Well said.
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