Guest Post by Kurt Schlichter
I don’t argue with liberals for several reasons, including the fact that as a trial lawyer I argue for a living so I expect to be paid for it, and the fact that I really don’t care what liberals think enough to try to change their minds. When I deal with them on Twitter and other social media, I just want to defeat them as I demonstrate to fellow conservatives that it’s okay to fight back. But some of you do argue with liberals, though I don’t get why.
See, liberals don’t argue either, mostly because they know no one else will buy the ideological garbage they are peddling. Instead of a reasoned position, they will inevitably offer a cheesy simulacrum of an argument that consists of the kind of hack ploys that would embarrass a shyster in a polyester leisure suit doing shaky rear-ender cases out of his 1992 Corolla parked down by the dump because he can’t afford a van down by the river.
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Liberals don’t argue in good faith because they can’t, and Normal people who don’t argue every day as part of their job often don’t see the argument grifts they are being side-swiped by. Normals are direct and honest folks, and often (though much less frequently than they used to since Normals began to get militant) they labor under the illusion that debates with liberals involve honest exchanges of facts and evidence that can lead people to change their minds. No. Liberal “argument’ is a bludgeon designed to beat you into submission with distraction and deception.
Let’s look as some of liberals’ favorite cheats, and how you can defeat them.
The Cheat: “Jesusplain Those Rubes!”
When in doubt, play the messiah card! It’s always a pleasure to have some atheist hipster explain to you how Christ was a socialist SJW who was ultra-open-minded about what bathroom people should use and who demands you give the government money so it can hand your cash over to deadbeats. I often wonder if this gambit ever works, if anyone ever thinks, “Gosh, I guess if @ImpeachTrumpHillarysHot says my Savior hates AR15s, then I better disarm myself in the face of liberal-enabled crime and liberal-supported tyranny.”
How to Beat It: You could explain the whole Christianity thing, but it’s easier to just tell the liberals to go pound sand.
The Cheat: “You are [Something Terrible] for thinking that!”
Racist, sexist, homophobic, Nickelback-loving – there’s not a slur or slander you won’t be called for standing up for the principles that made America great. But somewhere along the line, certain conservatives – let’s just say they tend to try to sell you cruises where you can mingle with the who’s who of the Fredocon elite – started trying to please liberals, seeking to prove that, “No, I’m not that horrible thing you just called me!” Big mistake. Of course, that never works. Liberals themselves are all of the things they call you, and they know it, and they don’t care, because their caring and concern and compassion for all the groups they accuse you of oppressing is just a pose. Watch how quickly they go from claiming you hate gay people to accusing you of being gay because calling a conservative gay is an insult that is supposed to blow our button-down bourgeois minds.
How to Beat It: You could deny the charges, but it’s easier to just tell the liberals to go pound sand.
The Cheat: “We are better than that!”
They like to try to weaponize our morality against us, which is hilarious since they hate morality almost as much as they hate us. They create some sort of moral test, usually out of thin air, and then announce you have failed it. One of the best was the recent “Splitting up families of undocumented workers is not who we are!” Except it is who we are. We split up the families of criminals all the time and we should – there’s no nursery in San Quentin for a reason.
What they want to do is well up those tears in your eyes so you don’t clearly see the truth – the problem is not the consequence of illegal aliens breaking into our country. The problem is the illegal aliens breaking into our country. The problem is always the misbehavior we are calling out, not the fact we are calling it out.
How to Beat It: Refuse to play this human shield game and tell the liberals to go pound sand.
The Cheat: “No other developed country [Does This]!”
The “Compare America to wonderful foreigners” ploy often comes up in their gun screeds, where they claim that no other “developed” country has as many murders as America and then put the blame on the 100 million gun owners who didn’t kill anyone. It’s true that no other “developed” country has Democrat-run blue cities full of Democrat constituents who shoot each other down in the streets. Nor do they have a citizenry that retains the right to oust a tyrannical government, but where we see that as a feature, liberals – who think Castro was a great guy – see this as a terrible bug.
And what’s this about being “developed” anyway? Mexico and Brazil, which have gun control laws that the Democrat Disarm the Normals Caucus only dreams of, also have murder rates exponentially higher than ours. Why don’t liberals compare ours with theirs? Do they think non-whites are somehow undeveloped? Do they have lower expectations for non-white people? This is, frankly, super-racist. Stop being racist, liberals.
How to Beat It: You could explain that this is America and not some dwindling nation made up of emasculated Euroweenies with a flatlining birthrate, but it’s easier to just tell the liberals to go pound sand.
The Cheat: “Well, [Insert Huge Shameless Lie Here]!”
Facts are, apparently, for suckers. When in doubt, liberals lie, and then they lie again. Like on guns. Prominent liberals announce they want to repeal the Second Amendment and then huffy libs leap up to assert that, “No one wants to take your guns.” Gaslight better, people! At least try.
How many times have you heard how AR15s are “weapons of war” when no one ever uses them in wars? How many blue falcon Democrat vets have tried selling us on disarming by saying, “I carried a M16/M4 for a year and, for some reason, now I think I have the moral authority to tell you other Americans what self-defense tools you can and can’t have!” Okay, an AR15 is not a M16/M4. It just isn’t. Saying so means you are a liar, or too stupid to be talking about guns. And wait a minute – I was in 27 years. Shouldn’t I have even more moral authority to tell people that every citizen should have an AR15, or does this special “But I was in the Army!” moral authority only accrue to liberals?
Getting basic facts about guns wrong again and again is not a mistake – it’s a lie designed to mislead you. The same with TRUMP RUSSIA TREASON RUSSIA EMOLUMENTS RUSSIA TREASON STORMY TREASON. After almost two years of this hooey, they are still lying about evidence of collusion between Trump and Putin. There’s none about Trump but plenty showing the Obama/Clinton Cartel colluded with foreigners big time. But that’s apparently A-OK collusion. Facts, schmacts, it’s all about the narrative!
What does it say about an ideology that its proponents have to lie about what they really want? It says that they know that if you know what they really want, you won’t have any of it.
How to Beat It: You could explain the truth, except we all know how that will go. It’s easier to get militant and tell the liberals to go pound sand.
I’ve never found these argument cheats to be limited to Liberals, they are pretty much universal to everyone that hasn’t thought their position through and has no logical fact to support it but are stuck in it anyway by that ego/pride thing (ego gets you in a position and pride keeps you there).
Facts, actual verifiable facts, usually don’t matter all that much to most people on either side of a heated argument they have personal interest in.
You are wrong, and probably a leftist troll…
You’re demonstrating my point?
I thought pyrrhus was being sarcastic? 🙂
Maybe, but around here it is sometimes difficult to tell.
Thus the question.
anon,
you are more right than wrong,but go pound sand anyway,you need the exercise–
People are fulfilling their pyschological needs for power/control and narcissism. Beyond inflating their ego some of it is just born out of anger/hatred, and many have honest to goodness severe mental issues. As it says in the bible the only one more foolish than the fool, is one who argues with one. Arguing with well established commie-crats is worse than a waste of time, in this day and age its potentially dangerous. Arguing with younger commies is still worth the effort, since many aren’t truly concrete in their belief systems yet. So if they are under 30 some one on one arguments may be worth the effort, especially if there is some relationship that allows for further conversations. Remember about 1/3rd of all people are full throated authoritarians the leftists are the most obvious, but the right still has their fair share. So power/control and dominance over you remains their goal, they just lie to themselves that they are making the world a better place by being hateful and wanting to erase your freedoms via gov’t.
With a US culture that is this fragmented with group identity beliefs and no real way to negotiate most issues, the future is bleak. Respect is not something that is part of our culture any longer, often its become a sign of weakness. Screaming or threatening others is not an argument its just an attempt at intimidation. Those that cherish freedom always seem to be a minority historically and it usually takes gross overreach and horrible living conditions before freedom is shown to be a human desire as well. People will live in their cosy prisons similar to The Matrix, its only extremem dissonance that truly motivates most people to make dramatic changes in their lives. I truly hope that the US can eventually break up peacefully into city-states and the like, I don’t see any way to reconcile the massive differences in lifestyle, beliefs in a political way that isn’t just more and more tyranny as time goes on.
Years ago, Ann Coulter had a book ‘How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)’.
Would be interesting to have a comparison of this Post to the book.
Well, that didn’t help. And worse, if you don’t contend with those who stand against you they will simply grow in power until no one is left to stand beside you. If you can’t argue with a liberal then you are a shit lawyer in a cheap polyester suit. Come on Kurt, how about using that towering intellect of yours to add something to the conversation. It has to be lonely in that ’92 Corolla and the dump must surely stink on hot days.
If you can’t argue successfully with a liberal it is your fault, not theirs. Where did you learn your debating skills anyway?
Somebody commented earlier about narcissism and this is a very relevant point to trying to “argue” with some (a lot of liberal) people — you literally aren’t on the same page, you (if you really are trying to reason with a person) thinks the person *can* be reasoned with, but a genuine narcissist … it won’t work. There is no useful purpose to trying to argue or discuss *anything* with a narcissist because they don’t need anything from you except your energy. That is, as long as you’re arguing, they’re being “fed” and they’re happy. You, on the other hand, are hoping to have a discussion and you find your energy draining away, and you’re confused because you must be doing something wrong (because you’re moderately sane and try to learn from stuff), but you’re not getting the reality: They don’t care. They genuinely don’t care. They aren’t listening to anything you’re saying, except as a way to keep getting energy from you. In an “argument” with a narcissist you will ALWAYS lose. Except if you walk away. In other words, tell them to go pound sand. 🙂
I’ll try and simplify Kurt’s argument for you – one cannot “argue” with a liberal because they don’t “argue”, i.e., engage in reasoned debate. Rather, when engaging with anyone of any differing opinion they attempt to verbally “beat” that individual into submission – using the tactics, inter alia, he identifies. Hope that helps but doubt, given your apparent location as disclosed by your TBP appellation, that it will.
Well AR, I may well live in a liberal hell hole full of beaners who shoot each other and retarded morons who just want to lie, drunk, on the beach, and I may well have to look up Inter Alia, among other things, but you have not made anything simpler if your suggestion is “the only way to talk to liberals is to yell louder than they yell.” If you are trying to suggest that the only way to change the mind of a liberal is to yell at them until they cry, I suppose I could go along with you. But you seem to suggest that the best thing to do is to beat them into submission before they beat you into submission. Has that strategy worked for you in the past? I am just wondering because it has never actually worked for me.
What *has* worked for you, Rob?
Once I thought facts plus my brilliant impassioned delivery would change minds.
Forget about it. Now I treat the fervent lib like a flat-earther. Smile, nod, and excuse
myself at the first opportunity. One can also say you just don’t get the complex political
issues of the day. Better they should think you are stupid/dismiss you, than to throw a
banana peel in your path. And anyway, why bother arguing anything? Life is short…
have some fun at that party/outing.
Amen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HIaH7hVjDA
You are all missing the point, as is Kurt. If you are not skilled enough in your arguments and find that you can’t persuade the liberals whom you so fervently disagree with, then nothing can ever be accomplished. You can’t change their minds if you won’t try. What would you believe today if christ had said that he couldn’t be bothered with talking to sinners? Well you certainly would not be christians, that’s for sure. If you want to change liberals minds then you are going to have to put in the work.
Hell, I am not even a believer and I know that nothing can be changed without effort. It’s my fault if I lose an argument with a liberal. It’s my fault if my knowledge of the facts is insufficient to change his mind. “It’s my fault.” And it’s your fault to. Stop whining and start studying and if you have to put some files on your smart phone cause you’re too dim witted to remember what you wanted to say. That’s what I have to do, and you can also suggest that the liberal with whom you are having the discussion go ahead and look things up for themselves. You know that they have a smart phone on them…they all do. So use their smart phone as a weapon in your arguments.
Do anything that you need to do but for god’s sake don’t stop trying. That strategy has gotten you to where you are today. Two truculent mobs both sure of their piety sitting in opposing corners refusing to discuss the differences which separate them.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
The thing is, Rob, changing the world is not always about talk and trying to persuade somebody else to change their mind. Rather, as Albert Schweitzer noted, “Example is not the main thing, it is the only thing.” That is, we (human beings) certainly like to shoot our mouths off and imagine/believe that what comes out is pure gold, but quite often the bulk of the work of the world is being done by people who, frankly, you don’t even know about. Because you’re expecting them to be talking and they’re working their asses off instead, quietly.
It’s like when you need to move or paint your house — people will happily give you all sorts of verbal advise and feedback on what you *should* do, but if you say to them, “That’s a good idea, will you come over on Saturday morning at 8am and help me do it?” you’re more likely than not to find out that the person is completely satisfied talking about things, not actually doing the work that gets the job done.
If you want to focus on “persuading” people through words alone, then go for it and good luck to you — but if you think your way is the only way of “persuasion,” you’ve got a lot to learn, my friend. I work tech support and I spend very little time telling people anything, I *show* them what I know. I *do* what I know. I demonstrate something that I think will help them and I leave it to them to decide if I’m persuasive or not.
You talk about missing the point, which is a bit funny to hear from you because it’s not for you do tell anybody what Kurt’s point is, if he even has one — he’s perfectly able to speak for himself, think for himself, because, dammit, that’s what liberty is all about, isn’t it? If you want to say differently about things you care about, then talk about what *you* care about.
Look at it this way — you’re telling us what we need to do differently, because we’re doing it wrong, right? Well, how successful have you been at bringing people around to your way of thinking, based on your chosen methods? Tell us what *you* have accomplished!
In the last year or so it just so happens that I have, apparently, become libertarian, though there has been no change in my world outlook at all. That is, by doing my best to be true to my own self/faith/ideals and work for the good of all people, everywhere, I have found that I am now “rejected” by many people whom I thought believed the same things, who describe themselves as “liberal” and who genuinely (as far as I can tell) think I’m nuts. I disagree with more than a few things Trump has done during his presidency but I imagine him as a human being who’s trying, as best he can, to do whatever it is he really believes in. I’m not clear at all on what he *does* believe in, but he still seems human enough to me that I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. This seems a decent thing to do, from my own point of view — but I have been attacked for this by people who, I’m sure, would describe themselves as decent human beings, too.
What these experiences have revealed to me is, how many people don’t really give a lot of true introspective thought to what they “believe” in — the world suddenly seems very unstable to them because *they don’t get it*. And because they don’t get it, it can’t be them — it’s gotta be somebody else’s fault. Sigh.
“The First Principle is not to fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard Feynman
There are lots and lots of different ways to save the world, beginning with accepting your own responsibilities and limitations, and then doing the best you can with what you’ve got. And when you try very, very hard at something and still fuck it up, you take a breath, step back, and try again — differently. And then you realize that other people are pretty much all trying to do the same, they’re just way slower at it than you are because you’ve been doing it a lot longer.
There’s a quote from the play “A Man For All Seasons” that I do my best to remember:
Thomas More: Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher, perhaps a great one.
Richard Rich: If I was, who would know it?
More: You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that.
🙂
Thank you oz. You just appear to have made my point for me. You suggest that we offer ourselves as example. Sure, that’s great. You apparently are a great example to our liberal opponents. I am simply suggesting that if you want to change somebodies mind you must interact with them. You can’t just walk away and wait for their minds to change. You have to do something that will show them how they have erred, and perhaps even show them a better alternative. But you can’t accomplish anything if you just yell at them and tell them to go pound sand.
You know, like BB or Kurt.
I am fine with you just showing them how great you are. I am sure that you have turned a great number of liberal purple haired harpies to the path of the righteous. I personally find that unless you get them engaged in conversation you won’t actually be able to even slightly change their minds but I am sure that your good example works just as well.
I am presently trying to change the mind of a liberal Swiss national who believes that the second amendment means no guns are needed. He has to be take down a very different road from the one that he presently is on and I have to be very careful because his wife is best friends with my wife. But he is a smart man who was trained to shoot rifles and even rockets in the Swiss military so I figure I have a shot. But it won’t be his fault if my arguments are not well enough formulated for him to find them convincing. It will be my fault. Just as it will be your fault if the purple haired harpies fail to see as compelling the remarkable example of conservatism that you display.
I see debate, civilized and calm, as the only path to agreement. If you are not willing to engage with the “enemy” then you are either a coward, or have enough self awareness to realize that you can not muster the skills necessary to win the contest. Either way, it will accomplish nothing to turn your back on your opponent and to walk away secure in the knowledge that you know the mind of god and your opponent is the spawn of satan. Kurt’s way leads to nobody talking to anybody, your way at least puts your thoughts on display. I am simply suggesting that it is only through dialog that both sides can come to a mutual understanding of each side of the argument. If you tell them to go pound sand you accomplish nothing. If you talk to them you may prove inadequate but you might plant the seed of doubt that sprouts into a full fledged awakening.
Don’t be a coward. Confront them and win. This is a really good example of a man explaining his point of view very calmly and forcefully.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UoJareHfIw&t=23s
Rob apparently misses the point, which could have been laid out more starkly, which is the liberal/prog whatever, is not an honest seeker. He wishes to change or overthrow the system to force you to do his will. To be guinea pigs in his experiment. To satisfy his curiosity at the expense of other’s lives and freedoms. After all, the “right people” weren’t in charge the last time. The lib/prog in every generation is always sure that finally, the “right people” have arrived. They just f’ing know exactly how to immanentize the Eschaton. What’s a few million bodies for such a noble endeavor?
this is not about arguing with liberals but you guys will like it–
it’s a gop ad tying the dems to ms-13–
scroll to the bottom of the article,1 minute video–
https://eaglerising.com/59020/new-gop-ad-showcases-democrats-defending-violent-killers-of-ms-13/
I wish I could debate like Patrick Little.
Meatball ,go pound sand !
Lawyers can be pretty good at missing a vital point. Reasoned debate is a very thin slice of communication. The most essential elements of communication include: “I am right and I know it”, “You are wrong and you know it”, “I am strong and powerful”, “You are weak and insignificant”, “You really want to agree with me because that is how you will get what you really want and need”, etc., etc., and etc. Refusing to engage with “weaker minds and souls” will not gain you or society anything. Disengagement forfeits the most important points in the communication and leaves those weaker minds in power and control.
Do not bother arguing with a leftie. It is like wrestling with a pig. You will get covered in mud and shit, and the pig likes it.
A quick fuck you, pig, and walk away, is my advice.
I am just getting more confused. Is Llpoh suggesting that we should all fuck pigs? How is that going to help anybody? And how can you be sure that the pig is consenting to the fucking?
Who cares if the pig consents? When was the last time anybody asked our permission before giving us a big fuqueing?
One other possibility exists. Liberals are always telling us how, what with all their sophistication, they can perceive the nuance which flies above the head of the ordinary and decidedly inferior Deplorable.
While you or I would look at the pig with nary a clue of what the pig is thinking, the proggie shithead looks in the pig’s eyes and immediately senses the wanton desire consuming the porcine temptress and knows instantly that the pig wants it and right now!