Arguing with the Left: We Are Doing It Wrong!

This strikes me as the right answer.

If you have ever tried arguing with a liberal, leftist or progressive, at some point you have inevitably come away frustrated by your apparent inability to “win” an argument, despite proving conclusively the other side is objectively wrong.  The subject doesn’t matter, it could be the failure of Obama’s foreign policy, the IRS targeting scandal, tax policy, (lack of) Global Warming, or “helping” the poor.  There in fact is a literal parade of liberal/leftist social policies and issues that have been unequivocal, abject failures, yet no matter how many facts and figures you can marshal, your argument falls flat, and your opponent remains completely un-swayed.  Have you ever wondered why this is?

“It’s not that we on the right don’t have a plan, it’s that we don’t have a narrative.”

Read the whole thing.

Dear Liberal, Here’s Why I’m So Hostile

I just discovered a blog I’ve never run across before; Sufficient Reason. Proprietor Jeremy Choate has an awe-inspiring rant against the “Liberal” creed. A sample:

The fact is, you can rail against my conservatism all you wish.  You can make fun of my Tea Party gatherings, and you can ridicule patriots in tri-corner hats until you wet yourself from mirth, but one thing is for certain: my political philosophy will NEVER be a threat to your freedom.  If you feel a burning responsibility to the poor, conservatism will never prevent you from working 80 hours per week and donating all of your income to charity.  If you feel a strong sense of pity for a family who cannot afford health insurance, my political philosophy will never prevent you from purchasing health insurance for this family or raising money to do so, if you cannot afford it, personally.  If you are moved with compassion for a family who is homeless, a conservative will never use the police power of government to prevent you from taking that family in to your own home or mobilizing your community to build one for them.

However, you cannot say the same for liberalism.  If I choose not to give to the poor for whatever reason, you won’t simply try to persuade me on the merits of the idea — you will seek to use the government as an instrument of plunder to force me to give to the poor.  If we are walking down the street together and we spot a homeless person, using this logic, you would not simply be content with giving him $20 from your own pocket — you would hold a gun to my head and force me to give him $20, as well.

Read it all.

Jonah Goldberg on the Myth of Live-and-Let Live Liberalism

First, the term Liberalism, as used in the US, is anything but in the sense of classical liberalism. It is statism/progressivism. Jonah does make this point in the National Review Online article here. That said he uses the news that the DC City government is about to issue 66 pages of rules regulating the tattoo and piercing industries to illustrate the point that when it comes to intrusive and largely unnecessary regulation, you are going to find a liberal-run big city, state or national government entity behind it.   From the article:

There is a notion out there that being “socially liberal” means you’re a libertarian at heart, a live-and-let-live sort of person who says “whatever floats your boat” a lot.

Alleged proof for this amusing myth (or pernicious lie; take your pick) comes in the form of liberal support for gay marriage and abortion rights, and opposition to a few things that smack of what some people call “traditional values.”

The evidence disproving this adorable story of live-and-let-live liberalism comes in the form of pretty much everything else liberals say, do, and believe.

Social liberalism is the foremost, predominant, and in many instances sole impulse for zealous regulation in this country, particularly in big cities. I love it when liberals complain about a ridiculous bit of PC nanny-statism coming out of New York, L.A., Chicago, D.C., Seattle, etc. — “What will they do next?”

Uh, sorry to tell you, but you are “they.” Outside of a Law and Order script — or an equally implausible MSNBC diatribe about who ruined Detroit — conservatives have as much influence on big-city liberalism as the Knights of Malta do.

Read the whole thing.

Liberalism: A Luxury We Can't Afford

That's the title of a post by John Hinderaker over at Power Line this morning and here is how he sums up Liberalism:

Liberalism is a sort of parasite that feeds on the wealth that free enterprise creates. Liberalism exists for two reasons: 1) to stuff the pocketbooks of those who have learned to live at the taxpayers’ expense, and 2) to feed the moral vanity of those who can’t resist meddling in other peoples’ lives. When times are good, the economy can drag a fair amount of liberalism along behind it. But when times are hard, liberalism is a luxury we can’t afford.

(H/T MBG)

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Read the whole thing.

Advice on How to Handle Friendships With Liberals

Belladonna Rogers has an advice column over at Pajamas Media on how to deal with liberals entitled "The Unbearable Smugness of Liberals: A Guide for the Perplexed." She has some great advice for a conservative reader living in the deep, deep blue territory of San Francisco. It's all good but this advice for conservative women stands out, and I'd say it applies almost equally well to men:

(8) Many conservative women, in particular, encounter liberal men in social settings who become uncontrollably loud and abusive when a conservative woman fails to nod pleasantly and express respectful agreement with his political views. When this happens, remain as cool as you can. Hold your ground. Let the liberal become apoplectic while you calmly say, “I disagree with your characterization” or “I don’t share your contempt,” “I don’t accept your premises,” or “I see things differently.”

You be the rational one, while the liberal is driven around the bend not only by your views and your knowledgeable statement of facts, but also by your composure and your refusal to be bullied.

Don’t be surprised or stunned into silence or submission when this happens. And it will happen. Expect it. Trust me.

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Read the whole thing.

Roger L. Simon Has Some Thoughts on Liberals as Reactionaries in Wisconsin

Pajamas Media co-founder and CEO Roger L. Simon, a former lefty himself, has some thoughts about what we are seeing playing out in Wisconsin:

"So why has our left become so reactionary, so unwilling or unable to adapt to a changed world that they “act out” with all the juvenility of adolescents deprived of the family car keys? Some say it is because they have replaced religious faith with politics and I, an agnostic, see some truth in that. But there is more. Liberalism has become a mask for greed in our culture — a way of hiding excessive selfishness from others and, importantly, from the self. It’s a deflection, really.

We see this in the billionaire extremes of a George Soros and a John Kerry, but also now in the demonstrators in the streets of Madison. Many are suffering economically in our country. Huge numbers are unemployed. But when asked to pull together for the good of the mean, the liberals, the ones who pay the greatest lip service to equality, say NO.

They hide behind “Union! Union! Union!” and “No pasaran!,” but it’s all a fake. When the chips are down, our modern liberals are overcome by their own sense of entitlement. Christopher Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism has infected them to such a degree reality cannot intrude. I get my pension even if there’s no money, even if you have to pay for it and you’re broke without any pension of your own.

Socialism, my fat fanny! It’s just plain old selfish greed."

Read the whole thing.

The Moral Case Against Liberalism

Writing over at Pajamas Media (lot's of good stuff over there today) Matt Patterson makes the moral case against liberalism and shows how liberal policies, no matter how well intentioned, eventually lead societies governed according to liberal principals to economic bankruptcy. Patterson asserts that this is because of the liberal tendency to divide people into groups or "mere collections of similar skin and genitals." To lump people together by groups is to dehumanize them and when you have dehumanized them, you can justify nearly any injustice against them, usually taking wealth away from one and redistributing to another.

Sometimes I like to play a little game with my liberal friends. Let us suppose, I say to them, that you have one hundred dollars with which you plan to purchase food for your family at a local grocery. Now let us suppose that I come along and rob you while you are on your way to the store, taking half of your one hundred dollars.

At this point I ask my friend: Is the robbery good or bad for you economically? “Bad,” they invariably answer, for “I now have less money for groceries.” Then I ask them: Is my robbing you good or bad for the grocer? “Bad,” they again answer, for “now he, too, has less money for his family.” Next question: Was it morally right or wrong for me to rob you? “Wrong, of course,” they answer, for “the money did not belong to you.”

Then, the coup de grace: What if I planned to give your money to someone else, I ask, someone whom I felt was more worthy or deserving of your money?

At this point, many liberals begin to suspect they have been led into a rhetorical cul de sac, and cognitive dissonance sets in as they realize that an honest answer necessitated by their answer to the previous questions will conflict with their stated political principles and past voting habits. Some will nevertheless admit, “Well, it isn’t really for you to decide who gets my money….”

 

[Snip]

An honest answer is that such behavior, like the hypothetical robbery, is both morally wrong and economically deleterious. Yet the same liberals who can see the fault in such behaviors for individuals support exactly those behaviors on the part of governments; confiscatory taxation and unsustainable deficits and debt are, after all, the inevitable consequences of liberal governance.

Patterson also talks about a practical example, Johnson's Great Society and the War on Poverty, still not won after 46 years, and the lessons to be drawn from that:

 

Liberal policies fail practically because they are morally defective — they discourage the recognition of individuals qua individuals, and therefore encourage the adoption of policies that hurt individuals. One might say in fact that it is the moral bankruptcy of liberal ideology that leads directly to the economic bankruptcy of states and nations that liberals govern.

When you see a person, not as an individual, who might have worked for and earned whatever money they have, but as a mere cog in a group (“the rich” for example) then it is easy to say, as Obama did, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” And if you see a person not as an individual who might have made some bad choices and is perfectly responsible for the consequences, but as a member of a group (the “disadvantaged” for example), then you have all the justification you need to rob from the one and give to the other, and you will have lost the capacity to see the injustice you have done to both, or care about the economic and social wreckage that follows.

Read the whole thing.

Victor Davis Hanson on the Postmodern Cultural Elites

Victor Davis Hanson offers a meditation on five things about our self-appointed, so-called cultural elites that are just so irritating. It boils down to their lack of ability to separate truth from their fantasy world or to see the logical conclusions that must flow from their preferred policies, especially as they are so far removed from the realities of how things are made, how their food finds its way to their tables, etc. They don't even appear to suffer from any form of cognitive dissonance at all from the contradictions that they must deal with in their daily lives.

Professor Hanson on number five, the logic deficit:

There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense. The idea that taxes cause scarcity, and subsidy abundance is a foreign concept. The notion that entitlements create dependency is considered Neanderthal. Tough penalties supposedly do not deter crime. Abroad, military preparedness or deterrence pales in comparison to “soft” diplomatic power and clever talking. Borrowing trillions is “stimulus” and need not quite be paid back. In other words, take a deep breath and imagine the opposite of everything you know by experience to be true, and you have mostly the worldview of the sheltered cultural elite, who navigate in rather protected channels and not in the open seas of the real world.

Read the whole thing, of course.

Update: From the comments, Mike McDaniel has some excellent insights along the same lines. PIO: Practical. Industrious. Optimistic. These are the characteristics of the kind of Americans that get things done. Not those who govern us right now. He calls this the PIO loop, like John Boyd's OODA loop (getting inside your opponents decision cycle and acting faster than he can).

Here are a few examples: Problem: Spending too much money. PIO solution: Quit spending money(!), perhaps work extra hours to make more and save more, know that this will reduce debt. Of course, for the elite, such as liberal economist Paul Krugman–he’s a Nobel laureate you know, if you don’t believe it, just ask him or the New York Times–such solutions are too pedestrian. Taxing, spending and borrowing previously unimaginable sums is the only solution. Why can’t the rabble see that? Problem: Oil spill in the Gulf. PIO Solution: Get people who know what they’re doing and plug the damned thing, fast. Work around the clock to do it. Pull out all the stops to waive any obstructing rule, obtain whatever equipment and personnel are required to contain the oil and clean it up. Worry about assigning blame later. Once that’s decided and the right people are working, there is every reason to believe it will get done, done right and done fast. But for the elite, action consists of endless talking, appointing commissions comprised of people who have no specific knowledge applicable to the task like Dr. Chu–he won the Nobel prize too!–press releases, and engaging every niggling, pencil-necked federal agency possible to dissemble, obstruct and hamstring the people who are actually trying to do the work. Blame and threaten everybody in sight, act macho and threaten to put your expensive, dainty little boots on the well-muscled necks of people who know what they’re doing. Travel to the Gulf and set up photo ops of you, looking concerned while touching and staring at apparently oil soiled sand. Send your wife to the gulf. Be sure that she’s wearing a dress that looks as though it has been soiled with oil (style and theme are important!), and set up a press conference on a beach so the dumber folks understand all the work your advance people went to for the proper, symbolic setting. Then go on vacation and be sure to provide a separate jet for your dog. And the well is finally capped, apparently through the insights of a plumber, a guy who, every day, lives PIO.

That's not all. Go and read it.

Matt Labash On Living Like a Liberal - It's Not As Easy As It Looks

Weekly Standard writer Matt Labash has just read Justin Krebs book, 538 Ways to Live Work and Play Like a Liberal and has now seen the error of his conservative ways. He has decided to take Krebs advice to heart and as he says: "Since politics, particularly liberal politics, bring people so much joy, wouldn’t I be better off politicizing everything—the way I live and work and play? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. The answer is a resounding “yes,”" . Of course you should go and read the whole chronicle of how he is changing his life, but this part about how he is bringing his new liberal principals to his work place. 

One thing liberals need to feel is a sense of community. I learn this from reading a very important liberal book, Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, while sitting on my front porch, smiling and waving at my neighbors (thus pulling a Krebsian hat trick). Krebs says that “every office will benefit from its staff feeling a sense of ownership,” which means a free exchange of ideas, which means a “feedback box” by which “management hears from its team.” 

I’m not a craftsy person, so I decide to forgo constructing a physical feedback box and set up a virtual suggestion box instead. I email colleagues that I will collect their important feedback and send it to our boss, Bill Kristol. After I open my virtual box for business, a flood of feedback comes in. Here are just some of the things my colleagues are convinced they need to make The Weekly Standard a more positive work experience:

More key parties .  .  . institute a ‘buddy system’ for all lavatory use .  .  . group showers, so we can save water and go easier on our earth mother .  .  . more irony in staff meetings .  .  . fewer first-person insertions into magazine pieces .  .  . prepare for Y2K .  .  . pension off Labash .  .  . change our name to ‘US News & Weekly Standard Report’ .  .  . institute an open-door trust-tree policy for managers so that employees understand that they are in a safe space to seek counsel for personal/emotional problems/issues.

I forward the results to Kristol, who seems fairly amenable. He agrees to the first three demands, and regarding group showers, vows to go “the extra mile by ending gender segregation and don’t ask, don’t tell.” Regarding many of the suggestions from our literary editor, Phil Terzian, Kristol promises to “check on whether Terzian has too much free time.”

Read it all. It's hilarious.

(Thanks, Megan!)

Why Are Conservatives So Mean? Andrew Klavan Explains

Go and see this short Klavan on Culture video over at PJTV (sorry, no embed) in which Andrew Klavan explains for the benefit of those just graduating from college just why it is that conservatives are so "mean."

Evan Sayet - How Modern Liberals Think

Former "L"iberal Evan Sayet talks to tthe Heritage Foundation about where and why modern liberalism has gone dreadfully wrong. The talk goes 34 minutes and then Q&A for 13 more. It's worth every minute.