Liberal Arguments: Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but Epithets are Argument Losers
By Will Malven
The Tin Ear Times
Those on the left still haven’t learned how to debate. You can count on a Liberal to immediately hurl personal epithets when one of your arguments hits home. They have made the ad hominem attack an art form. I’ve addressed this before, but only in passing. I therefore decided to address it in a full article.
In times past, the Ancient Masters of Liberal Thought confided in their disciples the “Secret Formula of Liberal Debate” a manual of how Liberals should debate against conservatives. I have on occasion imagined what it said. Through terrible trials and hair-raising dangers, requiring feats of great derring-do, I have managed to procure a copy of this tome. Now, at great personal risk and with some trepidation, I have decided to share it with you. Please be careful with this information as the mere possession of it may lead to the attempted assassination of your character.
Know Ye All Liberals-These Be The Ancient Secrets of Our Tribe’s Debating Techniques.
May Any Who Reveal These Secrets to the Conservatives Be Struck Dumb
[Judging from this curse, I can only conclude that most Liberals have at some time leaked this information to a Conservative. WM]
1. Avoid factual arguments, they're usually against you anyway.
2. If for some obscure reason the facts actually fall your way (an extremely rare occurrence) then repeat them endlessly regardless of the reply of your conservative opponent. Remember time is limited, use this against him.
3. Get as personal and vicious as you can, maybe it will distract your opponent from his train of thought.
4. If you are unable to insult him with the usual insults such as “racist,” “homophobe,” or “bigot,” then insult someone else on his side (someone related to the subject under discussion is preferable but not required).
5. When you’re losing, and you usually will be, abruptly change the subject. Again the object of this is to distract and deflect attention from your opponent’s argument.
6. Talk loudly and rapidly, don’t allow your opponent to get a word in. Remember the more time you consume, the less time your opponent will have.
7. Use hyperbole as an example of your opponent’s argument and suggest that that is what they are suggesting.
8. Purposely misunderstand what is being said by your opponent and distort it into something you can use.
9. Make up “facts”. Most people don’t check them and anyway, you’ll be long gone by the time the truth is known, and so will the audience.
10. Demand perfection. Focus on the slightest flaw in your opponent’s argument, any kind of mistake, grammatical, spelling, contextual, anything no matter how slight is sufficient to deflect attention away from how vacuous your arguments are.
11. Act insulted. Take umbrage at the slightest contradiction and act as if it is a personal insult. This will make your personal attack seem warranted and just.
12. Mug the camera or audience while your opponent is speaking, make faces, sneering is good, head-shaking better, and looking toward the ceiling is best [notice the avoidance of the word Heaven, Liberals avoid words of a religious nature WM]. Let the audience know you disagree with your opponent (even if you’ve no idea what he’s saying).
13. Use condescending laughter as much as you can. It serves two purposes, first, it dismisses your opponent as being unworthy of your respect and second, it shows your contempt for his arguments. This is a very powerful tool and can really annoy your opponent and disrupt his train of thought.
14. You’re an arrogant Liberal; demonstrate your obvious intellectual superiority by acting in a condescending manner.
15. Forget how many of the wealthiest in this nation are Liberals, always beat the drum of “Rich Republicans” and “working class Democrats.”
16. Finally, always remember style trumps substance. Know it, Live it.
There it is folks, the Liberal playbook.
Any Conservative engaged in political debate can expect some or all of the above rules to be followed without exception. You may on occasion encounter a Liberal who can argue on the basis of logic and reason but, once they reach a point where you have countered their every argument, they will fall back on the rules above. It is very, very difficult to find a Liberal who will argue “fairly” and stick with it. I believe the last one I knew was...uh...well, I know there was one.
I receive many comments from Liberals on my editorials. In fact Liberals are fond of pointing out how few positive comments I get, and use this as proof that no one agrees with what I am saying. What they don’t understand is that first, I don’t care if no one agrees with me; I am stating what I believe to be true and right. People are free to disagree with what I say, it doesn’t make them right, it makes them different (and wrong). Second, I have found from my own experience that I am much more likely to make a comment when I am moved to object to what is being stated. It is human nature to disagree vehemently more than it is to agree enthusiastically. Third, the truth is the truth regardless of what others think.
William Penn said it as well as anyone:
“Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and
wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”
The real story here is how bankrupt of ideas the Liberal side is. I don’t know of a single conservative politician or pundit, including myself, who has not been subjected to a torrent of truly hateful language. I have been called every obscene name you can imagine and told to perform feats of contortion that would defy an Indian fakir. This abusive tirade which passes for reasoned argument on the Left has absolutely no effect but to denigrate the image of the insulter. I am not impressed or cowed by such language, only saddened.
It doesn’t take a genius to spew venom and hate, any moron can do that. It only shows the total vapidity of the arguer and the complete lack of legitimate reasoning that has gone into his taking a particular position.
I encourage you to visit the many comments that my many “fans” have left on my previous editorials since I began this endeavor . Though I rarely respond to them (that would require a large percentage of my time), I always read them. Rather than deleting them as I have threatened to do on occasion, I keep them as a reminder of their vicious and insubstantial nature. Some commenters are so agitated, that they leave their comments on the wrong editorial and then when they return to admire their work, accuse me of deleting it. I never delete for the reason I mentioned above, with one exception, and that is if a person decides to publish a book. If a commenter chooses to refer to an article somewhere, then they are requested to include a small excerpt and a hyperlink to the original better for me and the copyright laws.
I doubt that this or any article will change the nature of Liberal debate because they lack the facts to back up most of their arguments. If you don’t have the facts in your favor, there is little you can do to change that. So for you conservatives out there, don’t get angry when you are attacked, be amused, it only spurs the Liberals to greater heights of expletive.
Now, go out there and have fun!
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