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The karate-chop approach to political discussion
As many have observed, liberalism creates a sort of inverted reality in which everything is the opposite of what is claimed:
It is the Right that gives those things a home in the form in which they make sense and can be realized. What right-wingers must do is hammer away at that point until it is generally understood that it is a point that needs to be addressed. The great weakness of liberalism is its refusal to argue fundamentals — that would be “absolutist.” So all the Right needs to do is create issues and refuse to lose by default. Because once it is recognized that there is are fundamental issues to be dealt with liberalism loses. The moral: go for the jugular. Put it on the ground of principles and
whose principles make sense. So if a liberal says “absolutes are
dangerous,” say “that’s why human rights ideology is so bad.” If he says
“be tolerant,” say “then be tolerant of how people have actually lived.”
And if he says “we should recognize the value of all cultures,” say
“including our own, which is why it needs a place where it has the right
to set the standards.”
Comments
I don’t disagree that right-wingers need to do what you say, but I think it’s a great mistake for people to think that our struggle with leftism is, or ever has been, principly an intellectual conflict. If rational argument alone could win the day, we would have won long ago. What you will discover if you follow your advice about showing liberals the natural consequences of their position is that it flies completely over their heads. They are inherently incapable of seeing such contradictions (or unwilling to, which comes to the same thing). The reason is that their principles are not, in fact, what they advertise, which is what you are really pointing out. While they say they are for “tolerance,” they obviously are not. They refuse to tolerate, for example, intolerance of evil. In other words, they are really for intolerance, but in the opposite direction from Christians. Whereas Christians will tolerate no evil in their laws, these modern pagans will tolerate no good. It’s the same hat, but worn by a different character; an “inverted reality.” This is why they’re immune to argument: they define words differently than the average man does. The word “tolerance” for them includes the idea of intolerance toward their enemies. That is literally the picture they have in their heads when they utter the word. “Tolerance” means to the liberal positively embracing evil and rejecting the good as good. It does NOT mean what you or I mean by tolerance. For a man in such a mental state, trying to demonstrate that consistency requires him to tolerate his enemies is a waste of time. How can tolerance require that, when “tolerance” is largely defined as being intolerant of your enemies? (Ugh. I don’t know that I’ve laid this out very clearly, but hopefully you can puzzle out what I’m trying to say.) Posted by: Bubba on April 4, 2003 4:39 PMWhat’s important is less to convert dedicated liberals than to make liberalism itself an issue so that people who don’t really buy into it but don’t know how to articulate their objections in a way that will stand up have an alternative. Right now implicit philosophical liberalism is the background to all public discussion. To the extent that’s so all conservatives can really do is grumble, make jokes and deliver one-liners. That situation has to change. Posted by: Jim Kalb on April 4, 2003 5:15 PMI think Bubba is onto something here. Liberalism (or whatever we wish to call it) is not a rational way of thinking but is in fact a religion - a counterfeit Christianity. Mr. Kalb also raises a good point about the need to “go for the jugular” - not so much as a means of changing a Liberal’s mind, but as a means to expose the utter irrationality of their beliefs to all of the people who stand in the middle. The exposure of the false nature of Liberal claims to moral high ground via “tolerance” and “celebrating cultures” can be very effective in changing the minds of those who are deceived into thinking the left really believes in “tolerance” or “celebrating cultures.” Posted by: Carl on April 4, 2003 7:10 PMWow! Just read it. This deserves study. Thanks. Posted by: P Murgos on April 4, 2003 11:43 PMThe late, great Willmoore Kendall had this dynamic identified and defeated back in the 1960s when he wrote that for liberals all questions are open questions except for the question of whether all questions are open — that question is emphatically closed. From there one perceives the incoherence of the whole structure. Posted by: Paul Cella on April 5, 2003 6:55 AM |