Can liberals be persuaded that liberalism is false?
Mark Jaws writes:
I had an interesting chat today while “slugging” to work. For those who don’t know, “slugging” is a form of controlled hitchhiking here in the DC area which allows drivers to pick up strangers at designated parking lots so that everyone in the car can ride the HOV lanes into DC. I have been doing this for 10 years and have met some interesting people, many of whom love to talk politics with me.
Today I rode with a driver named “Dave,” who like me is a retired military officer. Dave, however, exudes a more stately, eloquent WASP-y manner which is befitting his higher rank. He is obviously a retired Colonel or perhaps even a general. I have ridden with Dave before and we have butted heads a few times. Dave prides himself on being a “centrist,” but I have yet to meet a more politically correct white male. He is condescending to right wingers and thinks we are all like Michael Savage. In the past he has equated diversity with strength and he actually believes the Constitution will prevail against leftist dismembering. He actually thinks that the browner we become, the stronger a nation we will be. If he had his way, he’d open up the borders, but no one would get welfare.
Today, given this new moral cover offered by the election of a black racialist, I went for the jugular and spoke of black and Hispanic demographic dysfunction in excruciating detail, but all the while maintaining jocularity and sang-froid. He got the full Mark Jaws Monty plus some Auster (decrying universalism), and for the first time I heard him admit to my “possibly being right.”
I am convinced that much of the belief and value systems of moderates and left of center types is just fluff. These people can be easily turned if we could just individually isolate them for 30 minutes and de-program their pip squeak political intellects.
LA replies:
This is support for Alan Roebuck’s call for a conservative “apologetics”—demonstrating through argument that liberalism is false and traditionalism is true, and thus persuading liberals to abandon their liberalism.
Mark Jaws continues:
It was even worse than I described. During the conversation he said, “You know whom I blame for most of our problems? The white male. The white male for not exerting leadership in his home and in his family. And as a result the nation is suffering.”
To which I replied, “Well, yes, we can all do better. But what the hell about the black male who is impregnating women and abandoning his children? The black illegitimacy rate is 2.5 times that as the white illegitimacy rate. Are you going to blame the black males as well?”
“Yes, I will. Them do.” He admitted.
“It is curious to me,” I remarked. “Your first instinct was to blame the white male, when by any reasonable measure of civility and community building it is the black and Hispanic males who are asleep at the wheel. This is indicative of eternal white guilt. And brother, you got it. I have volunteered in the past to help the poor and I have only seen white people doing such civic duty. In our diverse county I only see white men stepping up to the plate to lead scout troops or charity drives, or the Knights of Columbus, even though there are plenty of black and brown men in my church. It is no wonder that the entire Mexican community in southern California has yet to build a hospital or a church as the Irish, German and Jewish immigrants did of old.”
But what really sunk his little ship was my being able to cite from the Mexican Constitution the Article dealing with immigrants in Mexico. I keep it on the screen saver of my lap top and that example of blatant Mexican racism simply devastated his argument. At that point he collapsed and admitted I may be right. And we shook hands at the end of the ride.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 19, 2008 07:22 PM | Send