Since the passage of the Health Care Reform bill, my approach to political discussions has changed in a fundamental way: I no longer allow lies to prevail. My style though, like so many other styles, is unique. First of all, I’m not an overly nice guy, I mean “fake” nice smiling at everything people say. In other words, I’m not a politician. What I do emphasize is two things: respect and factual accuracy. These two basic approaches are devastating to the leftists who tend to base their arguments on gross distortions of the truth and emotional appeals. Here are some examples of how this has worked in practice:

- Discussing education with a teacher, one of her arguments for why education in this country is not doing as well as it should was that this “The US is committed to education for all children of all people to the limit of their capacity. This idea is unique, no other country has had either the vision or the resources to undertake this task.” Note: this is a teacher in charge of teaching our children. As many people know, most if not all industrialized countries in the world have a system of universal education at least from K to 12 with the same “vision,” in fact, all of the countries that rank ahead of ours have such a system. Without facts, this discussion would have been based on a false premise and I would have been at a disadvantage. This underscores the importance of independently researching topics that matter to us as a society. It also shows that our teachers need to be better educated before they infect our children with such drivel.

- Recently, I posted a comment on an article written by a conservative and received an email from a liberal who had a problem with what I wrote. He wrote: “I do not go the a website (i.e Huffington post) to read posts that I agree with….I do not need affirmation of my liberals beliefs…..unlike u dittoheads and Beck worshippers who only seek affirmation of your racist and narrow minded views.” We see here clearly that the liberal uses his oft-repeated accusations of racism and stupidity/ignorance laced with other assumptions. My reply was lengthy and so I won’t post it here, but to paraphrase I explained to him my multiracial background, the fact that I read articles from different perspectives, and I suggested that he practice more of that liberal “tolerance” that they preach before he starts accusing people of things he knows nothing of. At the bottom of my email I wrote “God bless you.” This final part was the most important for various reasons, first of all he seemed very very angry and possibly needed to be reminded that though we may disagree, we don’t have to be nasty. Second, the far Left gets even more incensed when conservatives wish them well or invoke God and I wondered if he was that type. If someone is an ideological enemy, it does not mean that they are our mortal enemy (though often the converse is true) therefore we must remember to retain civility in discussions since this is far more powerful that foaming at the mouth (as they tend to do). Respect your opponent and never underestimate him.

- Discussing an article by Newt Gingrich with a liberal, instead of debating the content of the article he went on attacking Gingrich personally, calling out bullet point after bullet point of why he is a terrible person. Here’s one of his gems:

“Considering that he cheated on his wife while she was dying of cancer at the exact same time he was trying to impeach Bill Clinton, I’m betting it’s that he’s a lying sack of shit.”

For those paying attention, this accusation is false (his marital problems took place more than a decade earlier) but that won’t stop this guy. Another interesting part is that he, in an episode of projection, called Gingrich’s article “intellectually dishonest.” My reply was “you attack the man not the message, THAT is intellectually dishonest… Shame on you for debating things outside this article.” Only after this, did the liberal realize that he was getting out of hand and promised to “tone it down.” Fortunately, we were eventually able to discuss the actual content only to have him misrepresent data and force me to, again, correct him. This is what many on the Left do, especially the more extreme ones, they choose to sidestep the argument completely in favor of pointing out something distasteful yet unrelated. Whenever you see someone opt for attacking a person or thing related to the topic instead of discussing policy head-on, it shows that either they cannot intelligently discuss policy or have opinions that are based on whether they personally like someone or something, as opposed to analyzing the benefits and risks of the policy in question. Having a clear head, pointing out when they are being cruel or dishonest, and having facts on hand is critical to refuting the near-constant barrage of disinformation that liberals spew during debates.

These are just some of my more recent encounters with the Left, all of them show the shallowness of their arguments and highlight the importance of both respect and factual accuracy when engaging them. On the national scene, this becomes more pressing… but I say that the conservative revolution must be from the bottom-up and in the microcosm that is our everyday lives we must make sure that we blast away the silly leftist ideas every chance we get, but do it with respect so that the liberal can back away with dignity. Who knows, we might even convince a few of them in the process.

-AG