A little personal venting.
Sometimes I just take a news story or current event and go off of that. Its not that there is a dramatic lack of supply anymore, it is just that it seems monotonous at times.
We well proved how stupid liberals are, even if they aren’t done making their case.
So that is why I’ve been easing off, certainly not for a lack of ammunition. It’s a daily thing with Liberals, where one day they will surpass the idiocy of what they did the day before. It is hard to keep up. What do you want, they are evolving?
Some take to chronicling the Liberals’ bobs and weaves very seriously. But sooner or later you look back and wonder if you are getting anywhere? What’s the point, just reminding people all the places they’ve been and the ugly path they are on? It really is simple though and they supply plenty of motivation.
And some of us may appear obsessed with keeping track of Obama’s lies and his un-American agenda. It may seem like obsession but what should we call Obama’s agenda? Now that is a real obsession if anyone has one.
But it does tend to get boring if not predictable. Then there is exposing what the Right is doing that often falls short of responding to Liberals. There’s a task to keep up with. I saw a few interesting books out( one by Ben Shapiro) claiming the civility is totally absent with the left. I do agree. And they assert that, because of the lack of civility on the left, it is time to step up and respond to their blatant lunacy in kind. I almost agree, sort of. I’ve been doing that for years. Step it up to what? Namecalling, screaming, boycotts or protests?
But just to say we are now going to leave civil discussion behind because there is no civility with the left kind of gets my dander up. That is not the reason to abandon civility for scorched earth. I have nothing aginst scorched earth either. But the point was never just to be civil for civility sake. In fact, I’m not sure what the right’s entire point was till now?
Yes, Martha, there was a time when many conservatives naively thought they would convince, convert, or convict the left with the better reasoned argument. As TV’s Dr Phil says, “how’s that working out for ya?” It never did work. The dorbell rings and no one is home. The more civil the right tried to be, the more irrational and unhinged the left became. They don’t care. It was like a cat and mouse game anyway. Only those who “believed” in that illusion played the game. That got old somewhere around Clinton’s impeachment. The left fnally proved playing handball on a curb was even beyond their mentality when Bush came along. That was almost made to order for leftists’ Alinsky tactics.
So what to do? Well, I’m not recommending or changing my style based on anything the left is doing. That would sort of be pointless. They bob and weave so much its like getting hypnotized by a bobble head doll. Next you’d be buying tickets to the flea circus. The Right is right and the Left is, well, wrong. Changing the chairs on the Titanic does not change the truth.
Why bother saying it’s all out warfare now? It was always that to libs even when they are having success. That’s what Alinkyism is all about. But why the right has to make gestures about stepping up their arguments is beyond me. It suggests they weren’t doing all they could before. (and they weren’t) They merely thought the appearance of well-mannered discussion was enough to win the day. It didn’t; if the last two elections proved nothing else they proved that. It was always about survival – now more than ever.
Still it is time for some adjustments. I’m thinking of a few rules of the road. One of them would be to take a liberal seriously for what they say most of the time, especially during their emotional fits. They have moments of revealing their agenda. They may be as wrong and dumb as you think but that doesn’t guarantee they are losing, or will. Second, don’t expect that the majority of voters see the fallacy of the left. They don’t, so don’t be deceived. Don’t believe voters are smart enough to avoid doing stupid things. They aren’t.
Don’t mistakenly think the people will see a reasoned argument and agree with you. People are disagreeable, sometimes for the sake of it. Don’t think the truth always wins the day. It doesn’t. Once people are caught in a lie it often takes them a lot of digging to see daylight again. And finally, don’t take a liberal’s word for anything, ever. They live to defy reality.
Above all, never fall for their stupid ploys about how they actually can agree with much of what you say. They don’t, they lie. Don’t fall for the “can’t we all get along” schtick. That went out the window in the 70’s. They have zero interest in getting along. They only want to control as much of you as they can, period…ain’t no “getting along” about it. Now I’m having fun. I could go on here, probably indefinitely, but I need to stop now.
Like I said, it is a task to keep up with their bobbing and weaving. The point would be not to alter your response just due to their tactics or stupidity, it doesn’t help anyone. Conservatives, stop drinking the Kool Aid and thinking that if you only appeal to liberals’ better senses you will succeed. They have no better senses; that’s a fool’s errand. I have a gut feeling I only scratched the surface. Feel free to add your own.
Right Ring 
Bull,
Watching your writing over the last 2 weeks, I could see this article coming. You’ve probably melted a keyboard or two lately. 🙂
Here’s my contribution to advance what you’ve said, based on a couple things I’ve been thinking and writing since November 7th:
1) Among conservative Americans who are firmly rooted in traditions and common sense (rather than the liberal feel-good fad of the month), apparently quite a few of them didn’t bother to vote against Obama two months ago. Why the heck not? Apathy? Defeatism? Libertarian vengeance? We’ve got to figure that out and solve it.
2) The approx 40% (I used to say 30% a year ago) of committed, entrenched liberals are unpersuadable. They’re not our audience. The 20% (I used to say 30%) in the MIDDLE are our project to persuade.
3) Those middle 20% (maybe 25%) of persuadable swing voters must be reached, but using different tactics than just pointing out the lies and hypocrisies of the left and expecting moderates to vote our way. I believe many of them really believed the liberal storyline of “corporate greed” and “rich man’s tyrrany,” or they at least distrusted successful businesses and individuals enough to fall for the liberal media & liberal politicians’ seduction during the campaign season. So what tactic do we need? Like you implied when you said “take a liberal seriously for what they say most of the time, especially during their emotional fits,” I think we have to try to empathize with them at least enough to help them understand how they can join the ranks of the successful. We need to restore their belief that the American Dream (our self-earned kind, not the entitlement safety blanket kind) is realistically achievable by them, if they’d just try. The liberal propaganda machine has them so convinced that the game is simply rigged by Wall Street, big corporations, and wealthy residents of gated communities, I think many otherwise self-reliant citizens have sort of “given up.” They think they shouldn’t bother trying to work hard, because they can’t possibly succeed in a rigged game. So the only entity they think they can count on is big government intervention on their behalf. Somehow we’ve got to reinvigorate their will to fight for individual achievement. Talking down to them and calling them lemmings doesn’t work, or we’d have won in a landslide last November. I scratched the surface on this thought in my article America’s Political Bilingualism, which I know you already read and commented on — thank you.
4) We’ve got to find ways to reach our target audience (the middle 20%) directly, not relying on the liberal mass media channels. Liberals have the media stacked against us, and it really does no good to keep listing all the daily examples of media bias. That just expends our energy on complaining about something that will probably never change (for reasons I wrote about in Do You Form Your Opinions Independently?), and diverts our efforts away from constructive activities. What constructive activities am I suggesting? Here’s two examples: How ’bout things like forming metro-area or statewide alliances of conservative-principled small business owners who are willing to hold free community outreach events at places like libraries and community centers, inviting other small business owners who may be struggling. Give mentoring on business practices that might help the struggling owners, but also intersperse some conservative realism and some encouragement of the free market liberty kind. And how ’bout calling for more interest in participation in Big Brother / Big Sister mentoring programs, giving advice to young people about their upcoming education and careers, interspersed with straight talk about conservative principles like self-reliance and deferred gratification. I guess you could say I’m talking about doing some CONSERVATIVE community organizing. We need to get active and reach out to our target audience personally, citizen to citizen, instead of following our normal conservative instinct of “live and let live.” We need to intervene and break the normal cycle of K-through-12 indoctrination, higher ed indoctrination, liberal media indoctrination, and pop entertainment indoctrination. Those indoctrinators aren’t going to just stop — from their point of view it’s working great. We must fight fire with fire — not by scorched earth warfare, but by a constructive change of tactics…just like you mentioned in your title.
Like you, I could go on and on, but it’s bedtime. To close, I’ll say this: I’d love to see bunches of us articulate conservative bloggers (some of whom you and I share as followers, like JTR) cooperate in growing this set of actionable grassroots ideas, writing about them, and spreading the motivation to stop complaining about the unsolvable political headwinds we face, and instead find constructive ways to rebuild the Reagan-era confidence in conservatism that the Bushes let slip away, and that Clinton and Obama have overtly worked to wreck.
– Jeff
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Jeff, well the keyboard is cooling off but its probably driving the anti-spam programs into overdrive. Maybe the only glitch we may have is that the list of “rules” to deal with radicals becomes so exhaustive. Good suggestions, I’ll leave it at that. Some things have changed since the election. And to number 2 & 3, many libs do “believe” it and I’d like to see a real survey how many will just instinctively vote “D” no matter what. They’ve already tried to say we are a left of center country. Their perception is not my reality. We do have some work to do.
My one theory has been that we may need deprogramming programs on some scale, at some point, to deal with the larger isue.
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