Do you ever find yourself arguing with liberals on the internet? Are you tired of people telling you about how awesome free healthcare is for the economy? Or how you should just shut up and pay your fair share because crack whores need iPhones too? Or how we should ban the super ultra-deadly assault rifle AR-15 shotgun Glock? Or been asked why do you hate old people, you cismale gendernormative fascist, hatey-McHaterton-hatey-hate-hatemongering racist?
Have you grown frustrated because arguing with the willfully ignorant is like repeatedly punching a really dumb cactus?
Well, I’ve prepared a handy checklist so you can accurately predict what your willfully ignorant statist will spout next! Have fun with this, as you can follow your friends arguments and play bingo with these. If you are new to internet debate, just find any kerfuffle on Facebook and see how long it takes for you to check most of these off. It is fun for the whole family!
This may come as a shock to some of you gentle readers, but I am politically opinionated.
Okay, never mind, but as one of the handful of politically outspoken conservatives or libertarians working in an entertainment industry that is overwhelmingly left leaning, at some point I became the voice of an angry generation. (in reality authors are about as evenly divided as the rest of America, but most of the ones on my side keep their mouths shut, but we’ll get to that when we detail Concern Troll Threats)
WARNING!
Left wingers who can actually produce a solid argument are to be treasured and debated fully (that’s sort of the point of debate). Unlike many of my liberal contemporaries, I don’t “manage” my blog comments until I have an echo chamber and my self-esteem isn’t predicated on how many sycophants pat my tender head while telling me how brilliant I am for standing up for some straw man cause de jour. I’ve got a bunch of regular left wing readers who can bring their A Game. I love them. Arguing with them, and honing my points against them makes my arguments stronger for the future.
Sadly, for every intelligent, articulate Eric Flint out there, most arguments against liberal group think results in a legion of poo flinging monkeys showing up.
This checklist is intended only for the willfully ignorant, banally stupid, sound byte spewers incapable of thinking through anything more complicated than a Facebook meme. The lowest form of debater is the pathetic crap sacks that can only follow this checklist.
WARNING 2!
If you are on my side, but this is how you debate, shut up. You’re making us look bad. Good arguing should consist of compelling rhetoric which is backed up with facts and logic. If your tactics are to shut down debate, you are an idiot. It should never be to shut down or scare off, but to WIN.
THE LEFT WING INTERNET ARGUING CHECKLIST
- Skim until Offended
- Disqualify that Opinion
- Attack, Attack, Attack
- Disregard Inconvenient facts
- Make Shit Up
- Resort to Moral Equivalency
- Concern Trolling
- When all else fails, Racism!
So let’s break this down so you know what to look for, and you can have a good laugh as people who have zero substance, critical thinking skills, or facts make fools of themselves!
SKIM UNTIL OFFENDED:
A poo flinging monkey never actually reads their opponent’s article (That could introduce them to dangerous badthink!). Instead they simply skim down the page until finding something that they can loudly proclaim you were offended by. Remember, being offended grants liberals super powers!
True Example: I would go through this big gun control essay, but the author said that he made a state legislator cry. What a terrible person!
Fascinating, since in that particular case it was because I was testifying about mass shootings the day after a mass shooting, and as I described how disarmed and helpless people had no choice but to hide and pray, she became very emotional… But hey, #1 is satisfied! No danger of badthink here!
This one is hilarious. For example, if you are responding to something from somebody who self-identifies as a democrat or liberal and you use the term, democrat or liberal, they’ll be offended that you are “using labels”. (note, you never see conservatives or libertarians who mind being labeled as such. Go figure).
Today I was arguing gun control, and I put a link to my exhaustive essay on the topic. One poo flinger was a champion of skimming, clicked the link, only saw the covers of my novels, and didn’t like that they were “men with guns and big breasted females” and that was enough to disqualify my years of experience on the topic. I think that might be a new record. Interestingly enough, authors don’t even get much input on covers, as that is up to the marketing people at our publishing house, but whatever, I’ve sold a friggin’ ton of books with those covers.
The thing to get offended by doesn’t actually matter. Remember, liberals are all about claiming victimhood, so anything that allows them to claim that sainted status equals victory.
DISQUALIFY THAT OPINION
This one is lots of fun. Liberals never want to argue ABOUT a topic. They want to argue about why your opinion on that topic doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter who or what you are, there is some reason that your opinion doesn’t count, and it doesn’t have to make sense.
Say that you are a man who thinks abortion is murder, well your opinion obviously doesn’t count because you’re a man! What if my wife said that? Well, her opinion doesn’t count because she’s biased because she has children. What if a childless woman said that? Well, her opinion doesn’t count because she’s probably religious. What if she’s an atheist libertarian who happens to believe that a fetus should be considered a human being and thus receive the same rights and legal protections as any other human being? Hurr… Derp… Don’t legislate my vagina! War on women! Quick, switch to another item on the checklist!
There are several subcategories to this one, as it is the most common tactic on the checklist.
Race, sex, culture, economic status. Say you want to comment on any social issue. Well your opinion doesn’t count because you’re not part of that race or culture or economic group. Usually the liberal you are arguing with isn’t part of that group either, but it doesn’t matter, because white guilt liberals are automatically exempt, and their soft racism allows them to feel good about themselves as they declare that other groups are too stupid to survive without their benevolent guidance.
How dare you say that gangster rap thug culture of single mothers on welfare isn’t the way to go! Your opinion doesn’t count because you didn’t grow up there. And if you did grow up there, well you’re not “authentic” or one of my personal favorites I’ve seen thrown around Twitter against black conservatives “house negro” which totally isn’t racist if it is said by a smug liberal.
The problem with that is that most poo flinging monkeys are white suburbanites, and when they try to disqualify you, and you stop them and say “but I’m not white” which is a problem for them. Obviously this is going to happen more and more as race is an artificial construct that really only matters so liberals can make you check a box on an EEOC form so they can continue to foist social programs on us. Since the poo flingers freak out when their opponent isn’t white, liberals invented the ultimate disqualifier of “privilege”.
Privilege is amazing. It is the new race card, because pick any topic and regardless of what it is or who you are, a liberal can say your opinion doesn’t’ count because you have privilege. What does that actually mean? Hell if I know. It is such a nebulous term that surely everybody has some form. It means whatever the liberal wants it to mean. It is the new Neo-Con.
So you are against some dipshit welfare program because you’ve seen first-hand how that culture of government dependence destroys the human spirit, well obviously you are privileged so your opinion doesn’t count. So wait, even if I was born into a family with dark skin and super crazy poor, and worked my way out of it rather than becoming a crack whore, I’m now too privileged to have an opinion? YES. It doesn’t matter if you were born in a 3rd world hell hole and were a boat person refugee, if you disagree with liberal group think it can only be because you have privilege.
YOU SOUND ANGRY: This is one of my favorite disqualifiers. Type up a 10,000 word essay going into a great deal of detail, with cites, and graphs, and research, and you could have done it completely dispassionately and some liberal is going to say “wow, you sure sound angry!” Boom. You’ve been safely disqualified. In reality, considering the shit we have to put up with, yes, I’m extremely angry, but I’m still right. What’s your point?
YOU KNOW TOO MUCH/TOO LITTLE: I love this one. My big gun control article was dismissed by many because I am an expert on the subject and was thus “biased”. I’ve seen doctor’s opinions dismissed on health care reform because they were “biased”. Gee whiz, wouldn’t you think that somebody who invested their life into a topic would have a strong opinion on it?
But this also goes the other way. Say you own a small business and think your taxes are too high? Well, you’re not a PhD in Economics from Yale turned democrat appointed Treasury Secretary, so obviously your opinion doesn’t count… So you can be disqualified for knowing too much or for knowing too little.
So how much do you need to know for your opinion to be accepted by a poo flinger? If you are conservative? The answer will either be too hot or too cold. If you are liberal? Well, then whatever you know is just right.
EDIT: It was just pointed out to me that I forgot one. The YOU SURE DID WRITE A LOT. Yes, because if you care enough to write something that covers all the pertinent information, that somehow proves that you care too hard, and thus your opinion should be dismissed.
ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK
The dumbest of poo flingers must find something, anything about their opponent and attack it rather than the actual topic or salient points. Too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, nothing is off the table. I watched one on Facebook where one of my fans disagreed with a lib about Obamacare, and was attacked because of their profile picture “your kid looks retarded.” And yes, their kid was handicapped, but that’s what you get with caring liberals.
When you argue with a liberal online, no matter what you do, you’re doing it wrong. This is a personal pet peeve of mine. I make my living as a novelist. I get paid large sums of money to write books. I’m rather successful. But whenever I argue with a liberal on Twitter I’m not a “real” novelist. And because I write sci-fi/fantasy, I’m no longer allowed to have an opinion regardless of the long and varied career I had before that, which takes us right back to #2. I have witnessed this with many conservative or libertarian authors.
You’ll note that once any of my political posts go viral and it hits the lib blogs, there will be a deluge of posters all feeling the need to point out what a shitty writer I am (which is really funny since they’ve probably never read any of my books, but obviously, a conservative is going to write bad novels!)
And it isn’t limited to my field. I’m friends with some well-known actors. Same thing. Follow Nick Searcy or Adam Baldwin on Twitter for a few days. You’ll see. Doesn’t matter if you’re second billed on one of the top shows on cable, you’re a conservative, so you’re not a “real” actor. Doesn’t matter if you go to DragonCon and there is a line a thousand people long wearing Jayne hats wanting your autograph, you’re a conservative, so you’re not a “real” actor.
You’ll note that I just fisked a cartoonist. Note. I made fun of his ideas, his misconceptions, and his general idiocy, but I never made fun of his art, because the quality of his artwork is totally irrelevant to the worth of the ideas.
Another fun part of this one is the following scenario:
Liberal 1: Attack, attack. ATTACK!
Liberal 2: Attack attack, attack attack!
Conservative: Defend.
Liberal 1: How rude.
Liberal 2: Indeed, how rude.
Liberal 1: You Sound Angry.
DISREGARD INCONVENIENT FACTS
This one is really self-explanatory. It goes hand in hand with our next item on the checklist of Make Shit Up. So you see a liberal post something false. You post the truth. They ignore it. Say that you post a link to an article. They will find a reason to dismiss it. “The Drudge Report? That’s not a *real* newspaper!” So you post the same story from when the WaPo got around to finally copying Drudge a month later. They ignore it.
A subnote on disregarding inconvenient facts. You can be the leading expert in the world on some topic, but if you are arguing with a liberal then you will get “That’s anecdote, not evidence!” or “Link or it didn’t happen!” But the minute that you are quoted in Salon or Mother Jones, it magically turns into evidence. Crazy how that works. While arguing about Obamacare I could truthfully cite the regulations and hoop jumping I had to do for my company of 200 people, and how my equivalent at the company across the street was cutting all their 500 employees back to 28 hours a week because of Obamacare. That’s anecdote. A liberal comedian makes a video about how awesome Obamacare is with emotional music, totally evidence.
So let’s say there’s a new study showing that Japan has fewer violent crimes and fewer guns than America, so the liberals cite that these apples and oranges prove gun ownership equals more crime… They disregard the fact that we’re so socially different that you could flood Japan with AK-47s and their crime rate probably wouldn’t change, and then they’ll disregard any apple to apple comparison like El Paso’s crime versus Detroit’s’. Large cities, similar in population, both ethnically, economically, and socially diverse, only El Paso (right across the border from one of the deadliest crime cities on Earth) has lower crime, but more gun ownership than Detroit (right across the border from big peaceful Canada) with its draconian gun laws… Ignore. Or do Houston versus Chicago. What? I couldn’t hear you. Jamie Foxx was talking about his expertise in use of force laws.
MAKE SHIT UP
This one can get pretty crazy , but if they’ve made it this far down the checklist things are getting desperate, might as well go for the gold.
There are a few levels of this. The easiest one is taking the most absurd batshit insane person they can on the right and putting them as our poster child “Republicans don’t believe in dinosaurs and think the earth is flat and religious people hate science and homeschooling will make children into racist bigots who wage a war on women stay out of my vagina!” This is your usual straw man stuff. Fairly typical.
Then you’ve got the propaganda accepted as fact. Here we are years later, the ACA is going into effect, and millions of us have already had to deal with it, we’ve seen costs skyrocket for three years in a row, we’ve seen the doom and gloom come to pass, we’ve seen the jobs switching to 30 hour work weeks, yet still, STILL you run into people on Facebook ignoring reality and telling you about awesome stuff the ACA is going to do, even though they are talking about hype from when it was getting passed, which never made it into the actual bill.
Then you get into things which are simply flat out lies. As a gun guy, pick any argument involving the technical and legal aspects of building, buying, or using firearms, as reimagined by somebody huffing paint. But if you’re a liberal, and you just believe hard enough, then reality doesn’t matter, just how hard you feel about something. I saw where one recently where a particularly dumbass sci-fi author actually told an audience in Australia that Stand Your Ground laws were to make it legal for white people to just shoot blacks whenever they felt like it…
Wow.
RESORT TO MORAL EQUIVALENCY
Find something, anything bad as done by a liberal? “Well, republicans did it too!” Did the president do something stupid? “It is Bush’s fault.” So? Was it okay then? No. Then it shouldn’t be okay now, hypocrite. And of everything on the checklist, this is the one that I’ve seen people on the right be guilty of the most often. Do republicans suck too? Hell yes. They’re pathetic (most often when they’re trying to be democrat lite, oh, freaking retire already, John McCain). So sometimes this is totally true.
But the interesting thing is that this goes hand in hand with Make Shit Up, in that oftentimes it isn’t even true, and they’re not the same on that issue, but it is parroted so often that it has become an accepted truth. Even well-meaning people fall for this trap. Though it can be fun when they automatically regurgitate “well, both sides are the same.” And you come back with “Okay, name one time the republicans have done that.” And they sit there and go “Uh…. Hmm…. Uh… Oh, look Jim Carrey made another gun control video!”
So it now looks like Treasury Secretary Geitner was briefed on the IRS specifically targeting opposition conservative groups prior to the election, so this scandal goes straight to the top. “Bush did it too!” they bleat. No… No, actually he didn’t. And if he had, the stupid press would have done their stupid job and actually exposed it, rather than just being a propaganda mouthpiece for the administration, you dipshit. To ether party, you can’t whine about statist 1984 nonsense when the other guys do it, and then do the same thing bigger when you end up in charge.
But that check isn’t as big a deal, because elected democrats mostly suck, and elected republicans only half suck, so half the time it’s true.
CONCERN TROLLING
A personal favorite. There are two types. The classic Concern Troll and the Boycotter.
Concern Trolling is a tool to enforce the illusion of monolithic group think where the liberal responds like they care. They care so hard about you, poor misguided right winger, and they care that you are saying these horrible, nasty, awful, racist, mean, things. What will everyone think of you? What would your friends think if they knew that you don’t like giving a third of your income to support crack whores? Why, they’d think you were a horrible person.
One of my favorites is “I read your article, and it like totally would have swayed me to your side, BUT the way you called liberal ideas liberal and talked about people who are liberals by using the word liberal just ruined the whole thing. You’d be more effective if you used no labels.” Or substitute whatever bullshit there you want, but the important thing is that this combines dismissal and offense, all wrapped up in the fact that they’re not a mindless poo flinger at all, but are rather motivated by how much they care about you.
Horse shit.
These drip with self-righteousness. But it is rather effective, especially on people new to the whole debating thing, or who are easily frightened and don’t want to rock the boat. You see this when you happen to be a relative or coworker of the poo flinger, and they try to scare you on Facebook. Because of course, nobody is a better arbiter of what is correct and good than people who subscribe to the same political philosophy which eventually spawns gulags, purges, and concentration camps.
The Boycotter is rather specialized Concern Troll that usually only gets used on those of us who have some sort of public persona, like entertainers or business people. Because the left absolutely hates dissent, they will try to squish anyone who gets out of line.
“I came to your blog/facebook/twitter because I’m SOOOO very interested in your book/movie/product, but then I found out what a horrible, awful person you are, so now I’m never going to buy any of your stuff ever again. You should totally never share your badthink again because it will totally scare away the legions of people like me and you’ll starve in a ditch.”
Uh huh… How about I just keep on producing the best quality work I can and keep on sleeping on a giant pile of money? The thing is this type is super effective. I’ve been shocked how many conservative Hollywood people I’ve met who keep a low profile about their beliefs out of fear of getting blackballed. For every openly conservative writer like me there are probably half a dozen who share my opinion who won’t talk.
That’s what the poo flingers want. Screw them.
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, RACISM!
The most obvious one of them all, because if you are going to argue with liberals you WILL be called racist. It is inevitable. However that is good, because it means you just won. It is the final line on our checklist for a reason. Just keep in mind that you’re in good company. Charlton Heston marched across the Selma Bridge with Martin Luther King, and he was smeared as racist for believing that the 2nd Amendment applied to everyone equally.
The topic probably doesn’t even have anything to do with racism. Don’t matter. You disagree with liberals, you’re a racist. The clever poo flingers will snidely insinuate it, while the dumb ones will screech it at the top of their lungs. This one has been epidemic since we elected Barack Obama, and obviously the only reason you could hate a weak foreign policy, stupid gun control proposals, a shitty economy, a ridiculous bloated monster of a healthcare law, and the general corruption of our federal apparatus, is because you don’t like a black president.
You may not have had a racist thought in your life, but it won’t matter. A good author friend of mine was smeared as racist because he was against some stupid liberal nonsense even though he’s been married to a black woman for 20 years and has biracial children, and worked with every ethnicity there is during a career in the military.
I mentioned Nick Searcy above. He fights with liberals on Twitter for fun and has made it into an art form. At least a couple times a day, Nick will be called racist—usually for not being an Obama fan is enough—and he always posts the same thing. “Don’t tell my adopted son that because he’s black and thinks I love him.” Outspoken conservatives get uselessly tarred as racists so damned often that you can have the response ready as a cut and paste. Shit. I used the word tarred. I guarantee some liberal just thought that was racist (probably because they don’t know history).
Back in the olden days calling somebody racist was the liberal nuclear option. It was what they would use to instantly squash dissent, because most people are decent human beings who think actual racism is repulsive, so their opponents would recoil and backtrack, desperately trying to avoid giving perceived offense. The problem was that they overused it. It lost all its meaning. And people like me got sick of their shit and transformed it into a joke.
For years and years they kept calling people racist for things that clearly weren’t racist even if you squinted at them really hard, so now when real racism occurs it is lost amid the noise of poo flingers crying wolf. The definition of racist turned into anybody who has won an argument with a liberal. They were so used to the word having such power that they pulled it out at every opportunity. 1/8th black Peruvian Obama supporter who’d never done a racist thing in his life shot a young black man in a fairly obvious self-defense shooting? You’d have thought it was the second coming of Robert Byrd (D).
You think every law abiding citizen should have the right to have a gun to defend themselves? RACIST. You think Eric Holder illegally shipping thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels in an illegal effort to frame gun dealers to promote more gun control is bad? RACIST. Because obviously I only dislike felony gun smuggling when the Attorney General is black? EXTRA RACIST. But what if those guns were used to murder hundreds of Mexicans, including innocent women and children? RACIST. Because obviously liberals only care about Mexicans when they are an easily exploitable near slave class with no rights brought across the border, and made dependent upon democrat social programs so that they can be used to fraudulently increase democrat voter turnout. HOLY SHIT I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW RACIST THAT IS!
And off topic, but that reminds me that I really need to write a blog post about the most racist term still in use, People of Color. Man, I hate that term so very much. It is just Colored People backwards, but of course, liberals are all about grouping people into easily manageable victim blocks and don’t really give a crap about the content of anyone’s character, so this shouldn’t exactly be a surprise. And they love individuality, as long as you totally agree with them, because otherwise, out comes the Check List!
THE MORAL OF THE CHECKLIST
I often get people who agree with me posting stuff like “well, you wasted your time on that doofus!” Ah, but you miss the point. You don’t defend your beliefs in the hopes of convincing the willfully ignorant. That’s a lost cause. The willfully ignorant aren’t to be convinced, they are to be mocked. Their flaws are to be pointed out until everyone around them realizes how full of crap they are. Remember that argument is theater, and your performance isn’t aimed at your opponent, but rather at the audience. If you choose to follow the Fisker’s Path, your goal is three fold.
Give ammo to the people already on your side.
Convince the undecided .
Allow your opponent’s to display their petty ignorance to the world.
EDIT 2: WARNING! Somebody suggested making this into drinking game… If you do that, YOU WILL DIE! If you took a shot each time you saw one of these on Facebook you’d be dead in less than twenty minutes. 😀
EDIT 3: Some fun new ones were pointed out on Facebook that I forgot. These all happened in a single thread! They fall under Dismiss. If your profile picture has you holding a gun? Instant Dismiss! A PFM actually looked at my bio and pointed out that I only went to a state college! Dismiss! (by the way, if you are an adult and you are still listing going to college as some sort of achievenment you probably suck at life).
And a particularly vile one, if you are active duty military or your profile pic shows you in uniform, then you probably must have PTSD or a Traumatic Brain Injury, you poor Bush tool victim. Dismiss! That’s really disgusting, but not surprising.
EDIT 4: Read through the comments. Hilarity ensues as a PFM comes in, hits all the points, and then calls me racist. We’ve even got object lessons. 😀
I get a lot of funny responses from liberals on my blogs. On my “About” page in the comments section (see http://reflectionsofarationalrepublican.com/about/#comment-5912), one liberal accused me of being a fake (i.e., that I made up my credentials and background). It was quite humorous actually. I mean, how do you convince somebody that you really do, in fact, exist?
From my experiences, whenever a liberal accuses someone of something there’s a very real chance they’re already doing it themselves.
If I woke up tomorrow and read that the Left was accusing conservatives of cannibalism, my first thought would be “Oh, my God! The Left is eating people!”
Exactly!
Rush Limbaugh has been saying that EXACT thing for 20 years. Want to know what the liberals are doing? Pay attention to what they are accusing Republicans of doing.
Projection is their stock in trade.
Now ask me why I was concerned when they started claiming that Bush would orchestrate a crisis and refuse to leave office at the end of his second term. Go ahead. Ask me. 😉
Although I first read this last night, for some reason it only struck me as hilarious late this afternoon. I will be reposting it (with link & attribution) on Twitter & Facebook.
Thank you for making me laugh uncontrollably for (from the point of view of my co-workers) no apparent reason.
Oh, a new blog to follow 🙂 Thanks. It is interesting reading the comments from Shannon.
Thanks, John. I’m following you now as well.
cogito ergo sum: “I THINK, therefore I am”
That should be, cogito ergo cogito sum: I think therefore I think I am, as I could in fact be delusional
Are you familiar with Kafkatraps?
And yes, I love how Mother Jones trumps my decades of military and civilian experience with firearms. Whose mother is she, exactly?
As I understand, she was a labor union belle and a real mutha’. But I’m just a historian, so I don’t know anything.
Larry, you just outlined practically every conversation I’ve had with a liberal since 10th grade world history in 1980. So much for “progressive” thinking, ne?
DAMN……just damn!
“..sci-fi author actually told an audience in Australia that Stand Your Ground laws were to make it legal for white people to just shoot blacks whenever they felt like it…”
Who was that author? Just out of interest.
I also live in Australia and I’m a gun owner.
N.K. Jemisin is who I believe he’s referring to.
She’s the one who publicly advocated that fantasy suffers from too much consideration of how its magic systems work.
I believe that it was NK Jemisen
Thanks
Thanks! On the same list with Scalzi, now.
I get called racist all the time which is so far from the truth it isn’t funny. Anymore I just let them rant and if they take me off their Facebook then they aren’t worthy of my time. I won’t cower from posting how i feel on a subject. I got told I was violating someone else’s first amendment right because I commented on something they posted on my wall. But yet if I post a conservative comment I get told off for being hateful and racist and all sorts of other names. I have now come to the conclusion the next person that pulls that on my wall they will get booted if they cross the line to where my blood pressure spikes. If they want me to value their opinion then they damn well better be ready to value mine back. 😀
This is what happens when you accuse liberals of racism:
http://reflectionsofarationalrepublican.com/2012/03/04/the-lefts-cognitive-dissonance-on-race/
Their cognitive dissonance is so intense, it’s as if some of their heads were about to explode.
I think you’re hamstringing yourself with “Reverse Discrimination”. How about just calling it ‘discrimination’ or ‘racial discrimination against whites’. Since ‘racism’ is inherently bad, ‘reverse racism’ is probably good, so you start with an uphill battle.
Words matter, and conservatives got shot in the foot by tacking the ‘reverse’ on. I vote to drop it.
Foolhardy Expendable Minion,
That’s a fair point. If there’s one thing that liberals have mastered, it is twisting language to their benefit. Notice how I don’t call liberals “progressives” since the term “progressive” implies that anyone who is against them must be “regressive.” Liberals are not pro-abortion, they are pro-choice. It’s not institutionally-backed racism, it’s “multiculturalism.” If George Orwell were alive today, he would be impressed by how the American left has turned thoughtcrime into an art form.
Ha! Ha!
I just got a:
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, RACISM!
claim in the comment section of my website.
A liberal came to my site and just insinuated I was racist. When I called him/her out on it, he/she said my “ideas” were racist and then broadly called my argument’s “dumb” without providing any evidence to support the claim. And the moral relativism demonstrated in the argument is pretty eye-popping. Apparently, racial discrimination is okay if his/her side is doing it.
Also, some liberals actually believe that if they say something is true, it will make it so.
I got called a racist for defending two conservative black bloggers. It has no meaning at all these days; my teen kids and their friends fling it around as a casual insult.
I always like when they bring up racism. The best comeback is which race?
If they say anything other than human (If you hate the human race its not racism its misanthropy)
It leads to the a nice way to turn it around on em and ask who is the racist here ME who doesn’t acknowledge a race other than human OR you who is separating people by roughly 30 percent melanin variance and facial features.
When I get called a raciss. I just say “Yeah. So what?”
Leaving my accuser with no weapon and a mouthful of teeth.
I had a similar situation on my Facebook page, a former friend of mine was constantly posting pro-abortion memes and when I would correct her errors or point out her flawed logic She would get pissed. So eventually I stopped posting responses. Then after 3 months of silence and ignoring her memes I saw one I just could not ignore and when I did a guy she has a crush on decided to insult me and call me some nasty names. When I responded in kind, and pointed out that doing so served no reasonable purpose after I did it, it was then and only then that she decided she might need to remove me from her Facebook list of friends. Why? Because I had been constantly posting to her memes and correcting her over the past couple months… You know, the past few months where I hadn’t posted anything at all.
Another instance saw a friend of my who’s an admitted Liberal Socialist, who “tolerated” my Conservatism by the way. The magnanimous and enlightened individual would constantly make comments about Conservatives being “nasty” or “racist” but of course he never meant me. Yeah, right. But I ignored it because I was used to it. What made this “friend” turn their back on me? The fact that I thought Homosexuality was a choice. One reason why? Because he was constantly denying that homosexuality was a choice, while at the same time trying to convince me I should make the choice to give it a try. I might like it. It never once occurred to him that if he thought he could convince me to try homosexuality and might even like it that it would be me CHOOSING to be a homosexual. His own attempts to convert me belied his arguments and pointing this out, among various other things, as the logic behind my views he automatically assumed I wanted homosexuals tortured and treated with shock treatments. That I excused bullying of homosexuals because they chose to be bullied.
But then, that’s liberal logic for you isn’t it? In the first case she found a reason to be offended. In the second he ignored inconvenient truths like the fact he was trying to get me to choose to be gay. Then they both would go on to make shit up about what happened and even went so far as to call me a bigot.
Full of win, for HOW to win. Of course, one MIGHT ask the question, why argue logically with a Liberal: they don’t think, that’s objectifying white penis science or something. (Someone called it that in an argument I was in several years ago.. . . ) Liberals FEEL, and DEEPLY. . . . Ask them, they’ll tell you. . .
Why argue?
It separates the willfully ignorant from the merely ignorant. The latter is salvageable. The former rarely is, short of the sort of drastic measures I wouldn’t want to see inflicted on another human being, even a liberal.
However, being liberal, they sometimes bring such measures upon themselves, for which I cannot feel any personal remorse…
Liberals are human?
I just shared this on Facebook, but I can almost guarantee it won’t go viral–the lib…Sorry. The people-who-are-always-right-even-when-they’re-wrong don’t want their tricks made public. Can I just say I love your writing?
Hi Lauren, I am having the same experience. I’ve got a facebook friends list made up of mostly liberals (being left-leaning myself). Its surprising how much time people want to spend shouting about their views but won’t even acknowledge, let alone engage with a counterpoint to their ranting.
Sorry about the screwed up tag. In case of any confusion, my text starts with “This. Definitely this.”
Shoulda offered to show him a picture of your panel van (whether you have one or not).
So, if boycotters attack conservatives who already have a successful career, do you think there’s a such thing as gatekeepers, folks who block self-admitted conservative writers who haven’t yet established a position in the industry?
Yes. Absolutely. I’ve posted about it here before. I flagged Sarah Hoyt on Facebook for you as well.
Thanks, I appreciate the replies, here and on fb. I’ll root around the archives here looking for more mention of it. Again, thanks. It’s appreciated.
“men with guns and big breasted females”
Should’ve pointed them to the “Oh John Ringo No” page and watched their head explode…. heheheheheheheheh
I’m reminded of something Rush Limbaugh said, “You cannot wake up someone who is not asleep.” I suppose the take-away from this post is that when I find someone feigning sleep, I should get out a Sharpie and start drawing on his face. This is an excellent strategy for dealing with the obtuse. Thank you.
That’s also an old Philippine aphorism:
Mahirap gisingin ang gising
Possibly a lesson taught by cats
http://youtu.be/ZyEyXSZdKNQ
Generally attributed to Jonathan Swift is the advice: It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
OTOH, you can so embarrass his stupid liberal ass that others refuse to associate with him and realize how effing stupid his position actually is. That is, in fact, what they attempt when they screech racist sexist homophobic hater — except when you employ reason and facts it is easier to leave their arguments bruised and abused, crushed before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Liberals cannot be embarrassed. Embarrassment requires some sort of moral standard.
They DO have moral standards. Anything advancing liberal utopia=good. ‘Concern’=good.
Figure out what their hypocritical values are, and publicly show the lib to be destroying them, and they will cry.
See: Correia making state legislator cry. “Concern for children” + terrified children praying to non-existent diety + adults foricbly disarmed= tears
My answer a “You’re RAAAAAAACCCIST!!!11!1!!!” jab is to say ‘Why thank you, yes I am. My next race is the Long Beach Marathon in 3 weeks” (or whatever the next race happens to be).
That tends to cause confusion in their poor little brains.
I do occasionally make another answer that goes like something like this. “Yep, how astue of you to notice. As Cecil Rhodes said the great thing about being English is that I have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life. I can’t help it. Sorry. Better try being born English in your next life”
“Discussion” threads on most popular internet threads serve as my evidence for the eminent demise of any remaining vestige of a republican form of government or, alternatively, the validity of the argument for political secession by some portion of the country. Ideally,
If you cite Adam Smith or Hayek they will tell you to stop quoting Fox News Hosts. I find “Fox News” to be the number one tactic. There was no political disagreement until Fox News came along.
Fox News is the new Godwin’s law?
Don’t watch the news, haven’t had cable in 20 years, yet I get told ‘I watch too much Fox news’ on pretty much a daily basis…
“I would go through this big gun control essay, but the author said that he made a state legislator cry. What a terrible person!”
They say that like politicians are people. And here I thought they were the vengeful spirits of failed law students who just hated the rest of the world. My bad.
“They say that like politicians are people. And here I thought they were the vengeful spirits of failed law students who just hated the rest of the world. My bad.”
I’m going to share that with a formerly-politically-active friend of mine. His major in college was polisci/international relations…
I think the acronym ‘PFM’ should go viral…
Great stuff here….
Thank you for arranging the fine points of debating liberals in such a cogent manner. Of course, on the other hand, since you can cure ignorance by education, but stupid is terminal, there may be no hope in ever reaching this sort of person anyway!
Ah, I remember arguing with a Marxist on the internet.
I neatly labelled my information so she could tell what was anecdotal, what I had been told and what I had researched myself.
Her response? To have a go at the “anecdotal” indicator. Not the anecdotes, the text indicating that the paragraph was anecdotal.
I pointed out that she was “picking out” something to argue about while ignoring the rest. Her response? “I’m sorry you’re feeling picked on.”
I started ignoring her at that point.
I see I’ll have to update my Progressive’s Handbook of Argument:
http://shavingleviathan.blogspot.com/2009/11/progressives-handbook-of-argument.html
That is excellent. I like Crawling through the Cracks. Didn’t think of that one but I’ve seen it.
Thanks. I like that you gave yours separate titles. That was a good idea.
I don’t understand why this is considered a liberal check list. It seems very consistent with conservative arguing techniques as well. Perhaps we should just realize that most people arguing on the internet are ideologically motivated idiots.
You’ll note that I addressed the people on my side who do this, told them how lame they are, and even pointed out the one they are the most guilty of. But if you can flip it around an use this en masse against right wingers on FB, feel free. Good luck. 🙂 Though I have a feeling if it were a drinking game, tracking right wingers who do this would leave you tipsy, but tracking left wingers would destroy your liver in half an hour. The main difference between our sides is that mine normally loves to talk about the actual topic, rather than the emotions around it.
I have had every one of these used against me this week.
I recently had a HUGE argument with one time friends that said hate speech ISN’T protected speech and as soon as I bring up Nazis v Skokie that doesn’t count. They used the EXACT argument that Skokie Used and LOST WITH in the supreme court EVEN went to the trouble of POINTING THEM THE EXACT arguments used. I even Showed how intimidating speech and incitement speech are protected (EVERYTHING that comes out of their mouths and their actions are Incitement and intimidation. CLASSIC intimidation tactics at that marching in uniform and such… I finally had to un Friend them. sad I’ve known and actively done business with them for YEARS.
(Note: Different Tim Weaver here…)
Larry, actually, the other Tim is right. I’ve had to deal with folks on an Arizona gun owners Internet forum who argue in the exact same fashion.
I would actually disagree that they are ideologically motivated. I would argue they are mostly ontologically motivated. Ideology makes for excellent debate. Ontology is what brings out the checklist and makes it impossible to exchange cogent thoughts. I agree that I see both sides using the same unfortunate tactics. I typically read arguments and posts for content, and comments for entertainment (or when my blood pressure feels a little low).
Lefty kkkooks are like terrorists- they only respect strength. In my experience, shortly after “Concern Troll”, there is a moment that they realize that they have hit an immovable brick wall in me and quit trying.
If you extend an olive branch to a kkkook, he/she will happily beat you about the face and ears with it.
Don’t give them ANYTHING.
Actually, they don’t respect strength, they respect violence. There is no organization on earth stronger than the (until lately) despised US military.
The left actively ridiculed them at every opportunity, calling them baby killers and rapists. The left did so knowing full well that the US military wouldn’t punish them for it.
No, they suck up to those willing to terrorize and commit violence upon the weak. Chavez, Che, Castro, Stalin, Obama, Pohl Pot, Idi Amin…
Yes, big O’s only getting started, but he’ll drone you, or supply your local drug gangs with guns, or…
That’s prey animal behavior. No need to worry about the big bad predator who doesn’t actually eat their kind. Nope, they save the worry and the sucking up for the ones who might eat them for real.
I am so glad I was turned on to your blog. I find it humorous as well as relevant. What is your opinion on attacking the author’s credibility due to a simple grammatical error (grammar Nazi), such as “why should I listen to your perfectly concise and well thought out argument when you can’t even spell the word “of””?
The only thing I do not agree with was your comment on adults being proud of a college education. I did not go to college until I was in my forties, and am quite proud of my accomplishment. I am a failure at NOTHING.
But overall excellent articles, keep up the good work.
You should number these. It would really save time. Next time some leftista troll starts in, we could just say “bzzzzzzt! #5, #2, #9! You fail. Thanks for playing.”
“We’ll work up a Number 6 on ’em!”
Or keep a count on how often you hear them frieza-style:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMBbWE1wCKI
Had someone compare owning a gun to slavery. Trying to decide how to politely respond to that.
“The slaves would have been delighted own guns. They wouldn’t have been slaves for long. That’s kinda the POINT of owning a gun…”
I’ve figured that what really angers lefties about slavery is that they didn’t get to hold the whip — the idea of forcibly confiscating people’s labor for the benefit of a privileged class certainly doesn’t phase them. They also act like what angers them about the Klan is that they never got invited to the lynchings — because they sure do seem intent on ginning up some of their own.
Since they don’t have a coherent philosophical position against slavery, they make comments like the one you noted.
I’d say:
“Dear PFM.
If you received an invitation to the lynching of Clarence Thomas, your sheets would be off the bed before Weiner could wake up.”
That’s only if you buy their claim, the claim of Leftist Democrats, that the Demcratic Party of today is fundamentally different from the Democratic Party of yesterday.
As you point out, there are some reasons to think that the only changes may have been purely cosmetic.
In a sense, they did get to hold the whip … the Democrats were the pro-slavery party. And they practiced censorship, both violent and administrative, to keep Abolition from being discussed in the Old South.
“Deacons of Justice, Negroes With Guns, Athens, Tennessee revolt. Google them and then we’ll talk.”
That’s how you respond.
Current gun control argument stats
THE LEFT WING INTERNET ARGUING CHECKLIST
1.Skim until Offended Check
2.Disqualify that Opinion Check
3.Attack, Attack, Attack Not yet unless nondirected insults count. Bagger, delusional, etc.
4.Disregard Inconvenient facts Definitely checked.
5.Make Shit Up Yep.
6.Resort to Moral Equivalency Yep. Slavery laws equal gun laws.
7.Concern Trolling Mostly the “I should CARE about the slain” crap.
8.When all else fails, Racism Does the slavery comment count?
Just for everyone’s edification, the definition of Privilege from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary: priv·i·lege noun ˈpriv-lij, ˈpri-və-
: a right or benefit that is given to some people and not to others
: a special opportunity to do something that makes you proud
: the advantage that wealthy and powerful people have over other people in a society
Full Definition of PRIVILEGE
: a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor : prerogative; especially : such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office
Examples of PRIVILEGE
Good health care should be a right and not a privilege.
We had the privilege of being invited to the party.
I had the privilege of knowing your grandfather.
He lived a life of wealth and privilege.
Origin of PRIVILEGE
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin privilegium law for or against a private person, from privus private + leg-, lex law
First Known Use: 12th century
“a right or benefit that is given to some people and not to others”
Seems to me the left has become the privileged ones by this definition. Because only the left seems to be getting away with using racist and bigoted remarks without being called out on it by anyone but Conservatives.
Another apples and oranges comparison I’m always seeing is comparing firearm fatalities to other types, WITHOUT breaking down firearm deaths into legal, criminal, & accidental. I’m sure the Naval Yard Shooter’s death will go right in there with his victims when their trotting out their death totals. I keep wondering if anybody has the percentages for the above categories, or if they just don’t keep track of the differences.
good one…I find I get into just as many “discussions” with the radical right wingers as I do with the liberals and conservatives….it has gotten to the point where I just don’t bother with them….they are too concerned with being right and me being wrong to even begin to listen to my point….
Keep it up Mr. Correia
The way I put it on my blog is that calling someone a racist is the modern day equivalent of calling someone a poo-poo head, and usually comes from that level of mentality. Now that picture is stuck in my head and I start to giggle when the race card comes out. When they start as you say ‘flinging the poo’ now I’ll add to the image someone who needs their diaper checked and in need of a nap. Great column, I enjoyed it.
I think you left out a version of Concern Troll: The Pretend Conservative/Republican/Libertarian (whichever they think you are). The ones who come in with, “I was always a big (Republican/Whatever), I even voted for (Somebody), but you guys are going off into crazy land, and I can’t stand with you any more.” And they usually employ some of the other items on the checklist to prove either how you are no longer part of the group, or how the group left them. Kind of like most of the seminar callers to talk shows.
Concern Trolls stopped using the pretend bit because it is too easy to derail them simply by saying “You are lying. You are not a member of our group. Fuck off.”
Works particularly well with victim-disarmament supporters who claim to be rational gun owners.
Simply tell them that grampa’s old rifle in the closet at best makes them a dumb-assed Fudd.
That is like the woman who called me “Transphobic” on the internet the other night. This was after I asked them to justify their comments about an author online after this woman called the author a “vile, bigoted, piece of shit” and then actively refused to try to explain her comments. She basically used all of the steps in an abbreviated fashion (this is Twitter after all) to try and avoid an actual debate and then even used Scalzi as a way to say she won. *sigh* I miss actual, real debates. 😀
The same holds true of internet atheists, except their number 8 is that we’re “stupid and afraid.” I’m currently engaged with an atheist on FB who is arguing that there is no such thing as bias based on unreasonable doubt, since both science and philosophy use doubt to .”correct” for bias. He’s currently at number 2, and trying to say that I don’t understand philosophy. (I have a BA in Philosophy from Clemson and an MA in Religious Studies (Biblical Archeology and Textual Criticism). I’m tempted to post the link here, or the one on Vox Popoli and ask him to skip a few steps since its the weekend and I don’t want to miss college football.
I tried for years to politely argue with liberals on my FB page but it’s pointless for all the reasons you detail here. I purged my friends list about a year ago and never regretted it. It got old seeing all these posts on my newsfeed that I (as in someone of my political affiliation) was a horrible person because of my core beliefs.
Dear Mr. Correia,
Being a fan of older SFF authors like Asimov, Heinlein, Pournelle, Niven et al, I don’t keep up with modern authors. Luckily, I read of you on Vox Day’s blog.
I just finished and very much enjoyed your Hard Magic trilogy. I especially enjoyed the JMB and 1911 references, the 1911 being the finest handgun in the world.
Thanks for some fine fiction. I’m looking forward to reading more of your non-fiction essays, the one above was excellent.
Seconded. And ditto.
Now stop writing these long racist creeds and write moar books, you privileged racist!
(Seriously, Hard Magic, and MHI were really enjoyable)
“Willfully ignorant” is used a lot in this post. Correia doesn’t understand he’s describing himself. He is the one to be mocked.
http://poxvay.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-internet-arguing-checklist-for.html
Perhaps you could help me understand what looks like a contradiction in your blog’s comment. You wrote:
So are blacks committing the same number of crimes, or is their desperation leading to more violence?
Or is black violence due to poverty desperation not a crime?
Please help me understand your point. I am confused. Thank you.
First off, I have no idea where that came from or what the context was, and I don’t even remember if I wrote it or not. I’ve got 1,500+ blog posts on here and like 30k comments.
Second off, way to change the subject. How about post your question to the actual post where that was said so I’d have some earthly idea what’s going on.
Third. WTF? Seriously.
Assuming that you aren’t totally full of shit and just coming at the checklist sideways. This looks like something in response to some of the comments getting flung about during the Zimmerman trial where the left was trying to prove racism because blacks are convicted of violent crime more than whites. So to answer your questions:
“So are blacks commiting the same number of crimes?” No. Clearly not by any statistical measure. If you are looking at it per capita then the violent crime rate among blacks, especially young black man on young black man violence, is astronomically higher.
“or is their desperation leading to more violence?” Have you ever actually been in the poor inner city? Desperate and violent are the first two descriptors most of the people who live there would use. But that’s a really stupid question. As you’ve just taken a really vast subject and asked a yes or no about one cause of dozens. From what I saw the biggest root cause of inner city violent crime was that idiotic social programs have destroyed the family, replaced fathers, and enabled a self destructive culture that would not otherwise be able to continue, becasue its practicioners would be forced to abandon it, but social programs subsidize poor choices so that it may continue for generations.
“Or is black violence due to poverty desperation not a crime?” Crime is a crime, by definition. You must have mistaken me for a liberal where if you stick “hate” in front of “crime” it suddenly transforms into a special type of crime. If you go and rob a store at gun point, you will be charged with armed robbery, and your motive is irrelevant, in that you still stuck up a 7-11.
The stats were about drug crime.
I’m saying that the same stats are a factor, not the only one, but certainly a factor in the 700% difference in murder rates. Widespread poverty being another.
You really do struggle to make a coherent point, don’t you?
Because I think democrat social policy has harmed the black community, that’s your evidence that I am racist? (at least, I’m assuming that is your point, since in your other post you say that my use of statistics–which you are agreeing with–is racist).
So, following your logic chain, since we agree that black crime is higher, then you must be racist too! Good job.
It appears that you are Vox’s mental mini-me because that’s clearly not what I’ve said. I’ve said that statistics need interpretation and that your his (and maybe yours) always points the finger at blacks. That’s why he (and maybe you) are racist.
Huh? Why are you on my blog talking about somebody else’s blog? Oh, that’s right. You’re here link whoring and arguing (poorly).
You said statistics need interpretation, only any way conservatives interpret them is automatically wrong, demonstrating exactly what I posted about in the initial article. Boom. Done.
So you have zero evidence that I’m racist whatsoever but you just go ahead and keep on flinging that term around against anybody who disagrees with liberals, and keep on proving my point.
We had a City Councilwoman complain that 86% of those arrested in her district were Black. She said that it was racist. She wanted more Whites arrested. The look on her face was priceless when it was explained to her that 94% of the people in her district WERE Black.
Linkwhore much?
More of a link slut.
Heh… Weak. 😀 Come on, dude who named himself as an insult after another conservative blogger. Establish your own identity.
But here we go! Here is Pox’s list of how conservatives argue!
•Say something offensive.
Like the truth! 😀
•Pretend statistics support your offensive statement.
Or, you know, use the actual statistics. You’ll note that my list used examples, but let’s throw a recent one out, how many mass shootings have taken place in gun free zones? (the vast majority). Or how many companies have cut their employees to less than 30 hours a week as a direct result of Obamacare?
Here, let me help you. You should maybe just restate that and take out the word “pretend.”
•Claim liberal bias in the media.
BWA HA HA HAAAW snort!
No… Seriously? Wow.
Now most intelligent adults can look a the media and realize that every outlet is biased in one direction or another, with FOX being on the conservative side and MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC being on the liberal side, but oh no. Saying that would be… Offensive?
•Claim there’s a liberal agenda.
Uh… Every political group has an agenda. That’s sort of what they do… So when Mayor Bloomberg hooks up with the Brady Center and spends a pile of money to sway the legislation in some state, they’re just doing that for kicks? Flying by the seat of their pants?
There’s a conservative agenda too if that helps you.
•Offer up a conspiracy theory.
Really? Would you care to point one out? Unless liberal bias at MSNBC is a conspiracy theory.
•Call your opponent stupid.
Yes. But the difference between us is that I like to prove your stupidity by going through your argument line by line. Showing is better than telling.
•Gloat about your accomplishments.
It ain’t bragging if you can do it. 🙂
Now most grown ups would call this establishing credibility, as in establishing why my opinion on a certain topic that I’m an actual expert on carries more weight than somebody who learned everything they know about said topic from Facebook memes.
And since I’m fairly sure that Pox Vay is the reincarnation of the banned Clamps. (a talentless, unpublished, extremely jealous fiction writer, who styles himself automatically a superior writer to any conservative), this one is because he’s still angry that people read my fiction, and the most widely read he’s ever been was when we posted a sample of his dreck here to pick apart and laugh at.
•Offer easily disqualified opinions.
Well, I’m certainly waiting for you to disqualify them with facts and reasoned discourse!
And of course they are “easily disqualified”! That’s why I explained how #2 works.
•Create derogatory nicknames for opponents.
Yep. Except this is the same as the one where I call my opponent’s stupid, I just like to use a thesaurus. However you’ll notice I don’t ever call people I disagree with who actually bring good points and argument stupid. I love them. Oh, no, I only call stupid people acting stupid, stupid, and that’s fairly derogatory.
•Say science proves your point.
So how big is the ice sheet this year?
•Say science is limited when it conflicts with your point.
Or another way of looking at it, when a liberal presents you “science that’s settled” and it is something which there is still disagreement about from actual scientists, be suspicious of anything where the solution to said settled science is yet another massive expansion of government control over something.
But keep in mind, when liberals say that conservatives hate science, that’s code for 1. We think human fetuses are human. 2. We’re suspicious that mankind has anything to do with global temperature fluctuations (the Vikings farmed Greenland!) and even if we did, how come the answer is always more government taxes, regulation, and total control over our freedom? 3. They’re actually going for #2 and #5 on the checklist, where of course ALL conservatives believe the earth is flat, was created over a weekend, and dinosaurs are as fake as the moon landings, even though most conservatives and libertarians, religous or not, aren’t that stupid. Which is of course extra ironic since NASA is stuffed full of Mormons, and one of the best university space programs in the world came from my little, easily dismisable “state college”, but hey, whatever.
And don’t forget, liberals are super pro science and progress, which is why they love fracking and nuclear power.
•When all else fails, Communism!
After they tell you that they are in favor of redistribution of wealth and government control of the economy…
Hookay then… Try again, Clamps.
Holy crap, and it was just pointed out to me that Pox has been deleting some comments over on his page, surely “managing” the arguments. 😀
Hell, I’m very late to this party, and it turns out that “Pox Vay” has deleted his entire blog!
Now there’s the way to defend yourself: ‘You can’t prove my argument is wrong, because I won’t let you see it.’
Larry -I’m sure you know this. I’m sure Pox would just as soon _desperately_ ignore it. Multiple studies, NOT from conservative sources (the UCLA media study, for example), have documented a long-standing liberal media bias. It’s that “You should maybe just restate that and take out the word “pretend.”” all over again.
Those statistics totally don’t count! Everybody knows UCLA is a hot bed of conservative propaganda!
Larry,
I’m new to your website, and came here because I checked out your first book in the Monster Hunter series and enjoyed it.
That said, I just want to give you some friendly advice on how to handle Pox Vay. Pox Vay is here for one reason and one reason only: to generate traffic for his blog. While I’m sure the controversy he stirs up here also helps generate traffic for your site as well, it is likely taking you away from doing more productive things (like writing more books). Plus, your readers are doing a pretty good job at troll crushing on their own. Therefore, the most useful strategy for handling Pox Vay, in my opinion, is to starve the beast – that is, simply encourage your readers to boycott his site.
As his hits associated with your site diminish, his economic incentive for trolling should diminish in kind and over time.
Just my two cents.
1st point, I’ve never heard of clamps. So no.
2nd point, not managing arguments. Look at the extensive bullshit over there and you’ll see there’s hardly any censorship. The guy who was complaining was carrying the same argument on in multiple threads so I deleted one that was redundant to streamline the conversation.
Skim until Offended
But you right offensive nonsense.
Disqualify that Opinion
When I upper-middle class gives his opinion of policy concerning poor black culture, it’s pretty easy.
Attack, Attack, Attack
Attack what? Someone’s character, that’s easy if it’s Vox’s. Probably yours as well.
Disregard Inconvenient facts
Facts have to be interpreted. Conservatives (Like you and Vox, anyway) always choose the most offensive interpretation
Make Shit Up
This one’s not true. At least not on a wide scale.
Resort to Moral Equivalency
If it works…
Concern Trolling
What?
When all else fails, Racism!
Well, Vox is clearly racist and you probably are too. When you choose the most racist interpretation of every statistic you can dig up you’re a racist. Sorry.
If you aren’t Clamps, you two really should hook up because you (and your barely comprehensible writing style) were seperated at birth.
Okay, so you’re not managing comments… You are simply removing ones you find “redundant” in order to “streamline” the conversation. 😀
“Skim until Offended
But you right offensive nonsense.”
No. I WRITE offensive things. But if you would read what I wrote, it isn’t the act of getting offended, (because troglodytes like you are perpetually offended) it is the not actually reading what was written and using your offense as a weapon to avoid entering into meaningful debate.
“Disqualify that Opinion
When I upper-middle class gives his opinion of policy concerning poor black culture, it’s pretty easy.”
Come on. This has got to be one of my people having fun and pretending to be a poo flinging monkey…
Seriously? You’re real? Okay, first off your grammar is pathetic, but if I attempt to diagram your sentence, you are simply going with #2 based on privilege and race, ergo, no white people are allowed to comment on race, and nobody who isn’t living in poverty is allowed to comment on socio-economic topics. So, even if I’m legally not white, and I grew up in poverty, yet have been extremely successful in life, my opinion is disqualified.
Wow. I love you so much Checklist.
“Attack, Attack, Attack
Attack what? Someone’s character, that’s easy if it’s Vox’s. Probably yours as well.”
You are on the wrong blog. I know the internet can be very confusing and all, but that little star at the top will take you to your favorites rather easily.
“Disregard Inconvenient facts
Facts have to be interpreted. Conservatives (Like you and Vox, anyway) always choose the most offensive interpretation”
Note. No actual discussion of the facts or what is incorrect in the interpretation. Simply that whenever conservatives use facts, they are automatically offensive, and thus dismissed.
Holy crap. Seriously. The Check List wins again.
“Make Shit Up
This one’s not true. At least not on a wide scale.”
And since arguing is all about swaying the audience, I will let our exchange stand for itself.
But here is a hint, you are making smart liberals grind their teeth in frustration, and they’re probably wishing you weren’t on their side. 😀
“Resort to Moral Equivalency
If it works…”
That is sort of like the definition of moral equivalency, dumbass.
“Concern Trolling
What?”
I explained what that is in the original article in detail, but you probably didn’t read that far because you got offended before that and stopped.
“When all else fails, Racism!
Well, Vox is clearly racist and you probably are too. When you choose the most racist interpretation of every statistic you can dig up you’re a racist. Sorry”
Heh… Aw man, I’m laughing out loud here. You can’t possibly be that dense.
And if you are that dense, here let me help explain why. You are proving my Poo Flinging Monkey theory of liberal arguing rather well. You have somebody else you think is racist, ergo, a different person’s opinion is automatically racist as well, simply because we fall in the same HALF OF THE COUNTRY politically. So I’m racist, even though that topic has nothing to do with this one, nor have I said anything racist in nature. Also, since you will not use any actual facts or statistics, nor have you outlined how my interpretation of said statistics is in fact racist, you lose, and you lose badly, since you lose in a manner which helps illustrate my earlier point.
I can’t make people like you up. But please, do continue, because you are like the best thing ever for conservative philosophy. 😀
“But you right offensive nonsense.”
At least Larry can *write* a sentence in coherent English…
You’ve gone on to pointing out grammatical errors and typos now. That’s a good sign you have nothing worthwhile to say.
But, if you want to play that game…
You spelled ‘separated’ wrong in the opening statement.
“But if you would read what I wrote, it isn’t the act of getting offended, (because troglodytes like you are perpetually offended) it is the not actually reading what was written and using your offense as a weapon to avoid entering into meaningful debate.”
You never named your subject (it?) in the above run-on sentence, making it incomprehensible.
“No actual discussion of the facts or what is incorrect in the interpretation.”
And this one’s a sentence fragment.
I’m starting to see this blog’s not worth commenting on because it’s author isn’t capable of defending his views. Throwing out one-liners and smileys doesn’t count as debate.
Ah, but here’s the difference. My communication was clearly understood by everyone reading these comments, while you came off as a complete moron barely capable of stringing words together. Show of hands? Who here didn’t understand me? (other than Clamps 2, obviously)
As for run on sentences and fragments being forbidden, that’s English 101. Weak. Lame. BORING. Meanwhile, I’ll stick with the massive royalty checks I get for writing. 🙂 (o snap! Another smiley!)
Capable of defending my view? (oh shit, a fragmentary restate? NOoooooooo! However will he understand my meaning? Good thing my average readers are smarter than this dipshit… Whew.)
I’ve yet to see where you’ve actually articulated what view you are attacking, other than I’m a racist poopy head because I’m a conservative, and some other conservative blogger hurt your feelings once (and you’re fixated on this guy enough that you’ve created an internet persona based on that, which is kind of creepy and sad). Your one piece of evidence was where I used some stats that you agree with… Yet, because I blame democrat social programs for an increase in crime, I’m racist. Hookay then.
Yes. This blog is totally not worth commenting on. You should go away and deprive me of your brilliance. Forever.
EDIT: I didn’t catch this the first time I read it, but this poster is trying to say I’m Vox’s mini-me, which is kind of weird considering I’m not mini anybody, I barely know Vox, never mentioned him in this article, and I’m being accused of this by somebody who is fixated enough to name himself after Vox, created an internet persona with which to stalk Vox, and has come over to my blog in order to say that I’m racist, like Vox…
Yeah. That is actually pretty creepy. There’s some weird projection issues going on with this dude.
Pox.. “Disregard Inconvenient facts
Facts have to be interpreted. Conservatives (Like you and Vox, anyway) always choose the most offensive interpretation”
Son, two things.
(1) you don’t “interpret” them. You routinely _ignore_ them. If they don’t fit your narrative, they got tossed in the wastebin.
(2) Data is data. It is not my job to read the data in the light most favorable to your set of preconceptions. If I, or Larry, or Vox, or someone else, marshalls a set of facts that pretty much destroy your argument, the options for your response basically come down to:
– marshall facts and counter the critique, using data.
– whine and throw a temper tantrum (this will get you treated like a child, because you’re acting like one)
– totally ignore the cogent argument and keep going (note that this usually winds up getting you laughed at – you’re seeing a _lot_ of that in this thread)
– STFU
I would suggest that the best choices you could make are either the first or the fourth. The last will quiet things down, which I’m sure many people will appreciate. The first will at least lead to a reasoned, intelligent argument. You may even glean some respect from it, though I can guarantee a vociferous disagreement.
But if you stick with the middle two, all you’re going to get is ridicule. And you will have earned every iota of it.
AAAAAAnd thats the internet for today, folks. Thanks for playing!
The exact same people who expressed outrage on Twitter that there are still segregated proms in the South are responsible for a “safer space” segregated room complete with PoC dinner as well for non-whites only at the feminist bigot fest called WisCon. Of course I’m talking about K. Tempest Bradford and Jaymee Goh, 2 of the worst anti-white racial bigots in SFF fandom. Their comments about whites are non-stop and 100% negative.
Here’s Bradford crowing about her racial segregation at WisCon together with Jaymee Goh, who once referred to whites on Twitter as “sourdough-faced.”
http://tempest.fluidartist.com/wiscon-36-poc-safer-space/
Their dissonance about race is as astounding as their success at mainstreaming hate speech. Turn any of that around and it’s inquisition time. And let’s all hold our breaths waiting for the SFWA to investigate the emails that tried to take down an SF author from awards cuz he was white. Turn that one around and there’d be no stone left unturned by the justice league of race and gender.
“Safer space?” Safer in what respect? Could someone present statistics on assaults, robberies, accidental bruising, or whatever it is that the “safer space” is supposed to keep “PoC” less at risk for? This is fascinating.
My conclusion on the effectiveness of ‘reasoning’ (presenting verifiable facts) with liberals (also Christian vs. cultist) is that it is as futile as poking holes in mud, no matter how many holes you make it remains mud. The best you can hope for is that the mud drys up and blows away
We are dealing with people who invent facts and are void of logic, reason and common sense, unforunately they never dry up and blow away.
Google Peterson Syndrome. Your observation has been made real in the case of Joan Peterson, Brady board member and blogger.
This post reminds me of a crack whore who claims they are not a addicted to a drug simply because they are not using at that particular time.
This checklist is employed by conservatives, communists, atheists, socialists, and the Christian Libertarian intelligentsia. Thy name is…confirmation bias.
Question: I’ve been known to argue that gun control must be suspect on the same grounds if usage by Segregationists in Jim Crow makes Poll Taxes and Poll Tests forever suspect and probably Racist. Would this be considered a conservative violation of rule 8 on this list?
Not if it is not being used to slur the other guy, no. That said, such a claim contributes little to the discussion unless you are using it to draw some particular conclusion. Throwing it in there without drawing a conclusion can, actually, detract from your comment.
Something else to remember is that gun control does in fact have blatantly racist roots: in Dredd Scott, one of the reasons Chief Justive Taney cited for barring blacks form citizenship was that if they were citizens, they could own guns.
In all seriousness, one of the problems with “arguing” with progressives is that they do not use the same portion of their brain and we frequently wind up not even discussing the same point. Effectively we are arguing past each other. Conservatives try to discuss facts and history. Most progressives are trying to make points strictly based on an emotion and feelings.
Additionally, because of their view of life, they don’t see themselves as fitting into any sort of a continuum. In spite of their refrain of “for the children” all of their positions are of a “lifeboat” nature: what will make us feel better RIGHT NOW. Those on what could be called the conservative side of the fence often talk about programs and their effects generations down the road.
The debate over the national energy policy is one such example. While many on the progressive side focus on conservation and increasing taxes on carbon fuels (what can we do right now) conservatives talk more about exploring high density power supplies like nuclear and long term environmental programs such as the process to capture carbon dioxide from the air and eventually convert it back to a usable fuel (“S2P” research at Sandia National Lab or the “Green Freedom” process developed at Los Alamos).
Effectively, even when arguing with “honest” progressives we are speaking a different language.
@ Larry
Often liberals seriously misuse very precise terms to the point of rendering them meaningless. Vox already specified the term “privilege” and I would add “bigot”. If you want to identify someone by a term then you need some sort of validation criteria/criterion. Myself, I have a large number of positions on which I have consumed massive amounts of information and spent countless hours contemplating those issues.
It makes complete sense that if one has invested a great deal of time and effort considering a particular topic then one is likely to have a strong position on it.
Leftists frequently dismiss a position that is strongly held and back by significant consideration as “bigotry”. A bigot is one who is not willing to consider competing positions and the sole way to measure this is whether or not they offer competing positions and back them up with arguments If I spend 100 hours researching a topic and have a position while another has spent 5 minutes considering it then it is not likely that they are going to convince of much on that topic.
This does not make me a “bigot”; it means they are uninformed and need to come back when they can argue for their, competing, position.
Heh. Pox Vay just put up a silly response to your list with a list of his own. I engage him and he began deleting my comments. Typical leftist intellectual dishonesty.
You’re a fucking liar. I deleted one redundant comment and the rest of your ridiculous responses are left up. That’s not censorship. Get a brain.
Wait… Wait… So you’re saying you “massaged” the comments? 😀
Dude Chill. Get a word processor that has spell check and come back when you think of something insightful.
Oh. Is that where all those cactus spines in my knuckles are coming from?
DISREGARD INCONVENIENT FACTS
When you cite a statistic, “your statistic is wrong (or irrelevant)”, “because we’re dealing with people”
I can (but won’t) name PFMs who have engaged me in every single one of these tactics. I’ve been unfriended on Facebook by those calling me a lying racist (boo hoo hoo). I’ve been called a neo-con by those who have no clue what it means. But the most common attack I get is, “you have no say, you’re CANADIAN.” As if we “peace-loving Canadians” must keep our peace-loving opinions behind our peace-loving borders. When they find out I am an NRA member they believe it is a fraudulent membership because “Canadians can’t join the NRA.”
This piece had me both bobble-heading and laughing out loud – often at the same time. Beautifully written, Mr. Correia, I’ve shared it in hopes some PFMs will skim and respond!
I will admit that I didn’t think canadians could join the nra either. It is the “national” rifle assossiaction after all. Then again, it’s not like you’re from another country (joking).
Yeah, you can join the US NRA, even if a citizen and resident of a foreign nation. It’s not real common (for obvious reasons), but it does happen.
Sure they can. They can also join the NMRA, aka National Model Railroad Association. If they do, they’re only allowed to model the Canadian National Railroad though… can’t have them spooking about and impersonating REAL railroads. :p
(yes, mostly off topic. Which # does this fall under?? )
It falls under #5. 5.Make Shit Up.
“…because arguing with the willfully ignorant is like repeatedly punching a really dumb cactus?”
Wait a minute. So this suggests there are intelligent cacti? I knew it! Evil genius cacti are controlling the world as a super secret shadow government bent on enslaving humanity under a yoke of tyranny through their New World Order directives. Fight the real enemy!
There were, but the Doctor eliminated them: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Zolfa-Thuran
Nice, I’d forgotten that one.
Very late to the party. One of the more disheartening trends in liberal street thinking is the equivalence between disagreement, and disrespect. Our newest generation of progressives have been so thoroughly spoon-fed their perception of self-preciousness, that even the slightest hint of disagreement now becomes a shattering experience for them. “Stop disagreeing with me, it’s disrespectful!” This is especially common in certain echelons of so-called feminism. Disagreement — of any sort, for any reason — is automatically interpreted as a direct personal attack. Such people constantly and perpetually need to have their own opinions reflected back to themselves. Anything otherwise is highly uncomfortable, which is simply not acceptable.
Mr. Torgersen, I am:
A. Curious as to who wrote the emails at SFWA wanting to exclude you based on your race.
B. Wonder if you’ll ever say who it was.
C. Wonder if you’ll release the emails without the names attached.
D. Wonder if you plan any future action.
E. Wonder if you’d send me those emails privately.
If this had happened to Aliette de Bodard, Saladin Ahmed or N.K. Jemisin, the uproar and stink would still be flying around. This needs to be exposed and the SFWA asked about their sad double standards where right and wrong are literally black and white.
People who argue when they’re uncertain of their position will ALWAYS take disagreement as an attack. It’s just the nature of the beast.
If someone attacks me because of my opinions, I assume they know their position is weak.
I have a deranged left wing cousin who stops short of calling me a racist on Facebook but likes to use the term fascist. He doesn’t know what it means.
Describe FDR’s old National Recovery Act to him, the one that the SCOTUS overturned.
Ask him what he thinks of it.
Then let him know that it was a verbatim English translation of Mussolini’s Fascist party legislation.
Hmm, why is it that most of the argument seem to be ad hominem. BTW, you can recategorise your arguments using latin:
http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html
“Ignorant” is another term frequently, and egregiously, misused by leftists. It’s not the same thing as “uninformed”; hint: the root is the same are the verb “ignore”.
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/010/692/19789999.jpg
My new meme for the majority of words used by liberals.
Here’s another one I heard recently from a liberal. I saw a debate in the comments section on a youtube video about health care. And guy A (who I assume was a liberal because this is something they usually say) said to guy B “You need to stop getting your facts from Fox News”.
Guy B never mentioned Fox News once. It’s a mix of making shit up and dismissal based on false assumption.
Liberals aren’t just bad arguers, they’re actually mentally retarded.
Great piece! I’ve quoted, linked, and riffed on it here. And added you to my blogroll.
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/09/leftist-toddler-debating-tactics.html
Ex-Army would be gratified to be added to YOUR blogroll, too.
Perhaps you can help me. I noticed that you were faithful in responding to most of the commenters, and I could use some well informed advice. I was raised in a very conservative home, so of course, I was a very democratic/liberal young adult (rebellion at it’s finest). However, the older I get the more compelled I am to have my own opinions. My issue is finding non-partisan information. I read articles on both sides, and the comments, hoping for fact based debates, but your checklist reads true for both sides. Ignorance abounds and though I am tired of being socially stunted, I feel it is better than basing my opinions on hypocritical information at best, or worse, outright lies and fabrication.
What, in your opinion, is a reliable source of information, with minimal partisan input? Or, a place that offers well reasoned, intellectual, fact based debates/discussions from both sides.
Sarah, the first step is to realize that all news sources are going to have bias. The unbiased news source is a myth which has never existed. I actually read left wing news sources more often than I read right wing news sources, simply because I like to argue so much it is nice to know what the other side is going to say before they say it. 🙂
The best thing I can say is develop your BS detector and apply critical thinking to every bit of news that you hear. If somebody comes along and their answer doesn’t have any details, or specifics, and it just consists of soundbytes and fluff, you know they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. If somebody comes along with crunch, that doesn’t make it true either, but if they come up with crunch, and their opponents come back with nothing but fluff and feelings, that’s a good indicator.
The more you do this, the less you’ll be able to stomach places like Slate, Salon, and Mother Jones because it quickly becomes obvious just how much they really suck. And I’m not talking bias, that part is obvious, I’m talking wishful thinking. When you read places like that it is because you are trying to get at the underlying philosophy, not the truth. The same thing applies to right wing talk radio. Apply your BS detector, because a lot of what you are going to get is philosophy and information massaged to be palatable, because in real life, information is hard and complicated.
That said, I’m biased in that I think the overall left wing philosophy of ever growing and all controlling government as the solution for everything always eventually leads to gulags, purges, and concentration camps. I’m really more of a libertarian than anything, as I absolutely hate the total control side of the right as well. My personal gut feeling is that republcians are lying about half the time and democrats are lying all the time, so take that for what it is worth, though that ratio will get better when John McCain finally goes away. 🙂
Another thing to be aware of in reviewing any news story is “Gell-Mann Amenesia”. This is the phenomenon where you read a story about some subject you know well and see how horribly wrong the story gets things that you know and understand, often to the point to where they’ve got it completely backward. Then, you turn the page to some article about which you are not so familiar and forget what you just saw and instead assume that the article is accurate.
The news media is no more accurate about subjects about which you are not familiar than they are about subjects about which you are. Be aware of that. Question and doubt everything you read/see in the news and be prepared for the idea that they could well have the story completely backward.
Thanks for the feedback! Though I am a little disappointed that the mythical non-biased information source is nonexistent, this will definitely get me in the correct mindset. Research, research, question, and more research seems to be the formula to follow!
Obviously this is TEN YEARS late – but it helps to know classical physics.
Wishful thinking and legislation don’t mix well, and that science will show you when liars lie about their capabilities.
Being a libertarian means that I have twice as much fun on the internet – everyone has a bone to pick with me! So, I love this liberal check list – and I’ve seen examples, believe you me, every time I argue against gun control, against welfare programs, and so on and so forth.
I have to add, I’ve seen the same crap from conservatives. Oh, they won’t call me “racist” – but calling me a faggot, or unchristian, or unpatriotic? Yeah, that’ll obviously checkmate my carefully-reasoned facts and prose instantly. Or I’m “liberal” because I agree on something – such as a civil rights issue – which the ACLU, in one of their saner moments, also supports?
So, by all means, beat up on liberals – they surely deserve it! But let’s take a moment and ask whether there’s a bit of fault among conservatives, and even possibly among the right-thinking libertarians of the world. We can’t possibly be so perfect that a little consideration of our own tendencies toward illogic wouldn’t find something of interest.
Agreed. Note that I did talk about people on my side who argue like this and how they’re not doing anyone any favors. However, my area of expertise is arguing with liberals. 🙂
You would love Tom Woods’ “Interview with a Zombie.”
In my extensive experience, you omitted one: Change the Subject.
It doesn’t matter how unrelated or stupid it is – it works all too often. Drag in Bush, blame Reagan, babble about global warming. Get them to forget what they were defending in the first place.
I can’t believe you think the “actually can make an argument” type of liberal is someone worthy of debate and respect. They are, in fact, the worst. They are just seeking self-affirmation of their superiority a different way – and are displaying just as much bad-faith and they are just as disingenuous as the run of the mill lefty you describe in the article. Yes, you can hone your arguments and points with them – because they are trained at debating. They were probably in the ir High School or College Debate club — but what they are really doing is just playing for a stalemate. Prolonging the discussion till one of you tires out or until you make a logical mistake in post 105 at 2 am they can use to disprove some minor point. They aren’t interested in the truth, and will still ignore you if cornered – you will never get them to concede that you are right. But no, even after “winning” an argument NOTHING in their view of things changes. They simply forget, dismissing it after the fact and in private rather than in public. If they did acknowledge you were right after you had fully debated a subject, they wouldn’t be Lefties very long would they?
The “actually can argue” lefty still will tend to refuse to respond to your argument directly, but will instead ask leading, pertinent questions about your world view and take the occasional pot shot at one or another. They tend to not engage in a quid pro quo. They tend not answer questions about their own world view. They tend to not respond to questions as to why they disagree with a given statement of yours. They may be decent “debators” but they are NOT interested, in any way, in finding the truth. They already have the truth – intellectually and spiritually, and every time you contradict them, they get a little ego boost from it, because you have once again proven your stupidity – and you have, because responding to them at all, and in any form, and at any time is stupid.
The left is after power – pure and simple. They will do anything, say anything, believe anything that allows them to dominate others while thinking they are good people. They don’t care if someone is victimized by their action. They don’t care if their policies actually help anyone. They feel good about themselves because they are part of enlightened Master Race Lefty, and that is all that matters. The right expects good-faith argument, assumes that both sides are interested in the truth, want to arrive at consensus about what would be best, what would maximize freedom and minimize harm. The Left DOESN’T CARE about those things and never will. They already know what is best, and can’t even conceive there are holes in their knowledge. Oh they might pay lip service to the idea, ( because they will say anything to get their way , and if they have to seem reasonable to do that, then they will attempt to seem reasonable) but they don’t believe it. They are sociopath Narcissists – for who else would maintain that they could remain moral while forcefully indenturing and enslaving others to their agenda using a government contractually bound to respect the rights of others as a weapon?
That reads to me like you’ve never convinced a liberal to change their mind. I have. I’ve won the internet before. High five. 🙂
What seems to be overlooked here is that for a good chunk of Leftists (I won’t call them liberals – liberals believed in freedom) argumentation isn’t about winning, having facts, convincing anyone of anything, or anything else. Rather, the point is to silence and drown out opposing views. That’s why they’ll ignore the main thrust of an argument and try to bog it down in semantics or side issues, and why they’ll resort to namecalling if that doesn’t work.
The leftist intelligensia know that 1) the facts are not often on their side, and that 2) facts and reason are not necessarily the most effective routes to power. Starting with the Frankfurt School, they’ve done a lot of research into the way opinion is disseminated through society (Education, media, popular culture – it’s not a coincidence that leftists dominate those fields). Non-intelligensia lefties may or may not be aware of these things, but they’re steeped in the culture that their betters have made.
Case in point: You don’t have to travel very far across the Internet to find someone accusing someone else of “shaming.” “Slut-shaming” in particular seems to be a big deal right now. Now, if you dig into it, you’ll find out that “slut-shaming” is, essentially, expressing any kind of disapproval of promiscuous behavior. (Disclosure: I’m a VERY sex-positive libertarian, and don’t really have a problem with promiscuity, when practiced mindfully by adults). Now tell me how you can rationally discuss the pros and cons of promiscuous behavior (and despite my leanings, I do acknowledge that there are some significant cons) when discussing the cons constitutes “shaming,” and is therefore outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.
This is the idea: Not to win the argument, but to place the opposition outside the legitimate discussion. Thus, arguing whether a tax rate should be 10% or 12% is fine, but arguing that the tax should be abolished is, I dunno, probably racist or something. Certainly privileged, and therefore dismissable.
Yes, a few rank-and-file lefties might be convertible, but on the whole, I think the left has pretty well inoculated itself from opposing ideas.
I saw the light and abandoned liberalism back in 1982 because I finally found the hidden opposing views that were based on fact, history and reason (and before the internet!). I used that knowledge to bring my brother over from the dark side, and we have in turn freed others from the self-imposed ignorance of Liberalism. Rock on!.
It’s funny how Liberals totally discount amazing people like Dr. Ben Carson, rushing to apply the “Uncle Tom” tag to a man who has accomplished more in his life than most of us could dream of doing, despite his disadvantaged childhood, simply because he is successful, black, and advocates for personal responsibility and integrity (as they do with Bill Cosby). Liberals demonize him because he destroys the victim-hood narrative they depend on to maintain their voter base.
The ironic thing about that is, Bill Cosby is as lefty as they come, with the exception of wanting black kids to speak clearly, and pull their pants up.
Oh brother! How many mirrors do you have in your house? Your page is one incredibly long-winded one sided pontification. Good lord! It’s like you’re in love with yourself the way you masturbate your ego. You know, (instinctively, I’m sure), exactly what any and all reasoning persons of diametrically opposite political opinions would choose to argue. Not only that; you know exactly what they would say and what, then, you would say etc…(ad nauseam ). As one gives witness to the other, you are that unfortunate combination of arrogance and ignorance that has of late attempted to poison the very wellspring of American Democracy with exclusionary partisan hate mongering and divisive derision. While you may believe yourself to understand politics you know NOTHING about Democracy. Were I to have to sum you up succinctly I would have to say that your a smug, privileged, douche bag who leans heavily toward Fascism but you call yourself conservative because there couldn’t possibly be any way you could be a Fascist. Well, to that, I would have to say, “Yeah, you kinda’ are.” God Bless America. Amen
Heh…
Yes. I know very little about democracy, because luckily we live in a constitutional republic.
Other than that, I love when a leftist calls me a facist, because I really lean more libertarian than anything. Yep. I want to make the government as small and inobtrusive as possible, and limit its power as much as possible, because that’s all sorts of facisty right there. Oh wait… I’m sorry. I forgot this is the internet, where not kissing left wing ass automatically makes you a facist/racist/hatemonger.
And yes, I can predict leftist arguments rather well. That’s not arrogance. You guys are just that boring and predictable. 😀
HAHAHAHA! Projection at its finest, I’m sure.
A Niece-in-law, who is a teacher, discredited the bumperstickers on an obviously right-leaning individual. How? By claiming their opinion didn’t matter because he was driving a Geo.
When I pointed out that it got great gas mileage, and asked what was wrong with a Geo. The answer was that the only Geo driver she had known was a poor high school student.
Don’t know why she hates on poor people (she certainly didn’t grow up rich), or students, but that was the whole rational that the Geo driver’s opinion wasn’t valid.
You can’t make this sh*t up.
It gets better mileage than a Smart Car. 😀
EDIT: but then again I had a Ford Focus that got better mileage than one of those ridiculous little things.
THAT’s a scary point, that one of those little death traps is actually LESS fuel efficient than an older car half again its size.
I had to go look. It gets 36. My Focus got 34. (before the switch to stupid ethanol blend, but that’s a rant for another day). So in exchange for that 2 MPG I got a back seat, a trunk, better safety, and far more performance. But like most things designed to appeal to hip urban liberals, symbolism over substance. If you drive a Smart Car you just care so much harder. 🙂
Sound bite. Or more exactly, soundbite. Not “sound byte”. Not everything is an ersatz ‘puter term.
Hope that doesn’t get me “labeled” a “skimmer”, “disqualifier” or “attacker”. Because I definitely ain’t making this shit up, and I am genuinely concerned. For the children. 🙂
Love your stuff, keep up the good work and the good fight.
From now on I want to be known as “poisoner of the very wellspring of American Democracy with exclusionary partisan hate mongering and divisive derision” ‘Cause I think that means I hate me some lefties.
If poison doesn’t work is it okay to shoot ’em? No? Shit, ’cause poison is so slow and in any case does not seem to be working.
The point of a smart car is you can park in places that will cause the police to try find another reason to ticket you. 😉
That and driving in weeny Europe streets built before the US was officially discovered
Found your blog and love it. Makes me laugh, think, get angry … you know, the usual responses most normal people get when reading.
Side note. read this from the check list, in the head was the voice of Kim Kardashian. Not sure if the outside world is getting in more but it made sense to me in that voice.
“I came to your blog/facebook/twitter because I’m SOOOO very interested in your book/movie/product, but then I found out what a horrible, awful person you are, so now I’m never going to buy any of your stuff ever again. You should totally never share your badthink again because it will totally scare away the legions of people like me and you’ll starve in a ditch.”
This article is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. I resolve to, when I get PFM attacks in the future, to just respond with “PFM Debate Tactic #2” or whatever, with a link to this article.
Thank you.
You might need to add a number 9: “In the end, act above it all”. This is used when even screaming RACIST fails. They act above it all by saying ‘well at least people are talking about this issue now’ as if they’ve performed some sort of public service and we unwashed masses are now better off.
“No, we are not ‘talking about it now’. You won’t shut up about it until you’ve cowed or alienated everyone who doesn’t agree with you.”
Which is overly optimistic; they’d still never shut up about it.
Don’t forget “summoning the concern trolls,” also known as “siccing one’s minions.” Often employed by people with legions of rabid followers when they can’t think of a rebuttal.
Thanks, Larry, this is a useful list. Knowing what’s coming actually helps diffuse the kneejerk frustration smelted into fury.
http://www.rightnation.us/forums/index.php?s=a7ea6851c1cfe7c21d66d87c6c1be08b&app=blog&module=display§ion=blog&blogid=44&showentry=6188#comments is a link to my toon about this VERY subject.
I have yet to see enough evidence that people part of the Left’s utopia death cult have free will. Humans are supposed to have free will and the ability to determine things based upon their own conscience, not this kind of Global Warming Gaia cult that everyone says and thinks the same thing as the Divine Dogma tells them.
Yet they Obey Evil, so either they are tools and anyone can use them, or they are part of the organization giving the orders.
Coming here because of John C. Wright’s link. I’ve rarely encountered any of these argumentation “techniques”, perhaps because I don’t bother arguing with liberals with whom I’m not at least friendly. Mostly the argument I get is the “it makes me feel bad” response.
Me: Preventing law-abiding citizens from buying handguns is especially harmful to women, who are more likely to need a handgun for self defense.
90 pound Liberal Female: I don’t like guns, people shouldn’t have them.
Me: If you were walking to your car from the office at midnight and six grown men, say average 6 feet and 210 pounds each, smelling of beer and bereft of moral qualms, came out from behind a large dark van and surrounded you, and you by some miracle happened to find a loaded handgun in your bag, you would at that moment like guns very, very much.
90 pound Liberal Female: That’s a horrible thing to think about, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It makes me feel bad.
Me: I pray God I never hear about you being gang-raped and murdered in a parking lot.
90 pound Liberal Female: Like oh my god, do you actually believe in God?
Larry, I’m quoting this little blogpost left and right the past couple of days. This is seriously useful.
I had to check this list recently. It needs a 9th check box. “rage quit”, when you can’t win, quit in a fashion that uses one of the above checks to make sure everyone knows not only were you right, but the mean wrong person was really wrong, and possibly a monster.
I am a moderate I have views that sit on both sides of the fence, when I mention this I get it from both sides saying that I do not have a mind of my own and that I need to grow up an pick a side.
This is the stupidest site I have ever seen. And I have been to a lot of websites. Ever been to the site about Felching?
That is the stupidest troll I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of trolls. Ever seen clamps?
Since the Checklist is almost a year back in the archives, I’m going to take a wild guess that Pulga here just got spanked with it somewhere else. And spanked so hard, it forgot what year this is.
You’re one of the most ineffective, weaksauce-filled trolls that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of trolls. You fail horribly, and we are all dumber for your efforts.
Poca Hot Ass:
Thank you for teaching me a new word, one that I would never have discovered on my own.
The only part of this checklist that I’ve never encountered is the “concerned troller” or “boycotter,” I guess you have to have to be well-known to get those.
Hmmm. There’s another great game potential here: MadLibs for Mad Libs.
I’m a conservative, published Science Fiction novelist, as well as a retired attorney and former debate teacher, and I encounter these tactics all the time when I dare to voice my opinions on my own Facebook page. I’m particularly fond of how the PFMs use my experience teaching debate and the insight it gives me into logic and argumentation–which most people would regard as qualifications in this area–as disqualifications. It is almost as if they are saying “What is this thing you call logic. It is a dirty lawyer’s trick used to undermine those who make policy based on caring rather than cold rationality.”
Well then you’ve learned it is fruitless to debate such people. If you say you’re colorblind they’ll say well you have that privilege. If you say white people are being slammed with slurs they’ll say there’s no history of that and no such thing as ethnic white slurs.
There is no logic in PC land, there is only skin and gender and that is the god these folks worship. In that world straight white men are never right. There are never non-white colonialists or murdered natives in Spain, the Balkans or Greece; only in the Third World.
Nubian colonialists and conquerers in Egypt become black Egyptians. Greek colonists like Cleopatra become black too. Romans are just imperialists. It’s a stacked deck and a circular black hole one can’t escape from.
Larry, should “rage quit” be added to the checklist (although sometimes it’s more of a “sulk quit.” 😉 )
“Liberal 1: Attack, attack. ATTACK!
Liberal 2: Attack attack, attack attack!
Conservative: Defend.
Liberal 1: How rude.
Liberal 2: Indeed, how rude.
Liberal 1: You Sound Angry.”
This also applies with Atheist/Neopagan and Christian. They also proceed to sneer at the target for not “loving” them.
Another is
Lefty: You keep making blanket statements, without giving any examples.
Conservative: Example
Lefty: That’s just one!
Conservative: Another example
Lefty: That’s just two!
Conservative: Another example
Lefty: That’s just three!
Conservative: So what is the magic number of examples you were just criticizing me for not giving?
(Silence)
Boy am I late to this party, but I gotta relate a conversation I’ve had, well, every time I’ve tried to discuss political candidates with a liberal.
Lib: I’m voting for X.
Me: Why?
Lib: X is smart.
and the flipside,
Lib: Your candidate is stupid.
Me: Why?
Lib: He just IS.
It never gets beyond that. Their candidate is smart and yours is stupid, but they never offer any reason for either. I want to hear the bloody reasons, cuz who knows, maybe they know something I don’t, and maybe I’d change my vote if I had more information; wouldn’t you? (Er, well, not if you’re a yellow dog liberal.)
Oh, and since no one mentioned this…
https://xkcd.com/386/
}}} Charlton Heston marched across the Selma Bridge with Martin Luther King, and he was smeared as racist for believing that the 2nd Amendment applied to everyone equally.
Got a cite for that, sirrah? Not that I doubt it’s true, I just want to be able to back it up with a “reliable source” when I repeat it. 😉
}}} Nick will be called racist—usually for not being an Obama fan is enough—and he always posts the same thing. “Don’t tell my adopted son that because he’s black and thinks I love him.”
LOL, the libtard retort to that one is obvious:
“Clearly, he’s just a beard for your racism.”
😀
}}} I often get people who agree with me posting stuff like “well, you wasted your time on that doofus!” Ah, but you miss the point. You don’t defend your beliefs in the hopes of convincing the willfully ignorant. That’s a lost cause. The willfully ignorant aren’t to be convinced, they are to be mocked. Their flaws are to be pointed out until everyone around them realizes how full of crap they are. Remember that argument is theater, and your performance isn’t aimed at your opponent, but rather at the audience. If you choose to follow the Fisker’s Path, your goal is three fold.
Give ammo to the people already on your side.
Convince the undecided .
Allow your opponent’s to display their petty ignorance to the world
Actually you missed two others:
1) Mental exercise. It never hurts to stretch those reasoning muscles. Even when the liberal is a total dufus, they are likely parroting the ideas of a sly charlatan, so you may have to really think about what your response should be… even better, think about setting traps for said dufus, and then enjoy springing it when they blunder right into it.
2) Self-analysis. It forces you to reconsider your own positions in light of any newly acquired viewpoints, facts, or ideas, and gives you a chance to modify them as you deem appropriate. This, too, plays well into/with #1, above.
Great list, BTW.
Getting them to reveal themselves can also go on the list. For instance, Sad Puppies 3 has led the SJWs to reveal that they knew people were trying to rig the Hugo for years and years. They were so indignant that we did it better than they ever did that they let lots of interesting facts slip.
And let’s not forget plain ol’ FUN!
I just have to chime in and thank you for this article Larry. I keep referring back to it whenever I need to fisk a democrat’s argument or acquaint someone unfamiliar with it when they smell something fishy in a politician’s argument.
Thank you! I’ve been debating liberals online for years and somehow never saw this list.
Sadly, it’s as true today as when you first wrote it. Just this week, in the context of a debate regarding the principle “he who resorts to insults first has lost the debate” one poster sincerely insisted that calling someone “racist” isn’t an insult (Because it’s a fact! Or “it’s not an insult if you only said that what they said was racist”) and besides, the other side lost first because anything that provokes someone into calling “racist” must itself have been so offensive as to be considered insulting (even if it was itself an undisputed fact.)
I will say it’s hilarious when you do find one that tries to not be a hypocrite when applying “dismissal” based on some hierarchy of victimization. I actually once had a skimmer respond to me with “I was going to argue against your privileged white male heteronormative cisgender patriarchal religious opinion as ignorant and dismiss you as utterly incapable of understanding the unique intersectionality of my experience as a minority trans female lesbian atheist… But I see that you’re an Aspie. So never mind.” (No clue in what way all those qualifiers were supposed to be relevant to a debate regarding fetal personhood and abortion, but whatever.)
“Neurodiversity” is apparently the new gay in certain liberal circles. I have the ultimate trump card when dismissed with the “YOU just can’t understand what it’s like to be constantly misunderstood by people, to have people constantly treat you like your existence offends them, that you are somehow inherently flawed or mentally ill just for being the way you were born!” argument.
Poo Flinger is played to the tune Gold Finger.