Elf is in great company, in a lot of ways.

He has replied to us yet again, and again chose to debate in this passive style, leaving it up to us to find the trackback. That is, of course, exactly what we did to him, because that’s what he did to us. Perhaps he finds the situation as humorous as we do, but his more likely motivation is the usual: Wants to be seen by other liberals saying the right liberal stuff. We’ve seen this before. The evident terror, renewed on an hourly basis, of being thrown out of the “good liberal” club, and the enthusiasm for being seen saying the right things so it doesn’t happen.

The issue is eliminationism, which is the desire encased within a political ideology to obliterate those who don’t belong. I unwittingly set off something of a firestorm by commenting, innocuously I thought, that this is exactly what I see liberals do. Now, why liberals think conservatives do this, is something you can go look up, and they do have some evidence to support their cause.

It falls into two categories:

1. Humor. “We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee,” [Ann] Coulter said. “That’s just a joke, for you in the media.” Smart thing to say? Definitely not. Serious threat, or a joke? Well gee, since the answer to that one is given away by the person who said it…I’m gonna go with joke, Alex.

2. Cause-and-effect logic about the state of human affairs, and how it coincides with the law. They’re illegal and they have no right to be marching down our streets. They have no constitutional rights. They don’t have First-, Fourth-, Sixth amendment rights. They’re here illegally and they chose to be here illegally.

THAT’S IT. Every one of their examples, have fallen into one of those two categories. (There are other examples, like the Cherokee Trail of Tears and the Japanese Interment event during World War II, but those were liberal democrat initiatives; Elf and his friends have yet to acknowledge that, so far as I know.) The examples produced by Elf & Co. are fairly solid, including quotes, with citations, and none, within the information available to me, are open to question or dispute. But everything I’ve seen that really came from a conservative, in word or deed, falls into one of those two categories.

I’m not going to get into a link war with Elf as he wants me to do. It’s quite pointless. He said I didn’t come up with a list of my own to counter the list of his friends, when in fact I did exactly that. I came up with four items. I didn’t link to these, I simply said I did come up with a list. Get a load of this response.

Freeberg starts off with this claim: “As anyone who clicks through and reads my original work knows, I did offer a list of examples.”

No, actually, he didn’t. Here’s what he wrote:

Those groups, and many more, I’ve seen exposed to “complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination.” “Unfit for participation in their vision of society.” Earlier in the piece, the author further defines eliminationism as something that “cuts the target off from the community support it might normally enjoy and leaves them feeling even more isolated.” Is it possible to jot down a more apt description for what has been done to the Boy Scouts?

Bzzzzt! Sorry buddy, no that isn’t the excerpt I had in mind. Try again. And no, I’m not going to point you to it. I’ll just say it’s a list with four things. Happy hunting, Sparky.

Why am I being so evasive? Because the terms aren’t defined yet. Liberals, obviously, have an emotional investment in their monopoly on eliminationism. Look at all this backlash, and all I said was that within my experience — emphasis on my, since personal experience is a personal thing — liberals behave exactly in the manner I see them ascribing to others. And when liberals get emotional about things, they come up with terms that don’t have serviceable definitions to them. “Swift Boat” as a verb. “Greed.” “Wealthy.” I see “eliminationism” as just another one of these. It seems to have a definition, but it really doesn’t.

And from here on, the same thing happens all the time. The word takes on fuzzy boundaries, and whenever these boundaries are sharpened within a situation, this is done temporarily, in chalk instead of in ink, for the benefit of the liberal viewpoint in that situation.

Here’s an example. If you don’t have any intention of obliterating me, but you want to silence my viewpoint, is that eliminationism? Some of the conservative-on-liberal citations of eliminationism count on this being answered in the affirmative. But if that’s answered in the affirmative, the Hush Rush law certainly should count as an example coming back the other way. (Perhaps this is a good place to point out that “fairness” is another one of those nuisance words, the words that don’t have a definition except for a definition that is blury, temporary and/or situational.) Apparently, with regard to Hush Rush, the answer to my question suddenly changes; a desire to “hush” is no longer eliminationism. So we see, the boundary of “eliminationism” is sharpened, but only temporarily and situationally. Conservatives commit eliminationism upon liberals if we wonder aloud — or silently — if the republic can endure what some liberals say about it. If we simply bring up the fact that, in generations past, what counts today as “free speech” would have been sedition and would have been a shooting offense, that’s eliminationism. We need not indicate that we should go back to doing things the old way. Simply pointing out how quickly our standards are diminishing, with some tincture of alarm or dread, is good enough.

But liberals, it seems, have to be caught red-handed personally slaughtering us before they’re guilty of the same thing. That’s what I mean by sharpening the definition of a word situationally and temporarily.

And that’s why I haven’t come up with a list. Mr. Elf can play stupid all he wants, but anyone who’s interested already knows how this will end. I’ll say “what about this? what about that?” some forty times, or whatever, and he’ll just say doesn’t count, doesn’t count, doesn’t count. That is, if he engages me directly. Something he hasn’t done yet. So this is a pointless effort in a number of ways.

And I just don’t find that kind of thing interesting anymore.

I think Elf doesn’t quite realize it yet, but what he’s revealed about himself is that he doesn’t really know any conservatives, or if he does, he doesn’t talk things out very much with them. If the feeling that your opinions will not be welcomed is a symptom that you’ve been…eliminationalatiated…and he had some conservative friends he’d talk things out with, the fact of the matter is he’d need no list from me. He’d already know.

Because liberals are utopianists. You hear it all the time — “There is still racism out there.” Sure, there shouldn’t be any. And sure, it sounds pretty alarming when you say there is some. The first response is that yes, we should go ahead and get rid of it. Sanitize the place. Disinfect it. Nevermind how. We can’t have any of that racism.

Seems reasonable.

But you should realize at the outset such a venture subordinates the sensibilities of the individual to the cultural norms of the community, a violation of civil rights if ever there was such a thing. It’s still a defensible campaign, at that point, but then you realize the devil’s in the details. For example: Over the weekend, Bob Herbert found some racism in one of McCain’s new ads; he found it in representations of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Washington Monument, which weren’t even there for Mr. Herbert to find.

Of course that isn’t eliminationism. But it does make one point clear: Utopianists are, by nature, well on the way to eliminationism — when you take into account that the same folks who want to sound the alarm about some kind of “ism” being found, are the same folks who want to define what it is. Elf and his friends, it seems to me, want to define eliminationism in exactly the same way Herbert wants to define racism. Like Potter Stewart said about pornography, they’ll know it when they see it.

So in producing my own list, I’d be challenging the self-anointed. Challenging the self-anointed is something you just don’t do.

If I were to do such a silly thing, I might take the time to gather up anecdotes like, for example, Bookworm’s:

On the eve of last November’s election, a six year old girl who lives around the corner ran up to me chanting, “Bush is evil! Bush is evil!”

I was at a party last year when a woman I know suddenly burst out, “I hate Bush. He’s evil. I wish he’d just drop dead” — and everyone around her verbally applauded that statement.

At a lunch with some very dear friends, the subject of the Iraq war came up and one of my friends, a brilliant, well—read, well—educated man, in arguing against the War, announced as his clinching argument the “fact” that “Bush is an idiot.”

An acquaintance who had to go to the Midwest for business commented with wonderment, “They’re different in the flyover states. They don’t think the way we do.”

But Elf doesn’t just want me to offer a list. He wants to review it, too. And, I presume, post his findings, without notifying me of the posting, letting me find that by trackback. And, I further presume, in reviewing the list, whittle it down to zero with this justification or that one. Lemme guess…Bookworm’s little stories can’t be verified. Well, I can’t verify some of Orcinus’ stories either. But of course they count. That’s how it works. Having noble, progressive, wonderful fuzzy liberal intentions, means never apologizing for a double-standard. That’s why the self-anointed are not to be challenged.

I don’t find that kind of thing interesting anymore, either.

No — here is what I find interesting:

Just this weekend, Rachel was soliciting advice on how to talk to liberals. And someone — namely me — had made a great point about them. You might call it the “If you cannot convince me, it must not be so” doctrine.

6. Keep in mind who’s supposed to be convinced.

You know liberals don’t feel that good about what they believe, because a lot of these things start out with the liberal saying something like, as an example, “why do YOU THINK we went into Iraq?” So we’re having a conversation about what YOU think. And then as you present the case for taking down the Hussein regime, the liberal will use the talking points to shoot each one of those down…in so doing, swiveling the argument around into a (failed) attempt to convince him of something. This is actually pretty funny if you see it as the trap that it is, because people who feel secure in the things they believe don’t convert every single conversation into a failed attempt to convince themselves of something different. Just keep in mind how the argument started, and say “well, okay, but you asked what my opinion was, and that piece of evidence is good enough for me.”

With that in mind, my original point stands. What Orcinus described, is consistent with what I’ve seen a lot of liberals do. You can disagree with them…and hang around…so long as you are outvoted, ruled unconstitutional, intimidated into silence, shouted down, or rendered dormant in some other way. That’s what I’ve seen liberals do in my personal experience. If Elf disagrees, he’s perfectly entitled to his opinion, however wrong it is.

And since this conversation started out of what made sense to me, Mr. Elf, I should report to you (in your own passive, craven, just-wait-for-you-to-find-the-trackback way) that this still makes sense to me. My success or lack thereof convincing you of something is quite off-topic. You’re supposed to change my mind, and at this point you have yet to succeed. You’re welcome to give it another go once you find this post is out there, waitin’ for ya.

I mean, if liberals are not capable of eliminationism, this situation with Mr. Elf seems mighty strange. Look what we have going on here. If I’d kept my thoughts to myself about Orcinus’ original post, we wouldn’t be having a dust-up. But I blogged about it. Making my opinion known caused some kind of a controversy. But I’d better not notice that making the opinion known is what causes the problem, or else we have another problem. And of course it’s all my fault for not keeping my silence about what I’ve noticed…something liberals aren’t supposed to do.

Quite to the contrary. On the liberal side of the “aisle,” it seems making a controversial statement, is exactly the point at which the glory begins. Someone else makes a statement liberals find controversial, and you get all the derision, all the bullying, all the propaganda, all the shush-campaigns, that they complain about — and often, hallucinate about — in others. Liberalism is fast becoming, nowadays, an ideological manifestation of Thing I Know #235:

Thing I Know #235. What a self-parodying mess it is when a command hierarchy is constructed within any rebellion, for there it becomes undeniable: The rebel is only a fair-weather friend, at best, to the act of rebelling.

Their core philosophy is to challenge others, while they themselves don’t want to be challenged.

For a guy who writes for a Blog That Nobody Reads, I seem to have gotten quite a few folks on the left upset about some of the things I’ve had to say, specifically with regard to eliminationism. Thank goodness for trackbacks, though; one poster in particular, one “Elf M. Sternberg,” has cobbled together an impressive essay about me but hasn’t taken the trouble to point me to it. I find that interesting. Well, it’s only six to nine hours old, maybe sometime tonight I’ll get an e-mail.

Freeberg’s article claims that it is the left which indulges in eliminationism, and not the Right. Freeberg’s one and only piece of evidence? That the Boy Scouts were required to obey the founding law of the land and were forbidden from taken public funds while those funds being are used to advance a religious point of view.

That’s it. Freeberg’s only evidence that “the left” wants to “eliminate the Right” is that Americans want Americans to obey the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Meanwhile, he neither disclaims the quotes Orcinus puts forward, disclaims their speakers, or attempts to show that they are in any way unusual. Freeberg embraces Rush Limbaugh even as Rush says, “I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus — living fossils — so we will never forget what these people stood for.”

Freeberg’s article, however, illustrates something deeper, and it’s something I don’t think Freeberg intended: eliminationism is a popular subject of the Right. It isn’t just that Ann Coulter wants to kill everyone not like her. Thinking about committing vengeful violence is only half the thrill. The other half, and this is the half Freeberg embraces, is being fearful of eliminationism. It’s something they think about a lot; it’s in their air and water, and it’s part of their mindset.

When right-wingers talk about “us vs. them,” when they talk about “slagging Iraq,” killing every last Muslim because not enough of them are “righteous” (whatever that means), they’re talking about a sense of pre-emptive defense. “We have to kill them there to prevent them from killing us here,” as the refrain went. There is no middle ground. There is no negotiating. There’s no humanity. There’s just Kill (thrilling!) or be Killed (thrilling!). The entire mindset of the Right could fit in a Steven Segal film.

And Freeberg is as blind, and as foolish, as any of the people Orcinus quotes. When Orcinus wants to make his point about how vicious the Right is, he quotes someone from the Right. When Freeberg wants to make a rhetorical response, he quotes… someone from the Right. Orcinus’ shows us what’s going on in the echo chamber. Freeberg is merely playing the role of minor echo. As a side note, it’s rather sad to see just how badly Karl Rove has ruined techniques of discourse and how Rovian the Right has become. Freeburg, presented with evidence about the Right’s vicious underbelly, immediately went for the Rovian instinct of attributing that viciousness to others, and portraying himself as the victim, rather than a member of the perpetrating tribe. He didn’t bother disclaiming it. He tried to power right past it, without giving you time to pull him back and say, “But, what about the evidence?”

I’ve arrived! Maybe before Labor Day I’ll be Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person in the World.

The thing about quotes is something I find particularly fascinating, even moreso than the inconsistent spelling of my surname by someone who clearly wants so desperately to be taken seriously. The thing about my empty list is also an item of interest. As anyone who clicks through and reads my original work knows, I did offer a list of examples, with the Boy Scouts being only one item on it. Writers have to assume at some point their readers are following along, and I must say I’m a little surprised to see someone denying that there are leftists who want certain people to go away. But I did offer the list. I chose to expound on the story of the Boy Scouts somewhat because the irony is so delicious. Supreme Court says a abortion is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment…well there ya go, don’t even question it, it’s the law of the land and if your opinion is different, you’re simply not entitled to it. Supreme Court says Boy Scouts have a right to apply membership restrictions — THAT DOESN’T COUNT! Grrrr!

Reasonable people, I think, would say once that refresher course is delivered, leftist eliminationism has been demonstrated to any extent that would be demanded by said reasonable people. It certainly exists — not on old television sitcoms from the 1970’s, like right-wing eliminationism, but in reality. Boy Scouts wouldn’t toe the line, and leftists went to work trying to…what’s the present-tense verb…eliminatiate them. Elf needs more examples? Why? But I did provide them.

So he wants responses to more of Orcinus’ quotes, is that it? What quotes? All the quotes I saw on Orcinus’ page, were personal anecdotes of his/hers…and resembling strongly, suspiciously in my mind, some pages I remember from To Kill A Mockingbird…or plainly humorous. Are those the quotes I’m supposed to address? Or are there others? Quotes like these?

But while eliminationism’s most startling historical example was provided by the Nazis, it also has a long and appalling history in the annals of American democracy. It was manifest in the genocidal wars against Native Americans, when “the only good Indian was a dead Indian”: in the many anti-immigrant campaigns waged by Nativists of many different stripes; in night-riding Ku Klux Klansmen, Jim Crow segregation, and the lynch mobs who murdered thousands of innocent blacks during the heyday of white supremacism; in the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II; in the continuing march of hate crimes that target various kinds of “undesirable” members of society for terrorization and exclusion; and in the lingering far-right “militias” and related hate groups who scapegoat minorities and immigrants, gays and lesbians, government officials, and liberals generally, making them the targets of both hateful rhetoric and actual violence.

One at a time…

…was provided by the Nazis…

Nazis are National Socialists. Those are liberals.

[Eliminationism] also has a long and appalling history in the annals of American democracy. It was manifest in the genocidal wars against Native Americans…

…started by President Andrew Jackson, democrat.

…anti-immigrant campaigns waged by Nativists of many different stripes…

…democrats.

…night-riding Ku Klux Klansmen, Jim Crow segregation, and the lynch mobs who murdered thousands of innocent blacks during the heyday of white supremacism…

…democrats.

…in the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II…

…by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, democrat. Ronald Reagan, a Republican, eventually issued a formal apology for this.

…in the continuing march of hate crimes that target various kinds of “undesirable” members of society for terrorization and exclusion…

Examples, please?

…and in the lingering far-right “militias” and related hate groups who scapegoat minorities and immigrants, gays and lesbians, government officials, and liberals generally, making them the targets of both hateful rhetoric and actual violence.

Ah. I think we have our answer is to why the left envisions a monopoly on this theme. Liberals say bad things about conservatives, and that’s free speech. Conservatives say something derogatory about liberals, and they’re trying to get rid of ’em. Michelle Malkin never gets death threats. That just doesn’t happen, because it makes the left-wingers feel good to pretend it doesn’t happen.

Another point of interest for me here: Why do leftists link to things, and then tell other leftists (inaccurately) what exists behind the link? Do the other leftists put up with this? If so, why? Does this save carbon emissions somehow?

I can’t help noticing this pattern where when the right provides examples of left-wing eliminationism, the examples of left-wing eliminationism exist in reality, e.g., Boy Scouts, the Fairness Doctrine, letters from Howard Dean; when the left provides examples of right-wing eliminationism, those examples exist in fiction. They’re jokes used by Ann Coulter, or they’re All In The Family re-runs. Quoting Skip Mendler, commenter #8, on the original post over at Cassy’s place:

Reminds me of that Star Trek episode where the Enterprise crew and a bunch of Klingons find themselves stuck on a ship, unable to escape, and armed with nothing but swords – and the ability to resuscitate after being killed. Turned out that their fighting was being staged by an alien race that fed off of their hatred.

But having said that, I do think that a semantic analysis of, say, Hannity/Savage/Coulter/Limbaugh vs. – oh, let’s see, what would be a fair comparison to those folks? Al Franken? Ted Rall? Mark Morford? Whoever – short of some hardcore Stalinist talking about lining up the bosses against the wall, I don’t think you’d find as much violent imagery/fantasy in liberal writings and commentary. Remember, we’re the namby-pamby Kumbaya folks who want to get along with everybody, right? (And who get ridiculed for that kind of attitude, I might add.)

Ridicule is not eliminationism. And Star Trek is a science fiction television show.

I’d really like to know what conservatives want to eliminatialize liberals. Among the conservatives I know, the closest thing I know of is some kind of test to be placed on voting. Like, if you think an equitable distribution of wealth is an obligation of the government created by the Constitution, you shouldn’t be voting. And of course if you’re an illegal alien you shouldn’t be voting…the law says that anyway. Is that eliminationism? Perhaps that’s how the folks on the left see it; hey, if we can’t draft illegal aliens and dead people to vote for our side, our guys are gonna lose, and that’s eliminationism.

I’ve heard of some serious proposals to curtail free speech at various levels of government. None of these have been aimed at liberals. Yes, conservatives make lots of jokes about liberals. Liberals make lots of jokes about conservatives. When they do, conservatives understand the difference between joke and reality. Liberals, on the other hand, are so intent on finding the next hunk of inspiration for their next token outrage, that reality is whatever they choose to make it. Meanwhile, the dividing line between dark humor and serious intent, similarly, suffers. Why does Howard Dean want to recruit me to this drive to win elections? Why won’t he talk about what comes after the “win”? Was President Clinton just kidding when he linked the Oklahoma City bombing to right-wing talk radio? Is the Fairness Doctrine just a big joke?

But in the end, I’m pretty well convinced I’m not going to see eliminationism on the right, the way we see it on the left. The left, in this day and age, is all about believing your worthiness as a human being or lack thereof is derived from what you are: white, black, male, female, rich, poor. The right, on the other hand, takes worthiness as a derivative of what you do. You can be born poor, start a business, and end up with a zillion bucks. But when you kill that little old lady for $45 in her purse, don’t claim it was a wrinkle in your brain that made you do it, because it was all free will, pal.

So why would the right want to eliminatinize anybody, save for those who were found guilty of eliminating others? With that mindset in place, and I happen to agree with it, what would be the point? This is a classic case of psychological projection.

But the left has demonstrated their open-mindedness once again. If indeed there is some “Rashomon” syndrome going on with eliminationism, in which each side has a different perspective on what’s going on, the left refuses to see it. It’s like real estate. They discovered it, they bought it, they own it, and they won’t even consider the idea that someone else might have a different take on it. Meanwhile, all their examples exist in fiction, and all the ones I provided exist in reality. Those two are different.

Maybe I should take down the link to this post, and send a courtesy e-mail to Elf.

Ah, no, screw him. He didn’t do the same for me.

Oh goodness, I’m afraid I’m guilty of eliminationism. Perhaps a good liberal will happen by and offer his opinion on this, since I know nobody else’s opinion counts!

Update 8/3/08: Just noticed something about the “chilling catalog of quotes“, as in, from right-wingers wishing aloud wistfully that the left-wingers would be killed, slaughtered wholesale, or carted away:

A remarkable proportion of them, perhaps a majority, have to do with passivity. Not so much sniping the liberals or whacking away at them, but failing to protect them as a third party does its damage.

Bill O’Reilly: Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I’m not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I’m the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, “Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you’re not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

Now, this deserves a comment, since there are so many other “chilling quotes” just like this one. Failure to protect is “eliminationism.”

What a bumbling moron Bill O’Reilly is when it comes to practicing eliminationism. His argument boils down to this: Berkeley’s policy is unacceptable, because carried to its logical conclusion it leaves Berkeley unprotected. But Orcinus defined eliminationism as a tactic in discourse that involves the elimination of an ideological opponent, or a desire for that elimination. Bill O’Reilly, here, is opining that an idea becomes unacceptable if it leaves Berkeley, with which O’Reilly disagrees, without a defense. For it to work, then, you have to presume (as O’Reilly evidently does) that Berkeley must be defended. He messed up! Someone needs to talk to O’Reilly about proper eliminationist rhetoric.

Starting to see what’s going on here? A big bad boogeyman comes after your wife and kids, you pull a gun on the boogeyman…the liberal says oh no, don’t do that. Guns are bad. Call 911, and if the cops don’t show up in time well that’s just too damn bad. Same boogeyman comes after the liberal — and that’s different, you have to defend the liberal with that bad bad gun or else you’re eliminationalizing the liberal. And if you say a few words about why you don’t want to defend the liberal you’re going into the spooky quote file.

I imagine the next liberal who wants to passionately insert himself into this issue is going to call on me to build my own quote file of liberals indulging in eliminationism. I have to say, at this point I’m not entirely clear on the standards for what is to be included and what is not. Each and every time a liberal says we need to be more concerned about global warming than about terrorism — is that eliminationism? Because if it isn’t, this must be yet another example of two different sets of rules for liberals and non-liberals — it’s obvious at this point that the “Orcinus standard” sees eliminationism anytime there’s a failure to protect, or the expression of mere reluctance to protect.

Twenty-first century American liberalism in a nutshell: That which builds or preserves must, at all costs, be destroyed; that which destroys must, at all costs, be preserved.

Update: You know who said this so much better than me, was snippy, a commenter at an Oregon lefty-hippy’s blog, said lefty-hippy having the same take on things as this Elf dude.

To Jay: While I’m sure my conservative friends can point out counterexamples, the left generally doesn’t talk or think this way, dude, that’s confirmation bias right there. You’re soaking in it. You’ve just announced that there’s no amount of data that will change your mind…

I think that’s what the issue is all about. Elf and Jay say I’ve left an obligation unmet because I haven’t blossomed forward with a big long list of stories like this one, about the anti-war lawyer vandalizing the U.S. Marine’s car right before his deployment. With confirmation bias wafting in the air so strongly, what is the point of such a list? How long should it be? Fifty cases? Five hundred? Why?

The issue is goals. It is principles. Leftists are utopianists, and utopianists want to get rid of things that don’t fit in the perfect society. Conservatives not being utopianists, everything these leftists have managed to find on their right-wing eliminationist lists, falls into the following:

1. Humor;
2. Nostalgia for the days when sedition was treated like sedition.

Speaking for those who long for the bygone days when there was a punishment for sedition, I think I can summarize it here for whoever might need me to do so…in which case, it’s probably pointless, but anyway.

The argument is one of cause and effect, not utopianism. We do have, of course, the option of continuing to allow sedition to go unpunished. But if we do, then there is the possibility that the republic cannot survive.

I suppose some leftists consider that an entire discussion not worth having, since we don’t want any eliminationism going on. But I hope they don’t proceed from there, to telling me how open-minded they are.

Rachel is soliciting advice from people about how to talk to liberals. And man, I’m just diggin’ that post title.

There is the special case to consider when the liberal starts sounding off at work. The classic advice to offer is one word: “Don’t.”

Well, in the real world it turns out there are a lot of problems with that. If the liberal is mouthing off, at that particular moment the liberal doesn’t have any work to do. Maybe you’re doing his work for him, in which case the problem is solved: Adhere to the classic advice, shut your mouth and do the liberal’s work for him.

But if you’re gathered ’round the water cooler, so to speak, I’ve found that this isn’t terribly good advice. Contrary to what middle- and upper-management may think they know about human behavior, or pretend to think they know about it, people are not naturally inclined to want to work together on things. At all layers of the organizational structure we babble away about “diversity” and “tolerance for different points of view” but that’s pretty much a load of crap people say to keep from being fired.

People are molded and shaped by scores of thousands of years of social evolution, to live in tribes. It’s just a fact.

Sure, in a modern environment we’ll work with people in other tribes. But still — we want to know where the other fellow’s coming from. So we talk this stuff out. It’s healthy. It’s part of respecting him, in a way. If you’re going to communicate with him generically, in a way that remains politely agnostic about his background and beliefs as a person, you’re going to be working with him in a manner that is very, very cold. Distant. Some might even say, with more than a hint of legitimacy, rude.

And so we talk about politics…in addition to religion and family.

And then if that doesn’t hammer home the point to the classic “Don’t” people, there are the questions. If you know something, even if people understand they don’t agree with your slant on it they’re still going to come to you with questions when their own knowledge-base is lacking. That’s what people are supposed to do; they’re certainly expected to do that with work. And some of these questions are of the nature that there is no polite way to decline them. Anybody who says this is possible, hasn’t been put in the position. They probably haven’t been put in the position because they aren’t known for being approachable with such questions, or for having an information store that would make the questioning worthwhile.

And it should be noted — a lot of the folks who say don’t discuss politics at work, are liberals who freely discuss politics at work. They want an echo chamber.

Outside of work, it isn’t all free-reign either. Family reunions, bridge parties, whatever. It’s up to the conservatives to keep things cool, because the liberals are just there to talk down to people, quote the inane drivel they’ve heard from The Daily Show, and make sure they’re seen interrupting.

Well, here’s my list of advice if you want to keep things peaceful.

1. Let the liberal call a stop to it.

Bear in mind “I don’t want to talk about this anymore” isn’t something you’re going to hear a lot. You have to read the code.

“We’re not going to agree on this” is something used by the rare mature, tactful liberal.

If you find yourself interrupted twice in a row, that means the liberal knows he can’t “win” if you’re actually allowed to get an entire sentence out. By then, you’ve made all the points you’re going to make.

A lot of disagreements boil down to one’s perception of human nature. I’ve always thought of that as an exit point. “If you subsidize something you get more of it, if you tax something you get less of it.” “That’s bullshit!” Okay…you understand human behavior, the liberal doesn’t. You won’t educate him in this exchange. Move on.

Sarcasm is used by nervous people. The right response is to back away, although the temptation is to clarify your position because it’s being misstated. “Taking Saddam Hussein down just made sense.” “Oh RIGHT, because of those Weapons of Mass Destruction, and everybody KNOWS he personally ordered the September 11 attacks.” You’re dealing with a nervous person. Just mutter something like “well, that’s not what I said” and move on.

2. Use rhetorical questions.

Be respectful. But keep in mind you’ve reached a point of agreement here, that it is mutually beneficial to each of you to explore the mindset of the other. This is valuable; orient your rhetorical questions toward that. “Does war ever have a purpose?” “Could it ever be hazardous and self-defeating to try to avoid war?”

3. Concede the points where it makes sense to do so.

Acknowledge the validity of the sub-bullshit, which is a true and verifiable statement tossed in so that a big ol’ plate of garbage can be sold right afterward. “Well, certainly there was bad juju going down at Enron.” “Well, like any other country with a history, the United States has some moments where it’s a little tough to be proud.”

Find the points of agreement first, then proceed from there to the points of disagreement. It could be there isn’t a point of disagreement. If that’s the case, it’s a win-win for both of you because you’ve demonstrated the maturity to work together on something, and in addition, you’ve had it demonstrated to you that the other person has this too.

4. Don’t tell people things they aren’t ready to be told.

A country has ten thousand starving kids. We send food and medicine. In another ten years that country has a hundred thousand starving kids. It’s true that it works that way, but to some people when you point this out, it has a flavoring of genocidal intent behind it even though that’s not where you’re going with it. That’s because they’ve been indoctrinated into thinking inaction is the same as mass murder.

It’s a booby trap. Maybe you can disarm it, maybe you can’t. If you can’t, do the smart thing and avoid it.

5. It’s a success if you inspire doubt.

Part of being a liberal in the first place, is to believe propaganda from the home office above the common sense of outsiders, so you’re not going to win a convert here. Liberalism being what it is, they’re probably going to work very hard to make you into a convert to their cause, so stick to politely explaining your problems with it.

6. Keep in mind who’s supposed to be convinced.

Corollary to #5. You know liberals don’t feel that good about what they believe, because a lot of these things start out with the liberal saying something like, as an example, “why do YOU THINK we went into Iraq?” So we’re having a conversation about what YOU think. And then as you present the case for taking down the Hussein regime, the liberal will use the talking points to shoot each one of those down…in so doing, swiveling the argument around into a (failed) attempt to convince him of something. This is actually pretty funny if you see it as the trap that it is, because people who feel secure in the things they believe don’t convert every single conversation into a failed attempt to convince themselves of something different. Just keep in mind how the argument started, and say “well, okay, but you asked what my opinion was, and that piece of evidence is good enough for me.”

7. Don’t debate feelings.

There’s some overlap here with #4. This post from “notaclue” is one of my favorites, and it speaks for itself:

Sometimes you don’t get argument, you get a restating of cliches. A few years ago I had this chat about gun control with a coworker at a volunteer agency:

SHE: We’ve got to do something about these guns.

ME (sitting there with a pistol in my pocket, savoring the irony): Actually, guns are used defensively much more often than offensively. Gary Kleck’s study, etc.

SHE: We’ve got to do something about these guns.

It’s just not worth trying sometimes.

In this situation, which comes up often, your opposition lacks an intellectual “motor” and probably knows it. A sailboat has right of way over a powerboat; back off and let the other vessel proceed. Like notaclue says, it’s not worth trying.

8. Stay away from what is deserved by who.

There is no discipline of science that has found a way to politely engage liberals on the subject of who deserves what — philosophy, psychology, neurology, phrenology. To the best experts have been able to determine, this simply isn’t possible with liberals.

So when a liberal comes up with a nifty way to help women, the very last thing to come out of your mouth should be “what about men?” You’re talking to someone who is convinced women deserve good things and men deserve bad things, and it simply isn’t up for discussion. That goes for working families as well. And ethnic groups.

This is the irony about liberals. They like to walk around using feel-good catchphrases like “for the benefit of all” or “for the good of everybody,” but, in fact, liberalism is opposed to seeing things that way. They want different groups of people to enjoy different standards of living; that’s what it is all about. And the funny thing is, even in environments in which we’re supposed to honestly respect the truth, we have to let them get away with it because their feelings (see #7, above) are so incredibly enmeshed in this, it simply doesn’t make sense to challenge them on it.

So the timeless question “how many paychecks have you ever received from a poor person?”, as wonderful as it is, should be just kept off the table. They can’t handle it; they’re too fragile. Instead, ask where lines are drawn with regard to “progressive” policies. Should the highest marginal tax rate be eighty percent? Why or why not? Should the minimum wage be raised to sixty bucks an hour? Why or why not?

Cross-posted at Cassy’s.

Hmmm, I’m thinking this should be required reading.

Virtually every group in the population is less angry in 2008 than in 1996 — those making more and those making less than the average income; college-educated and noncollege-educated folks; men and women.

Only one major group in the population has gotten angrier: people who call themselves “very liberal.” While conservatives, moderates and nonextreme liberals all have seen their average levels of outrage fall over the past 12 years, the number of angry days among our leftiest neighbors has risen 56% (to 2.28 from 1.46), and the percentage with no angry days in the past week has fallen to 31% from 37%. Today, very liberal people spend more than twice as much time feeling angry as do political moderates. One in seven is outraged seven days a week.

Now that I reflect on it, it isn’t very often I get to hear about someone saying “I am outraged! Personally!” It’s always a messenger boy reporting outrage felt by someone else. Regular hosts on The View aside, it’s always proxy outrage.

Maybe proxy outrage is a cause of global warming.

Wouldn’t it be healthy if we all just agreed to call an abrupt stop to it? Tell me all about it if YOU are ticked off…but if someone else is, they can probably express themselves just fine, so you may have a seat and STFU.

Yes I know there’d be no way to enforce it. And there’s all that money to be made from delivering proxy outrage. But a guy can dream. And how much fun it would be watching the democrats try to find something to talk about. Yeeeeeeaaaaarrrrrrrgggghhhhh!!!!