Posted on 10/08/2022 5:06:37 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Over the last several years, my liberal friends have become less and less comfortable with utilizing classical debating styles — you know, where one person proposes a theory, explains it thoroughly with facts and figures and then responds to any questions about the theory in a logical, rational way. This article develops a theory on why the vast majority of all liberals are currently atrocious debaters.
My wife and I have been lucky. We have developed many close friendships with lots of people over our lives. Some of these relationships are more recent, but many have lasted 20, 30, or even 40 years. We have over a dozen friends whom we try to stay in close contact with on a regular basis. About half of them are liberal; about half of them are conservative. Virtually no one seems to be dead in the middle anymore.
Recently, a new trend started to become obvious. For my conservative friends, roughly half of all their friends share conservative values, and half are liberal. But our liberal friends tend to have just one or two conservative friends, and they are no longer able to discuss political issues with their conservative friends, since the liberals tend to get too emotional when talking politics.
It is my belief that this inability to discuss political issues is because my liberal friends look only at online sites that share their worldview; they watch only TV news that reinforces their worldview; they discuss politics only with people who share their worldview; and they often look at social media that make them think the liberal view on a topic is the only rational one to have.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I noticed this escalating about 10 years ago. I love debate. I am a Conservative. I listen to a lot of talk radio, a lot of that is NPR. I love Conservative talk radio (like Dennis Prager and loved Rush). The best, if they have open questions, are the ones that take the disagreeing Leftist. It is great. These people rarely call in anymore, if they do they usually make their position, then when the reply comes, they get hysterical. Too bad, debate is interesting, and makes for good radio. I also have noticed that left wing web sites have removed comment sections. Very telling.
So true. We cannot coexist in a loving peaceful way. I have no liberal friends. Life is way to short. Why waste my personal time on fools, idiots and people who really do hate you. The way I look at it is they will not change their ways. They have chosen abomination (abortion, homosexuality, transgender, anti Christian…). Therefore I will not be supportive in any way to the radical left.
I have had a liberal friend tell my wife that she will no longer even talk about politics around me because “he uses too many facts.”
It is simple. Liberals are like my wife, they don’t have any reason for their position, it is all based on feelings, ideology and not based on any logical conclusion. When they are cornered they run, they don’t have any ammunition to debate with logic and reason. If they ever do recognize the folly of their position it shatters them and they run.
My situation also. Conversation is like walking on eggshells.
Liberals don’t debate, they lecture.
I agree with this article. The emotion is overboard. No facts allowed if it doesn’t support their view, no allowing for difference of opinion- their view or you are the problem All Trump supporters are stupid or domestic terrorists. Its scary.
My friends are almost exclusively liberal. Topics come up from time to time, but I avoid debating anything with them. I’m not likely to change their opinions, and they most certainly won’t change mine.
Personally, I don’t mind having liberal friends, no matter how lunatic they might be…
I don’t even bother anymore......a waste of time and energy.
If I tell someone their hair is on fire and they give me the middle finger.....well I say let it burn.
I agree with most of what you said.
However, BECAUSE of this deliberate bias, I do NOT watch any of them, period. I rarely/never watch network TV. Even cable. I have a Roku on every TV and 90 % of what I watch is on there or on my computer.
I only watch the Five, Tucker and Gutfeld on Fox.
I stopped all magazine subscriptions many years ago, and while I’ve had every single National Geographic magazine, in nice box sets per year since 1979 (I even lugged these around every PCS I did in the military until I retired), I stopped even getting them around 2016 because they went totally climate woke.
The only place I get DNCMedia news is here on Free Republic. We need to keep up reading and ridiculing/debating them.
I also do the Sunday Talk show thread. EVERY week I get posts and freepmail from other FReepers asking me to stop promoting the liars on these DNC shows. I am NOT promoting them! We post it to directly confront and debate what they’re saying.
I guess that is my main point. We know what they’re all about. We hear it from everywhere. They don’t have a clue what we really believe, except the lies CNN/MSNBC Noah, Colbert, Jimmy and other idiots tell them we think.
We should never emulate their same isolation. As you say, there’s so much out there, we really can’t. But don’t try, either. We NEED to know what crap they’re up to.
Or when you criticize Putin.
How do liberals respond when you try to debate them?
They call you a racist Nazi.
They respond with random phrases they all share, they often spew them out without even trying to have a coherent structure. And it works on other liberals who nod their heads in agreement or say “This.” and point at the person who said the stupid phrase.
It’s called “confirmation bias, the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs.”
And to that I plead guilty.
I don’t bother tuning in to network tv evening news, CNN, NPR, MSNBC et. al. nor do I spend my valuable time trying to make sense of what’s out there in leftist publications and on blogs.
So, yes, you could say that I’m in a conservative “echo chamber.”
The difference being, I would say, is that I need to make an effort in that regard.
With the left, opinions affirming their beliefs are ubiquitous, from academia to Hollywood to social media and beyond.
That’s THEIR “echo chamber.”
You can’t debate
They base everything on emotion but at the same time they are the most emotionless (except anger), soulless people out there. Whenyou talk to an-ultra Liberal there’s just something dead inside of them. Whomever came up with the term NPC for them nailed it.
You just aren’t debating a person capable of making logic decisions.
Liberals tend to get too emotional when talking politics
Indeed it’s a Marxist way or no way they have the utopian dream of the government will take care of from cradle to grave.
Now they have found out the lies of government it’s a loot and shoot movement.
The purpose of an ‘open mind’ is to close it upon the true and useful. Lefties insist on an open mind so much their brains fell out.
Not so easy for me - family thing.
Almost every liberal is a secularist, so are many people who are traditionalists. A lot of secularists are atheists. A major problem is having any sort of in depth conversation to establish the beliefs or world view of individuals. The same is difficult with English speaking Europeans. An attempt to do this with a Danish business professional produced the same sort of snark and bumper sticker expressions as here. It appears to that intellectual activity even among those who consider themselves intellectuals has declined with the rise of the electronic universe. Ask friends on either side of the divide what books they are reading or the last book read. Many take this to be a trap or an insult and those who don’t are often embarrassed and admit either none or a virtual non-book or a help book. Intellectual activity seems to be on the decline.
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