MY STRAIGHT LINE LEARNING CURVE

amazed I can still get when some factoid finally manages to bore a hole in my skull and jump in. I mean, not to sound too self-congratulatory or anything, but when you're nearing the end of your sixth decade, you start thinking there aren't too many surprises left. So imagine my surprise when one of those surprises that had been lagging for 58 plus years decided to finally show up.

Writers are artists, I suppose - although I always like to think of Hemingway as a big game fisherman who just happened to write stuff. He was too manly to be an artist. But most of us writers aren't anywhere near as manly as Hemingway was - even the women. So I guess we have to be artists.

An enclave of artists, it can be accurately predicted, is an environment in which liberals dominate. No surprise there, not even for disconnected old me. I knew what I was getting into when I joined the group, but I vowed to be pleasant and maybe slyly engage them in one-on-one discussion from time to time as the opportunity presented itself. Incremental takeover is, after all, how liberalism began its little project of rotting our society at the core, so I see no reason not to employ liberals' tactics against them. And it seemed to have worked on many occasions, at least with the liberals who accepted my friendly manner and willingly sat down to knock back a few with me as we discussed things like plot structure and characterization, scene building, omniscient viewpoints vs. first person narrative - the war in Iraq. Oops, just slipped that one in there. Sorry. Hey, you want another beer?

Most of the time, I've got them hooked by the third Bud Light (artists almost never drink real beer - it's too icky). I've even been thanked a couple of times for illuminating reality for them and I was actually starting to think I knew enough about what I was doing to make a real dent in Hillary's base...

The critique session had ended and we all headed to the local Ruby Tuesday's to get down to the real reason we get together every week. I seated myself stategically betwixt a couple of lady libs and waited like a trapdoor spider for the conversation to make an opportune turn. I didn't have to wait long.

The woman to my left, who shall remain nameless (Toni), mentioned how she didn't dare drink anything alcoholic because she got all weepy and stuff. For an example, she cited the night during the presidential campaign

last year when she and her husband were having dinner at a local fine restaurant with some friends. She'd downed two poodle piddles, or some such

liberal concoction, and began wailing about the upcoming election and how the world was going to hell in a hand basket because George W. Bush was going to win. I har-harred with her for a moment, and then jumped in with my own humorously delivered lament over what I'd seen as the potential victory of Lurch Kerry, which had become my reason for drinking. She laughed all the harder.

As she didn't get all huffy like libs have a tendency to do, I did a little WMD magic and elicited a couple of interested nods of approval. This

was going just as planned. I'd have her denouncing Ted Kennedy as the bloated hypocrite he is in mere minutes.

Just then, the woman to my right, who shall remain nameless (Margaret) jumped in. "I don't want to talk about these things," said she.

"I just don't. It makes me...(she stopped in mid-sentence, her hands up beside her head and vibrating with such intensity, I thought she might lift off).

"Huh. When did this problem start?" (Always engage them with concern for their welfare...this normally works wonders.)

"I-I-I just don't like war and we shouldn't be in Iraq." (This is a spin-off variant of the "Bush Lied" theme that is so popular among libs, who

will continue to parrot its vacant message until they can tie him to the global warming that caused the ice berg that sank the Titanic to break free.)

"Hmmm," I mused, stoking my chin stubble. "So, what about the 17 UN resolutions citing Iraqi WMD prior to 2000, and all those 1998 speeches by Kerry and Clinton Squared and Albright and..."

I swear this is true, she all but covered her ears and began that monotone scream little kids do when they don't want to hear that it's bedtime. And she'd had not so much as one poodle piddle.

And that's when it dawned on me that I've actually been missing the boat all this time, allowing the most basic and obvious thing that separates

liberals from conservatives - other than choice of drink - to blow right on through the vast emptiness of my cranium.

Turns out I wasn't converting liberals at all; I was converting moderates who were already partially converted. A soft-shelled, hard-core liberal was

But now I can. The lady who shall remain nameless (Margaret) and her hissy little rant have cleared my blurred vision, and a dire need to develop

a new strategy when I identify one of her ilk is definitely indicated. You see, facts and memory enhancement where history is concerned do nothing when

you're faced with a black-belt lib, and that's because of the definition that has eluded me for so long. A conservative is someone who views all the

evidence available and then determines his or her political position based on what was learned. A liberal determines his or her political position, and then throws out the evidence that makes his or her position look as stupid as it is, accepting only the bits and pieces that at least appear to lend support to what they themselves probably already know is a lie. So, back to the drawing board. Yeah, I know - how blind can a guy get,

I heard it best when Dennis Prager stated that any ideology, liberalism included, that is not based on fact, and merely on emotion and feeling, is impossible to argue with. You cannot argue with facts when someone refuses to acknowledge or refute them.

Or as Michael Savage obnoxiously totes, "liberalism is a mental disorder". I believe the brood you referred to is precisely what Michael was talking about.

I'm glad you've learned, Pap. You can argue with a moderate. You can argue with someone is left of center. You can never argue with a cold-hearted liberal. They are illogical in nature and usually lack a fundamental understanding of history, not to mention an unwillingness to examine it.

I like that piece. I've noticed the same thing, although I've never documented it like that, and my analysis not as thorough. I've been trying for years to figure out a way to drill holes in liberal's heads that I can jam facts into...

Nice read. Thanks.

I'm sure each of us can relate to the "hands over the ears and screaming" concept. I was at a picnic the other day and happened to wear my George W. Bush shirt. As much as I have problems with the less-than-conservative administration we've witnessed, I still believe the better choice was made.

I was introduced to a gentlemen in his late 40's and he asked me why I would wear such a nasty shirt. I stated, "I guess I voted for the better man". He had his brain-washed son recite some kind of a "Bush is a loser" statement he had been trained to regurgitate. I then asked him, and his son, why they believed Kerry would have been the better candidate. They responded that "Bush was a moron". It was at that point that I decided the conversation was of no purpose. I wished him well and said "have a nice day", to which he mumbled something along the lines of "you too you idiot".

Leave it to a liberal to be "compassionate" and tolerant of other's views.

Sometimes when I find people like that, I just have fun with them. You should have re-stated your question and asked him for specifics until his nose bled! But then again, I guess I'm not very nice to those people when I find them.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.