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Liberals Are Done Debating
Townhall.com ^ | September 25, 2015 | David Harsanyi

Posted on 09/25/2015 8:53:52 AM PDT by Kaslin

Not always. Not everyone. But enough.

This week, for example, while thinking about the pope's take on global warming, I tweeted out this comment: "Celebrate climate change, an externality of the greatest poverty destroying program in the history of mankind." There is plenty to disagree with in my observation, I admit. Although I believe what I wrote to be true, I sent it out partly to elicit exactly the sort of reaction my tweet got -- with one person calling me a psychopath (a Slate writer, not some anonymous critic) and another calling me sociopathic, among other things. I don't mind the insults (perversely, in fact, I sort of enjoy them), but I do mind that the debate is over.

Conservatives may be ethically compromised, uninformed or -- if liberals are in a generous mood -- mentally unstable, but they can't be for real. At least, that's the sense I increasingly get from the left these days. Blame it on social media.

When a group confuses its politics with moral doctrine, it may have trouble comprehending how a decent human could disagree with its positions. This is probably why people confuse lecturing with debating and why so many liberals can bore into the deepest nooks of my soul to ferret out all those motivations but can't waste any time arguing about the issue itself.

Are you also corrupt? Probably. Bought off by big oil, big food or big something or other? Washington is teeming with Manchurian candidates, because no one could possibly be this malicious on his own. Why should liberals debate a point when they can debate your imaginary sugar daddy? Why else would conservatives "hate workers"? Why would they "bet against America"? Why do they want to destroy democracy? Why would conservatives vote against their own interests? Someone pays them to lie.

Or maybe you favor inequality, injustice, rape culture and poverty because privilege clouds your sense of decency. If you were born wealthy (anything over 130 percent of the poverty level or so), how can anyone expect you to have empathy for the destitute? You certainly don't possess the life experience or skin color to challenge leftist economic doctrine. For inexplicable reasons -- that can't possibly have anything to do with a genuine belief in supply-side economics, a belief in property rights or an aversion to punishing success -- tens of millions of you spend your political lives protecting the interests of billionaires for no other reason than that you hate the poor.

You hate a lot of things, don't you? Like half the country, you're furtively racist and irrationally misogynistic. The American idea is erected on a foundation of intolerance, according to one of the most celebrated thinkers on the left. You hate black people, sure, but also brown people. So this bloodlust manifests when you oppose the president on foreign policy, for instance. (Then again, maybe it's the Israel lobby paying you off.) You're not anti-Iran deal; you're pro-war. Just as you're not pro-Second Amendment; you're pro-mass shootings. You're not concerned about terrorism or (genuine) illiberalism; you're a bigot. You're not pro-school choice; you're anti-children. You're not pro-traditional marriage; you're anti-dignity. You're not pro-entitlement reform; you're anti-retirement.

You're not in favor of a cost-benefit analysis when it comes to climate change policy; you're anti-science. Skeptic. Denier. Psychopath. Why do you hate Earth?

Don't like big government? You're a nihilist. Forget what your policy does; watch your tone. Transphobic. Homophobic. Eleutherophobic. Sure, you may claim that you want to save unborn girls from the scalpels of Planned Parenthood, but your real goal is to control women. Even if you're Carly Fiorina.

Or maybe you can't see things clearly because you're hooked to the most addictive opiate imaginable, religion -- which, let's face it, you probably don't properly understand or adhere to correctly. Here, let them tell you what Jesus would do. Are you part of some regressive denomination that follows doctrine and hasn't been poll testing on the left, that isn't always pleasing to millennials' ears, that hasn't evolved properly or that still clings to "religious freedom"? You're a modern-day Orval Eugene Faubus, probably. We can sue you into compliance or mock you into the 21st century, because clearly you're too selfish to be part of our future.

What conservatives (and some libertarians) possess are not arguments but corrupt and nefarious ambitions. Defend yourself. What you can't possibly have are legitimate differences of opinion.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: liberals
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To: redgolum
Ideologically, the two Americans cannot live in the same country for much longer. There is nothing holding us together, no commonality of purpose, no culture or politics. Left and right are mutually exclusive.

They aren't going anywhere and we aren't going anywhere soon so it is cruel to both sides to continue this way; there must be a physical separation. A secession would work because then the two sides would have geographical place to migrate to with like minded politically aligned people.

THE STATUS QUO CAN'T GO ON MUCH LONGER.

21 posted on 09/25/2015 10:30:10 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: redgolum
Interesting social-studies lesson.

He was right, and I like to think the People, after one good whiffenstink of the Klintonx, voted Republican because they recognized Slick and Beast from old newsreels about the '30's.

22 posted on 09/25/2015 10:33:03 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutfeld)
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To: Kaslin
Liberals Are Done Debating

Done debating?
When did they start?

Help me out here.

Can anyone explain clearly how they could possibly relearn a skill they dumped a generation ago?

23 posted on 09/25/2015 10:40:43 AM PDT by publius911 (Pissed?? You have NO idea!)
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To: central_va
A secession would work because then the two sides would have geographical place to migrate to with like minded politically aligned people.

The bicoastal distribution of liberalism is a result of Yankee migration out West, starting with Oregon and the Old Northwest, and the only partial acculturation of the Atlantic Slope "deferential society" (as historian T.R. Fehrenbach calls it, I haven't seen the phrase elsewhere but it works) to Middle American values. Living in big cities and studying under immigrant Frankfurt School Communists does that for some people. Others are simply still half-European and never really got off the boat, but were intercepted on the wharf by ward heelers who took charge of them.

My idea of a new Constitution, same as the old one, but with New England and downstate New York disinvited, would give us the political heft to invite the rest of the "New America" to emigrate to Uruguay or Paraguay, where the Gay Left is going to create a fabulous new society and show us all how it's done (instead of leeching off us and stealing people's kids).

24 posted on 09/25/2015 10:42:03 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutfeld)
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To: publius911
Can anyone explain clearly how they could possibly relearn a skill they dumped a generation ago?

In Alinskyite workshops, where, of course, a different vocabulary is used.

25 posted on 09/25/2015 10:44:01 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutfeld)
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To: Kaslin
Why should liberals debate a point when they can debate your imaginary sugar daddy?

Why should we take this when the biggest private funding sources of the AGW scam are the tax-exempt "charitable" foundations belonging to the owners of oil companies?

Hell, the Environmental Grantmakers Association was started by the Rockefellers!!!

26 posted on 09/25/2015 10:58:16 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (Dupes for Donald, Chumps for Trump)
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To: bert

Liberals don’t ‘debate’ - they bully, shame, call people names and make threats.

The latest threat from Liberals on climate change is that citizens who don’t agree with them should be jailed under RICO.


27 posted on 09/25/2015 11:25:38 AM PDT by GOPJ (Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE)
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To: GOPJ

if the libs bring jail........ conservatives should bring death

Lois Lerner must be executed for her crimes against the Republic


28 posted on 09/25/2015 11:49:30 AM PDT by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc.;+12, 73, ....carson is the kinder gentler trump)
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To: Kaslin

Watermelons. Enviro green on the outside, commie red tot he core.


29 posted on 09/25/2015 11:52:03 AM PDT by Travis T. OJustice (I miss my dad.)
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To: bert

Climate Alarmists to Obama: Use RICO Laws to Jail Skeptics

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/19/climate-alarmists-obama-use-rico-laws-jail-skeptics/

Orwell warned us about liberal totalitarians... next they’ll want to jail us for thinking the wrong thoughts.


30 posted on 09/25/2015 12:01:36 PM PDT by GOPJ (Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE)
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To: PROCON
But here is how global warming "science" works: [government funding]

You know, the brilliant Michael Crichton wrote about just this point eleven years ago in the novel State of Fear. He was a brilliant thinker and I miss him, especially his tv series "ER."

31 posted on 09/25/2015 12:16:30 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (If you can't make a deal with a politician, you can't make a deal. --Donald Trump)
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To: central_va

Except that for many it is a moral movement. It isn’t enough to be right, it is to force the view on everyone.

For Pete’s sake we are kicking people out of the military because they are anti pedophile!

They will not let anyone out. Peaceful partitions rarely happen, and never work.


32 posted on 09/25/2015 12:24:32 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: redgolum

Liberals would be at a distinct disadvantage. They don’t like guns and the conservatives are mostly armed and buying more ammo.


33 posted on 09/25/2015 12:41:40 PM PDT by Shamrock-DW
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To: Kaslin

Liberals are done debating. They won’t even debate in a presidential race.


34 posted on 09/25/2015 1:56:06 PM PDT by minnesota_bound
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To: lentulusgracchus

[[But our opponents, by contrast, are not shaken or deterred. They are resolute and they are militant, and they will never concede so much as a matchstick. ]]

Exactly, and speaking of matchsticks, I often give the analogy that claiming that man’s piddly 0.0037% CO2 in atmosphere is causing global warming is akin to:

Standing in a domed football arena, lighting a match a couple of times a year, (heck we can even let it burn all the way down) and then claiming we’re causing ‘catastrophic climate change within the dome”-

Because a couple of matches burned per year in a doems arena s is pretty much the equivalent heat content that the 0.0037% CO2 in our atmosphere captures and back radiates to earth- it’s simply shameful that these comunists are suggesting that our CO2 is, in their words “Almost entirely responsible for global climate change’ and that ‘we are 98% sure man is causing climate change”

They should be ASHAMED of themselves!


35 posted on 09/25/2015 3:16:15 PM PDT by Bob434
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To: Bob434

and I should be ashamed of myself for my horrible spelling


36 posted on 09/25/2015 3:16:58 PM PDT by Bob434
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To: Albion Wilde

[[He was a brilliant thinker and I miss him]]

Yep- me too- He wrote a book once about some nano-particles that had a mind iof their own- it was a great book- very entertaining- He was a brilliant writer and thinker


37 posted on 09/25/2015 3:19:07 PM PDT by Bob434
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To: Albion Wilde

this is the book- prey- great book- the site shows how he came up with the idea for the novel too- very itneresting

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/prey/


38 posted on 09/25/2015 3:25:08 PM PDT by Bob434
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To: Bob434

His response to a question is pretty funny- and as any true artist- He feels compelled to write even when he doesn’t w3ant to lol

“Q: Of all the disturbing subjects you’ve explored in your career, is it these small, insidious things that concern you the most? Because the problem in Prey, as in The Andromeda Strain, seems more tangible, more of a problem that we all need to deal with and think about now, then the problem of, say, revenant dinosaurs?

A: I don’t think in this way. I tend to write books that grab me by the throat and force me to write them. I don’t usually feel as if I have a choice, or much control of what comes out. Often, I don’t want to be writing a particular book, but there I am, writing it anyway.”


39 posted on 09/25/2015 3:27:37 PM PDT by Bob434
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To: Bob434
He was a brilliant writer and thinker

And so far ahead of his time. God bless him where he is.

40 posted on 09/25/2015 7:54:44 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (If you can't make a deal with a politician, you can't make a deal. --Donald Trump)
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