The Rush to the Reality of Slut-Gate and Esau’s Pottage pt. 1 of 3

The Left delights in being accused about what it’s accusing others of doing… ever notice that? Whether or not their accusations are accurate isn’t the reason why they make those accusations – for the Left, particularly the Proregressive Left (Alinsky and the like), their accusations are the point of the accusations they make - not what the accusations state, but that an accusation is made. If you respond to them, you accomplish their purpose, that being legitimizing and spreading the message that accusations have been made. Even if you are right in your response, they do not lose – you do.

I almost fell for a variation of this myself, in talking with a friend on my side about this picture you see here to the Right. My friend didn't make the silly mistake which Rush Limbaugh recently did, in fact he even made the very important observation that 'Illiberals tend to use quantity instead of quality to debate', (I'd say always, rather than tend, but that's quibbling at this point), he was concerned that in posting this picture on my facebook page, I was  inadvertently making a straw man argument which would weaken our position against them. What he didn't realize was that he himself was enabling their position against us, by assuming a position ourselves, rather than insisting on sticking to ideas.

My friend's particular concern was that in using the comment of the pictures caption('We can get free sh*t from the government!'), when Sandra Fluke didn't technically use those words, that:

...as dumb as Fluke's argument is, she never argues for free stuff from the government. Rather, she is demanding that religious employers and charities need to put contraceptives on their health insurance plans.... I just want to be clear when making arguments against the left and it is completely false to say she's asking for free stuff from the government....The leftists will use that crack in logic to try to LOL in mass you out, even if your arguments are better. Illiberals tend to use quantity instead of quality to debate.

While I fault his assessment of her true position, he is right in his assessment of their response (though I think he failed to see that he would come in for it as well) - how do you respond to that?

After all, the left is still thoroughly enjoying being all aghast and aTwitter over Rush Limbaugh’s recent Slut-Gate demonstration of how not to respond to them. When he wondered whether the word “Slut” might apply to a women who laments about a friend needing $3,000 worth of contraception in order to get through law school, his statement, and especially his apology for it, enabled the left to demand that companies boycott and remove Limbaugh from the air, but it did more than that. It also bolstered the visibility of their carefully crafted issue high enough to demand that presidential candidates, as well as every other conservative politician in range of a microphone, should apologize for Rush's comments and pointedly distance themselves from him, which is a source of power to the Left that depressingly few seem to comprehend. And then of course you can't help noticing that these very same leftists, journalists, comedians, talk show hosts, etc, who have been so outraged over Rush's comments, were delightedly twittering and snickering over how Bill Maher called Sarah Palin a c**t, and they found no issues or difficulties whatsoever with politicians then going on his show to discuss his many other fascinating comments and insights.

The person on the Right looks at this and says WTH?! And the person on the Left says… What?!

How do they get away with this? How does it make sense? To reasonable eyes, they are lying, they are getting called on it, and yet they are getting away with it, over and over and over again. What you may not be seeing, is that their behavior, and their accusations, and their re-accusations to your reactions, are the primary means of ginning up the public furor they need to gather the social currency, acceptance and the political power they need in order to take that which a respect for Individual Rights and Liberty would otherwise withhold from them.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the Nuclear Freeze movement in the 80's, or the anti Iraq war protests of a few years ago (during Bush's term only, of course), or even a seemingly small policy issue such as ‘minimum wage; they accuse, we respond, and then they accuse louder, more self-righteously and more viciously. Our responses to their accusations enable them to attack, sully and obscure the issue, and in doing so the real principles involved, such as Individual Rights, are pushed to the background, replaced by whichever particular things or actions they happen to be calling for today, and how very useful or practical they are. The accusatory tool, such as contraception, things which seem sensible when looked at in isolation: 'Nuclear War would be bad', 'a barrel of oil isn't worth an Americans life', the need for 'a living wage'; become the only things discussed - and by that means, step by step, the critical principles are forgotten as the left edges their way closer and closer to being able to brush the conceptual barriers aside and take what they want.

And we help them do it every time. If Rush owes an apology to anyone, it is to his audience for taking the bait and enabling the left to vent their spleens and further obscure the boundaries of our Rights and Liberties, even further than they were before he responded, logically, to what the left's accusations clearly meant.

A word of advice to all when trying to understand how to respond to the left - don’t bother looking for the answers where the left isn’t concerned with your finding them - IOW what they are saying, and the implications of what they are saying - no matter how outrageous or hypocritical, or even on occasion, sensible, they may seem - it is all safe ground for them, and they know it; it is after all the position they've prepared for you, and if you take the bait and engage them on it - you lose.

The key isn’t so much that the leftist see’s themselves as being lying hypocrites – they don’t - as that those things which they think of as being true are never more than instances of isolated ‘factoids’ and positions which they feel will work for them for the moment. In the eyes of the Left, holding these varied, even fragmented, positions are seen as being examples of ‘intelligence’ (it's actually more will power, than intelligence, but they don't understand the difference), and when someone is able to hold these fragments together simultaneously in their mind, no matter how contradictory they are when taken together, is a skill that is admired by the left, as with Bill Clinton, and are seen as impressive traits of complex people who are ‘very compartmentalized’, nuanced, etc.

On the other hand, the Right sees their varied positions not as discrete instances, but as fragmented parts of a whole, clearly contradictory positions, often despicable and unprincipled ones at that - which is precisely what the Left sees as evidence of conservative’s ignorance and moribund stupidity. The Left sees conservative’s reverence for timeless truths, particularly those which come from religion, as being nothing more than examples of their being obsessed with traditions that have been handed down to them from time out of mind and as having no value other than their being old. To the Left, these are simply how conservatives escape from thinking (’clinging to their guns and religion’), mere stand-ins for thought which the Right clings to without thought, to escape from making the effort to do what the Leftist does, ‘bravely’, that of dealing with ‘what works at and for the moment’ and refusing to pretend that there is, or could be, anything more to it than that.

The disconnect is that the Right seeks general truths which if followed would reward the practitioner with a worthwhile life, principles which integrate into larger Truths without contradiction, because far from being impressive to those on the right, the refusal to tolerate contradictions is in fact THE fundamental starting point of logical thought (see Aristotle’s rule of non-contradiction). In the conservatives mind, the person who manages to do this consistently, overcoming the urges and desires that are ever tempting us towards taking the easier path, that person becomes Virtuous and worthy of their highest respect and admiration. But that is a view and practice that has long since become an exiled and alien view to the Left; those urges and desires are what they pursue (again, see Bill Clinton for reference), the leftist does not even attempt to integrate their views into something beyond that current single and slender track of thought they are engaged in, consequently they don’t really see contradictions, instead they see separate tracks of thoughts and actions to be taken and judged one at a time. When you call them on it, they can honestly say to your face ‘What?!’

Calling them on what appears to be hypocrisy, misses a key essential of what it means to be a hypocrite – namely that of believing one thing and doing another. At no time does a full blown proregressive leftist believe One thing – or at least not in the way that someone on the Right would understand that concept; that of expecting that each thing you do, one way or another, to integrate into One, Big, Whole of what is good, right and moral. Not so for the leftist, they simply believe that their disparate beliefs and positions (contradictions) help them to advance towards a better position, and the splintered edges that are often exposed from attempting to hold such positions are simply opportunities for clever compromises in order to artfully cover them over with. The more of these positions a person can manage to maintain, the more complex and nuanced they are, and as long as they help them to achieve the greater goal, it’s all good – for the Left, the Ends truly do justify the means.

Reality is your Friend - Don't turn your back on it!
To even give the benefit of the doubt to what Fluke said, as not being a desire and claim for being given free stuff from the govt, is to concede vast amounts of territory to their attack. Did she verbally ask for free contraception from the govt? No. Was she actually asking for free stuff from the govt? You're damn right she was. She is demanding that businesses, churches and individuals, be forced to offer or provide products or services, not through honest efforts of negotiation, but through shear thuggery - and whether or not they are 'allowed' to offer them for money, or are forced to offer them for free, are small, secondary issues - don't take that bait.

I wouldn't personally bother with pointing out that they are demanding free stuff, because that is a secondary issue, nonetheless it is true that she is demanding free stuff, free compliance, free concessions, through the muscle of govt intervention.

To restate that more clearly: She is NOT simply insisting that it is 'right' for religious employers and charities to put contraceptives on their health insurance plans, while being careful to not be mistaken for demanding something for free - if she wanted to ask for them to do that, I'd tell her she had every right to seek it. But that isn't even close to what she is doing. What she is doing is demanding that govt force religious employers, charities, individuals, to put something particular on their health insurance plans, in this case contraceptives, and she in particular, and the Proregressive Left in general, deserve zero respect, zero toleration and zero sympathy for that, and as much indignant opposition as can be mustered (one of the best features of this caption my friend and I were disagreeing over, was that it came from a cartoon, and is clearly more concerned with mocking the proregressive left, than with making a reasoned response to them, and mockery in such matters is always preferable to a seemingly logical response) - and with NONE of your response being on the grounds that they are attempting to drag us onto, that being women's health, 'contraceptive rights' or any of the rest of it.

The fact is that the primary issue is that she is demanding that Rights, and I mean the very concept (Quality) of Rights, be erased from the argument in favor of various quantities of benefits and privileges being offered to some particular people, in this case women, who have conned a favored place from those in power in exchange for their support. What she in particular, and the Proregressive Left in general are seeking, rabidly so, is an end to the concept of Individual Rights, which is the only true source of equality available to any in society, in favor of collective benefits and privileges, which are to be doled out unequally to those who best beg favors from those with the power to offer them.
Pure barbarism... and not a little bit of evil to boot.

Do Not give them the benefit of the doubt in these matters, don't offer up technicalities for their convenience, such as

'Well, she didn't actually say she wanted the govt to offer free stuff'.

And above all don't respond to what they are demanding, or try to refute their reasoning - they have none, they are the Arbitrary incarnate - demand that they step onto your ground, Reality, demand that they deal with what is True, demand that they explain how their positions (and they have nothing else but positions, no ideas whatsoever - I challenge any leftist out there to prove otherwise) are compatible with even the ghosts of America's concepts, which they can't yet pretend don't exist - Reality, Truth, Principles & Rights - and they will break themselves upon those concepts or run like a troll back under their bridges, lickety-split.

Ask them to define their terms. The Stock-in-Trade of the Proregressive Leftist, is your willingness to assume that because you both use the same words, you are talking about the same things, and they use your generous willingness to gain ground over you that they are entirely incapable of seizing on their own power. When you ask them to define their terms you accomplish two huge victories.

1. you begin the process of insisting that they deal with Reality.
2. you put them back into the alien world (to them) of concepts and principles from which they exiled themselves long ago (more in following posts).

For instance, when a Sandra Fluke insists you are denying them their right to contraception, waging war on women, etc, do not take the bait, do not reply to what she's uttered, instead, ask, repeatedly (believe me, repeatedly will be an understatement) that she identify what it is that she means by "Rights".
You will get one of two responses to this:

1. having never really thought of it beyond what they heard someone else once say (either in school or on The Daily Show), they will give you some boilerplate fluff about 'human rights'... which is begging the question and telling you nothing - don't accept such intellectual beggary, do not accept nothing in payment for your time and effort, demand payment, demand that they identify what it is that you are both supposedly discussing - ask again: 'What are Rights?'
2. or from the more corrupt sorts, you will get every diversionary tactic under the sun, they will call you names like you wouldn't believe, they will insist you are using secret code words for racist, misogynist, class-warfare, etc, but what they will not tell you, is what Rights are - you can declare victory here as they turn mental tail and run .

Sorry to say to all my conservative friends, but the 1st Amendment issues are not the primary violations here, this is an assault against liberty itself. Religious liberty is secondary in this issue, and Free Speech as well. Though it is true that both are being violated, debating the proregressive left on this issue as if who is paying for any part of this, is any part of the actual issue, or even that religious liberty is the issue, is getting suckered into responding to the arbitrary, and it's all down hill from there - see Rush's slut-gate gaffe for reference.

The primary issue involved here, is that the left is agitating for the govt to force its will upon individuals, violating their Individual Rights, their Property Rights, their right of contract, and above all else, everyone's ability to live their own lives!

Focusing on any other issue, IMHO, is a losing proposition all around.

More to follow in the next post, on how those who claim they are just being 'realistic', manage to avoid reality entirely.