Principles Left Behind: The Rush to Slut-Gate and Esau’s Pottage pt 3 of 3

Trading Truth for Tidbits
I began these three posts (first and second) because of how people were responding to the over the top statements and charges made by Sandra Fluke in support of the Obama administration’s Health Insurance Mandates; responding to Fluke & Friends as if they were honestly trying to convince you of something, rather than (very successfully) manipulating the opposition (you), into helping them further their own agenda - and bury yours. Since the first of these posts the media has shifted focus to the latest firestorm and away from Rush Limbaugh’s ‘horrific’ questions of whether or not a woman who needs $,3000 of contraception to make it through law school might reasonably be considered a ‘Slut’; unfortunately that shift has enabled the Fluke flaks to escape with nary a mention of this tidbit of news: “Fluke-associated ‘reproductive justice’ group hosts ‘Slut-Pride’ event at Harvard” ,

“Radio talk show giant Rush Limbaugh has been condemned by nearly every sector of the feminist and left-wing movements for using the term “slut” to refer to 30-year-old contraception activist and Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke — but at Harvard’s “Sex Week” Monday the Harvard affiliate of Law Students for Reproductive Justice championed the term with its own “Slut-Pride” seminar.”

Seriously, could they make my point more clearly than that? Do I really need to make my point more clearly than that? I think... maybe I still do, because while the media storm has changed, the tactics, whether the Fluke flaks or those capitalizing on the Trayvon Martin tragedy, have remained the same.

What was my point? You might find it in comparing what had been cited as Rush’s offensiveness, using the word ‘slut’ in relation to hard working Ivy League law students, while the next week finds that these hard working Ivy League Law Students are festively engaging in a week long celebration of “Sex Week” complete with a “Slut-Pride seminar”, now, does that sound like ‘slut’ was an issue for the left… or a godsend?

If you did get my point, then you should realize that the point was NOT that the left are being hypocrites, but that they purposefully make outlandish statements and accusations, not because they truly have any basis in fact for them, or to convey meaningful information to you, but in order to suck more power from you, through your responses to them.

My point was that they make their attention getting accusations, and this applies equally to last weeks “War on Women!” or this weeks “White Hispanic racial profiling stalking and murder of hoodie wearing people... or blacks”, as well as to whatever the heck news next week brings, while fully expecting to be able to follow up on your responses to them with even more heated, self-righteously offended reactions, reactions which have, and could have, no heat without your principles to fuel them with.

Take a look at that headline again, who was offended and who was on the offense?

It was conservative sensibilities that they were playing to, only conservatives would actually be offended over the word ‘slut’, clearly the use of the word itself could not have inflamed leftist sensibilities – again, see the article above, leftists revel in vulgarity, their cultural signature is that of pursuing the vulgar, flaunting a coarsening of standards ‘pushing the envelope’ or 'defining deviancy downwards' (see the ‘Reason fest’ for evidence ). The Proregressive Left’s huffiness is powered across the media through statements that are spun to magnify conflict with conservatives sense of right and wrong - though the sanctimony is all theirs.

The power of the Left's accusations, comes from the Right's reactions to them, as is made clear in  Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals - and pay special note to the word 'enemy' - that's you:

: …the fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.

More importantly, my point was that they do not make their accusations in order to win an argument they never actually made (claims and assertions are not arguments), but instead they are made to lure you into answering their charges, and in so doing they succeed in getting you to abandon the only solid ground you had to stand upon to begin with, that of principle. Here, let me let Alinsky make my point for me, Alinsky

“The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a “dangerous enemy.” — P.100”

Alinsky wasn’t some brilliant innovative thinker, he just had a talent for recognizing what the meaning of the ideas the proregressive left espoused must mean when put into practice, and the actions that would be needed to do so. They are nothing new, he just reformulated what had been practiced a few decades before, and without the German accent.

More than one way to skin a Con….
One way to win an argument you cannot win by strength of argument, is through shifting the argument to another argument, without your opponents realizing it, which is not as difficult as it sounds, it simply means running the old Quality to Quantity switcheroo. When you begin an argument over whether Healthcare should be provided by Govt, and the leftist replies that

“30% of Americans are not covered by healthcare, what about them! Are they just out of luck?! Would you leave them to die on the sidewalk?!”

, they just shifted the original argument - that providing Healthcare is not a proper function of Govt - to what you would do about large numbers of people who are dropping dead of being uninsured – they just shifted your argument, to their argument, which is an entirely different one, they shifted it from the One Principle to the many particulars, Quality to Quantity, Concepts to Percepts, High to Low, it is the sure fire method for transforming Steak to Beef Jerky, and it easily transforms your concern for ‘doing the Right thing’, into useful sympathies for the quantities of people in peril… and why?

The ‘Why’ is critical here. It’s Not because it will help those quantities of people gasping on the sidewalk, not because it will further the cause of liberty and individual rights, not to help you to understand them, most definitely not because it is a better argument, and not even in order to win the argument. No, the purpose is to move YOU from the positions of standing on principle, to their position of standing on an intellectual dinghy, a lifeboat, separated from all long range ideas, principles and truths, leaving you bobbing there, in the moment where urgency and crisis rule, with your attention and sympathies focused upon the sympathetic image of ‘30% of Americans being without healthcare’, which of course means any moment they could have their lives destroyed by medical bills – the purpose is to move you away from the solid ground of integrated Principles, where they know full well that you are unassailable.

This works fine in a one on one debate… but when you want to win something more than the argument of the moment, when you need to battle a whole people who habitually look beyond the moment… you’ve to go that a step further, after all, you can easily step back onto solid ground… right? When the argument is over, you could easily shake your head, and go back to your principled position… right?

The way to destroy your ability to go back, is also the best way to ‘win’ (and by win I mean sabotage) an argument that cannot be won by strength of argument, is to combine the ‘Quality to Quantity’ method with another, destroying the ground under your feet, destroying their opponents (you) ability to make their own argument. That’s done by introducing an arbitrary issue, usually either an asserted standard of ‘fairness’, or something that’s urgent!, into your argument (‘Contraceptive rights’ and ‘woman’s health requirements’ are prime examples of this), which if accepted, you not only find that you must respond to it, but must think of it as if it had meaning, IT becomes the standard which the rest of your argument must justify itself by, and like introducing a nest of termites to the timbers of a home’s foundation, your work there is done, the timbers crumble, the foundation cracks, and your principles come tumbling down.

Look at the ‘development’ of the GOP over the last century. With each accommodation it has made to the themes of the proregressive left, the Taxation, Prohibition, labor law, Social Security, it has slid from the party which won the Civil War, which insisted on Civil Rights, pushed through Constitutional Amendments to secure those Rights for all Americans (13th, 14th, 15th), the party which opposed the President who introduced official segregation into the Army – Democrat Woodrow Wilson – and has slid down into the party (though it still thinks of itself as believing the same things) which is snidely, without effort or question, spoken of, mocked, derided as, being opposed to minorities, the middle class and civil rights.

That is how it works. Read Saul Alinsky, he’ll show you in detail how to make it work. Why does it work?

Termite Taunts
As Aristotle pointed out almost 3,000 years ago, you cannot respond to fallacies as if they were legitimate arguments, they are “that which does not follow”, they are examples of dis-meaning, and if you don’t identify what is meaningful and discard what isn’t, the weeds will take root in your thoughts,

Book Vii, Part 17
""The object of the inquiry is most easily overlooked where one term is not expressly predicated of another…, because we do not distinguish and do not say definitely that certain elements make up a certain whole. But we must articulate our meaning before we begin to inquire; if not, the inquiry is on the border-line between being a search for something and a search for nothing. Since we must have the existence of the thing as something given, clearly the question is why the matter is some definite thing; e.g. why are these materials a house? Because that which was the essence of a house is present…."

Aristotle identified all the fundamentals, that the purpose of considering anything, is to judge its soundness and value, and that value has value by having a credible connection to reality, by being true. You identify what the nature and purpose of a house is, and then you determine what belongs in it by how they support the purpose of the house – or not – if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t belong. The purpose of logic is to ensure that what you’ve said is in that full measure, reliable; not just in what you said, but in the premises which support your saying it. In honest attempts at reasoning, fallacies are made through honest error - even outlandish ones. For instance, it's conceivable that someone could, after noticing that you have a garage, and a shower in your hall, propose installing a car wash in your hall as well -

'well, since people need showers 'cause they like to be clean, and they own cars, it'd be convenient to clean their cars after taking a shower...'

, but even the densest dunderhead would be able to see that while showers have some similarity in purpose and plumbing, the purpose of a home and the needs of typical homeowners would be at odds with an indoor car wash, both sides could eventually reason their way to an understanding as the faulty reasoning is identified, exposed and discarded because of the desire on both parties to respect and reflect reality.

The arbitrary assertion has no such connection, it isn’t even wrong… it is just there, like an elephant in a dining room… it doesn’t belong, it has no place there, it doesn’t enhance the room or its purpose and it isn’t made to enhance the purpose of the house, but to destroy it – there is no possibility of making a convincing argument against it, it wasn’t made to convince you in the first place. When an assertion is made which has no reason for being other than to inflame and corrupt, the only proper response is to dismiss it, with silence or laughter (see post #2), while returning the discussion to the fundamental nature of the discussion, leaving the burden of them for making a logical case for it – which they cannot do – a logical case, a connection to reality – never existed even in their minds.

Put the burden on them, and you will win, but if you answer the arbitrary charge directly, you will join them in their flight from reality. Bon Voyage!

Yet, in time honored Conservative tradition, we take the bait, abandon our ground, and fall flat on our faces at their feet. As I said in part 1:

“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.”

We must realize that proregressive leftists are not making their statements and ‘arguments’ because they believe what they are saying has any real relation to the truth, but only because they see it as a way of ‘making things work’ to further their positions and weaken your ability to rely upon principle.

They are not trying to help you to understand their ideas - they have goals, not ideas – they assert their positions in order to further their ends, not by way of arguments, which their misosophy (via hyper pragmatism) makes them ill-equipped to construct, but through your over generous willingness to believe that they did have one to begin with.

The left has no arguments or even any real intention of arguing with you (as Monty Python pointed out, Contradictions, Assertions and Insults are not Arguments… that’s down the corridor (and too the right, no doubt)), the Proregressive Left cannot make true arguments because they are entirely focused upon the pragmatic ideal, as Dewey said

“There is no absolute and unchanging truth, but rather, truth is what works””

, or more truthfully put:’ “What works at the moment, is what is ‘true’ enough”’, and with such thoughts they sever themselves from reality and the only means man has of discovering and living within it – principles. The Pragmatic ideal is to take action, don’t deliberate, there’s no overriding truth to be sought or found, just try something, anything!, just take action. Not surprisingly, that goes exceedingly well with even more of Saul Alinsky’s advice:

“The fifth rules of the ethics of means and ends is that concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa. To the man of action the first criterion in determining which means to employ is to assess what means are available. Reviewing and selecting available means is done on a straight utilitarian basis — will it work? Moral questions may enter when one chooses among equally effective alternate means. — P.32”

Keep in mind, the leftist will appeal to high-minded values, brazenly so, in fact that is how they attract the youth as they do, they sound so enticingly idealistic, Alinsky pg 32,

"The organizer, the revolutionist, the activist or call him what you will, who is committed to a free and open society is in that commitment anchored to a complex of high values. These values include the basic morals of all organized religions; their base is the preciousness of human life."

They know the power and importance of principles, and they desperately seek the appearances of valuing them, that is the heart of propaganda, but they do so in only the shallowest of ‘photo-op’ instances (Spike Lee promoting ‘Hoodie’ solidarity for Trayvon… from a Nick’s game - sans the hoodie); they do not and cannot practice the ideals they mouth, the first probe for principle ("So Mr. Lee, what is the connection between jobbing apparel and Justice?") will scratch the surface and expose that nothing is there but their own gaping void. For the proregressive leftist the Ends do justify their means, even when they try to moderate them, they do so only to pursue them more efficiently, as Alinsky points out:

"Democracy is not an end; it is the best political means available toward the achievement of these values.
Means and ends are so qualitatively interrelated that the true question has never been the proverbial one, "Does the End justify the Means?" but always has been "Does this particular end justify this particular means?"

Luring you in with the sizzle of steak, while never intending to feed you anything other than a pack of beef jerky instead. Review the last two posts if you miss my point, but it should be clear by now that the left is only interested in using Reason as a tool, a weapon for winning arguments, and accordingly they consider logical fallacies not as errors and flaws, but as useful tactics which will ‘work for the moment’ in swaying opinion in their favor, which is as close to ‘truth’ as they are interested or care to come.

Or to put it ironically: They are opposed to principle, on principle.

So who is Esau and what was his pottage?

It's forgivable to not recall what 'pottage' was, a thick red (very appropriate) stew, but if you don’t remember Esau, you can thank your proregressive education for that. Such stories were eliminated from our educational systems long ago, and respectable discussion of them soon after; I don’t want to shock you too much, but, brace yourself, it’s from (whispers:)The Bible (gasp!), Esau’s Pottage is a very brief passage about two brothers, twins in fact, Jacob and Esau. Esau was the older brother, a hard worker, kind of gruff, who was not all that concerned with impractical things, Jacob knew Esau pretty well, and he knew that when Esau wanted something, he wanted it right then, he wanted satisfaction, then and there, and would value that satisfaction above and beyond any future concerns.

Genesis 25:24-35
24 So when her days were fulfilled for her to give birth, indeed there were twins in her womb. 25 And the first came out red. He was like a hairy garment all over; so they called his name Esau.[a] 26 Afterward his brother came out, and his hand took hold of Esau’s heel; so his name was called Jacob.[b] Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.
27 So the boys grew. And Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field; but Jacob was a mild man, dwelling in tents. 28 And Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
Esau Sells His Birthright
29 Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary.” Therefore his name was called Edom.[c]
31 But Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright as of this day.”
32 And Esau said, “Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?”
33 Then Jacob said, “Swear to me as of this day.”
So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils; then he ate and drank, arose, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

We don’t have the luxury of having a Jacob, as a direct result of our educational system we’re all Esau’s today, but if you don’t want to end up in a well, or sold to a slave driver (read the rest of the story yourself), there are certain things we need to remember. You cannot lose sight of the fact that your reliance upon principles unbound by time, is the anti-thesis to their pragmatic positions made for the moment - you are their enemy and they sense it, and like Esau, they too have a hunger which they must satisfy, but they can only do so by passing some of their own hunger off on to you (ever wonder why zombies are so popular lately?), which they do through moving your focus from planning for the long term, to satisfying the urgent needs of the moment. All else is done or made to serve that, no matter what long term consequences that may cause, or cause them to lose out on – as their patron saint of mis-economics, Lord Keynes said about the long run,

“In the end, we're all dead."

The left by nature chooses Quantity over Quality. The question for the Alinsky generation, isn’t "Is stealing wrong, or right?", it is whether or not it seems as if the particular ‘good’ which they can imagine doing with someone else’s money, ‘justifies’ their stealing it, with ‘justify’ here meaning little more than what Marshal McLuhan and Andy Warhol meant as the new definition of Art:

‘“Art is what you can get away with”

, which is an excellent, real life example, of how the principles which one does, or doesn't hold, truly do surface in your approach to both Art and Justice - a principle the left vociferously denies... yet practices daily.

The proregressive leftist will exuberantly trade away the Right of individuals to live their own life, for gaining attractive privileges in a life that another must provide for them. The Proregressive Leftist’s marketing plan for Utopia is that of getting what you want, when you want it, without fear of consequences – what works for the moment – without fear of an unpleasant consequence in tow.

But the reality is that when you abandon Reason and embrace chaos, you are choosing to eliminate your ability to choose. You cannot embrace, shake hands with or be polite to leftist positions (I’m talking about the positions, mind you, not the people) and expect to be able to hold onto your own principles, or what they provide – a path for pursuing happiness –‘they’ cannot allow it.

When I say ‘They’, I don’t mean a collective of people, but the nature of the ideas which collectivists ascribe to, the philosophy of the left. Even if not consciously, the sensibilities built upon them will shudder at the suggestion that there are universal truths in anything, it’s a slap in the face to the entire leftist program of lifeboat ethics, the foundation of which is urgently doing what seems to work at the moment, because after all, the moment is all there is. Lifeboat Ethics is a favorite tool of college professors for disarming and destroying the morals of new students with something along the lines of :

"You have five people and a lifeboat in shark infested waters that can hold only 4 people, who will you push out?"

, they shift the argument from Ethics, to a situation which urgently requires immediate expedient action and where extended reasoning and debate is not possible – a situation antithetical to ethical consideration and thought, is used to undermine whatever ethics that students might have managed to make it to college with.

Conservatives, need to realize that no matter how much they do to ‘accommodate’ the left and gain favor and popularity with them, or even attempting to win favor through debating them, they never can or will. Conservative positions will always be perceived as a threat, and for at least two reasons.

• First, your principles are a reminder that there are consequences for all that we do, which is an affront to everything they want, and everything they want to believe.
• Secondly, your claim to such principles and rights, are barriers which are keeping them from what they want, in just the same way that the Constitution is a barrier to the power to ‘provide’ the universal healthcare they so dearly want.

But enticing you to yield the power of your principles to them, bit by bit, has shown itself to be a means to their getting the power to get what they want, whenever they want it, and so they will do what they need to do to get that power, the power of your principles and rights, away from you. Which is why they will forever gleefully taunt conservatives with promises of niceness, as Lucy does with holding the football for Charlie Brown.

They will wine you and dine you, celebrate your ‘good guy’ness – ‘Maverick’ John McCain come to mind – while focusing your attention upon the moment with them, urging conservatives to see the urgency and need to deal with a situation, “Choose to be your own man”, they’ll say, “Work with us, be reasonable, be pragmatic, just this one time” they'll say – supporting your choice to choose as they’ve chosen for you,

• thwarting Bush,
• furthering Campaign finance reform or
• saving healthcare!

As long as you advance their positions they’ll happily feed you their approval and their access to popularity, and as the conservative takes their eyes off of looking at the world through a principled perspective, they will be cajoled into making a bargain with them, trading their favors for ‘modifying’ your principles in thanks, or in anticipation of the approval which popularity starved conservatives will hungrily eat up, just as Esau ate his pottage, in exchange for their birthright and yours – your principles and your rights, without which, no lesson can be learned.

As the left implicitly understands (and which the rest of us once knew), taking your attention off of what is the highest good, and focusing it upon the immediate and urgent desire you hunger for, is the best way to separate you from your Rights and from your ability to recognize what is true. The more mileage that can be put between you and your principles, the more easily you can be led. The nature of temptation is that you don't gain power over people through forcing their compliance, but from their being tempted into following your wishes... and helping them to 'forget' that choosing ‘just this one time’ means for all time – that to corrupt a principle is to cripple it, and to abandon a principle 'for a time', is to abandon your grip upon the eternal truths in exchange for a satisfying morsel... for the moment. But since it took over a century of corrupting the educational system to rid it of such lessons for most of us, they’re not about to enlighten you on that score.

Once upon a time in America, a good professor could take a passage like that of Esau’s pottage, and spend the entire day, if not the week, drawing lessons out from it, lessons that would Enlighten their students understanding of how best to live, which, once upon a time, was what teachers taught in order to Educate their students – it was Why they were Teachers, and why parents sent their children to be their students. But that was back when an Education was understood as, not a means of training you in skills to earn a living, but as something which made you better at living, something which made you capable of being a moral, self-governing individual and fit for living in liberty with their fellow man. Back then they understood that a side benefit of a good education was that it enabled a person to earn a living in any field they chose… now… it fits you only with the skills useful… for the moment.

A Slap out of Left field - Just For You
So, now, after all of this, as the deeper slap to the face, I'd like to offer to you, in addition to the political argument, and the threat to your Individual Rights that you and, or, your fellows are selling out for gain, I'd like to point out that they are not the real issue here; it isn't even the rhetorical ability to make an argument that has me fit to be tied. It is your willingness to focus upon this circus in Washington D.C. that is centered around healthcare and the legal standing of all of our individual rights - important stuff, no doubt - but the real issue, the point upon which American has been ushered up to the edge of the abyss, is that you, and it is very likely that I do mean you, have quietly allowed your children's education to be sold for pottage, an 'annoyance' to be conveniently offloaded to govt functionaries to handle so that more urgent hungers of your own could be satisfied, but... tell me... what do you suppose your children are being fed by these people who are employed by (directly or indirectly), and beholden to, the people who are writing 2,000 page bills that no one does or can read?

Hmmm?

Do you think that they are being taught the importance of reading and reasoning? So that they can be fit to fight for, defend and live in liberty?

Have another bowl on me, brother.

Today, lacking such lessons, our students are ‘feducated’ into becoming good workers who scoff at impractical ideas of Right and Wrong, and we thoughtlessly trade away the birthrights of our children to satisfy our urgent need for some pottage.

Or maybe even for some contraception... eh? Yummy.

There is a Method behind the Left's Arbitrary Madness - The Rush to Slut-Gate and Esau’s Pottage, pt 2 of 3

I said in the last post that it was pointless to argue with the accusations which the Left heaps upon us, because the truth of the matter is less of a concern to them than what they can make people believe is true - it is pointless and self-defeating to ask what they mean by their accusations. Rather than risk getting sucked into furthering their purposes, it’s better to ask

• What they are seeking in making the accusations,
• Why they are seeking it, and
• How do they intend you to help them accomplish their aims.

That last, the How, is the most important to grasp first, because in making their claims, it is that How that they use in order to claim that they are just being 'realistic', practical, that they are more concerned with the real world rather than those supposed fantasies and nefarious intents of Conservatives who are so concerned & obsessed with mere 'Western-Centric Rights and Morals'… and it is through exactly that pretense that they manage to avoid reality entirely, imperiling us all.

ar•bi•trar•y/ˈärbiˌtrerē/ Adjective: 1. Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system. 2. (of power or a ruling body) Unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.

Though they claim to be practical, the so-called ‘reality based community’ discards what enables man to understand reality in the first place, a principled regard for Truth, and the erratic behavior which results from that rejection, is the key to what conservatives find so jaw-dropping about the left. What's more, if you're not very careful, engaging in their arguments will pull you into the relativistic quicksand with them - if you give in to their premises, if you slip into arguing over whether 20% or 60% tax rates would be better, or even about the 99% vs the 1%, then you will concede the only solid ground you had to stand upon to begin with – that of Principle.

How do we get sucked into it? Ask yourself this,

• when they have you arguing over whether it is better to keep income tax rates at, say, 30%, or to raise them to 55%... what is it that you are Not discussing or arguing over?
• When they have you arguing over what should be done with the richest 1% who are hurting the interests of the 99%, what is it that you are Not discussing or arguing over?

Once you've followed them into their argument you are reinforcing their premises, and even if you disagree with them in your conclusions, they are not going to justify or explain themselves to you – that would require reaching beyond the moment to the larger principles and truths which they just succeeded in getting you to discard - they will simply reassert their current position more emphatically, and more accusingly and more insultingly than before, because that's the only option left, such as,

"I'm simply speaking out for contraceptive rights [insert conservative objection here] Are you serious? You would deny that to women? How could you violate such a fundamental right? IT'S LIKE YOU WANT TO WAGE A WAR ON WOMEN!!!"

– sound familiar? How do they do that?

The answer is that when they suck you into discussing and arguing over their particulars, one more outrageous than the last, what you are NOT discussing, or even thinking about, is whether or not a government that is concerned with the liberty and Rights of its citizens, should consider having such a power in the first place. What you are not arguing or discussing is whether or not such powers and actions are compatible with "Equal Rights for All", what you are not arguing or discussing is whether or not it is Right to even discuss dealing with any percentage of the population in a more, or less, favorable manner, than any other percentage of the population; in short, what you are not discussing or thinking about, is whether such actions are in any way compatible with your fundamental principles, and the reason why you are not discussing or arguing those important fundamental questions, is because you allowed their attention getting, but unimportant non-essential particulars, to make you forget to consult your principles.

When you mislay your moral compass of Right and Wrong, you become lost at sea. For Conservatives, that's a problem. For Leftists, that's their destination.

For the proregressive leftist, when conservatives oppose them, when they line up detailed arguments about why it is that what they say can’t be true (which, remember, was never a concern of theirs to begin with) they aren’t going to refute that argument, they will simply accuse their opponent over the real reasons (the hidden code words!) that conservatives are attacking them - and if you pay attention, you'll notice they are making your motivations into being decidedly non-conservative ones (that'll be a key issue in my next post on this).

The DailyKos recently had a good example of this tactic in action with one of their moon-bat’s explanations of why it was ok that Bill Maher insulted Sarah Palin, and yet how it was truly shocking that Rush Limbaugh insulted Ms. Sandra Fluke – sorry for the language, it’s his:

“When Rush called Sandra a slut and a prostitute he was bullying an powerless innocent.
When Bill called Sarah a twat and a cunt he was bullying a powerful bully.”

David Axelrod, smearing lipstick on the proregressive pig, gave what amounted to the same position, that:

“"But understand that these words that Maher has used in his stand-up act are a little bit different than — not excusable in any way — but different than a guy with 23 million radio listeners using his broadcast platform to malign a young woman for speaking her mind in the most — in the most inappropriate grotesque ways. And and nor does Bill Maher play the role in the ... Democratic Party that Rush Limbaugh plays in the Republican Party, where he's really the de facto boss of the party. ”

, prettier words more finely spun into glossier lipstick, but it’s still a Pig.

Still, the Conservative, when presented with these statements, will typically bristle as if they were arguments that expressed ideas concerned with reality, and then work to expose their errors – errors being those points where their argument departs from reality – and we’ll work our darndest to show how Fluke was in fact not innocent, that she selected Georgetown in order to cause an incident, and that Palin has never used her power to attack anyone or to shut anyone down, that Mahr himself has a show which he uses to provide powerful politicians and other ‘opinion leaders’ a platform to promote those positions he agrees with, and ridicule those he doesn't, to millions of viewers. But the fact is that even if the conservative were to write an airtight brief proving that and more... the leftist will simply dismiss it as being mean-spirited, or some such, dropping the conservative’s jaw yet again.

Why? Because we miss their point entirely: the reasoning behind their statements, and the supposed argument of ideas, is irrelevant to the Left, such reasoning is of concern only to those who believe that Ideas have a basis in reality and are important because of that – the left does not. The left believes that ideas express positions, not an understanding of what is real and true, but of what they’d like to be real and feel they can get away with making work for the moment. The Left holds Positions; NOT , strictly speaking, Ideas, but opinions which are popularly agreed to – and in such a view it’s not the positions that need explaining – they are simply assumed to be ‘correct’ because the Leftist feels that they are. To their minds their positions are improved not by the demonstrable quality of their argument, but by what passes for conviction amongst the left, large quantities of like minded others who agree with them (hence their almost talismanic regard for the power of polls) – and with such a scale of value, only the positions and motivation for upholding, or attacking, those positions matters.

When the conservative sees the words ‘bully’ and ‘innocent’, their thinking is directed to the meaning of the concepts involved, for instance,

"Hmmm... to bully means to force someone against their will, to initiate Force against someone means violating a persons Rights, Rights derive from the essential nature of man as a reasoning being, Reason requires choosing to ask questions, checking your answers and assumptions against reality, checking to see that you don't go astray and so arrive at what is True, and if true, acting in accordance with that. If that is True, is anything else related to this that raises contradictions and would indicate an error? Does it integrate with other concepts and reasoning's... citizenship? Manners?..."

And so on. Whether or not a person does that implicitly or explicitly, well or poorly, that is the nature of conservative thought, of Western Thought, the nature of logic - if a person was engaging in bullying behavior, forcibly violating the rights of others, a conservative would have to acknowledge that and stop defending them, or be a hypocrite. Conservatism requires Principles and and a respect for Truths that extend and integrate with other concepts and situation.

The dyed in the wool proregressive leftists doesn't go through that process. They don't seek long range, integrated reasoning and cohesive answers, they simply ask whether or not a person is for, or against, the current position of the Left, and if not, attacks them, somewhat like this:

I want this, it'll get me that. Others will support me on it. Is this guy arguing with me a conservative? Have they done or said anything that in anyway can be construed or spun in a mean spirited way? Is there anything they've said, that on its own would resemble that? Is there?! Then that'll work for the moment, "You're a Bully!" Boom Winning!

The leftist is not looking for answers, but for doubts, doubts that can be humored at will, arbitrarily, doubts are what enable them to wish for how things should or shouldn't be - as the old Capital Hill button said, 'Reality is negotiable', and they negotiate unilaterally, dropping the conservative’s jaw yet again.

We shouldn't be surprised though, the truth of the matter was never their point, accomplishing the stirring up of opposition was, and that opposition chips away at the public’s perception of what they are opposing. See Bill Lind’s excellent article, Political Correctness: Cultural Marxism for a deeper explanation, but in a nutshell, they are practicing 'Critical Theory', as in "Critical Race Theory", and every other variation that has evolved from Descartes original 'Method of Doubt':

" What Critical Theory is about is simply criticizing. It calls for the most destructive criticism possible, in every possible way, designed to bring the current order down"

'Is it True?' is a question that is entirely beside the point for the leftist, as Nancy Pelosi so eloquently demonstrated when she was asked where in the constitution the authorization for ObamaCare could be found, she replied:

“Are you serious? Are you Serious?!”

Translation: ‘Do you really mean really? Who cares! What is important is that it helps get what we want and helps sully and silence those who we oppose!’

Their Position is what is important to the left, and they do not seek or desire any basis in reality for it – they Want it. Period.

Dismiss the Arbitrary So here we are, yet again, what do I mean by ‘The Left’, or the Proregressives? Aren't there 'conservatives' who behave this way as well? Yes there are, in fact if you went to college, unless you were forearmed, it's highly unlikely that you don't have a touch of it yourself, which is why when I use those terms, I’m not referring to only Democrats or even Proregressives, or excluding those who place themselves on the Right, I am instead referring to all of those whose thoughts follow from the broad, fundamental philosophical principles (!) which formed, and which are peddled by, modern philosophy.

“There is also a third kind of tyranny, which is the most typical form, and is the counterpart of the perfect monarchy. This tyranny is just that arbitrary power of an individual which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or better, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will. No freeman, if he can escape from it, will endure such a government. ” Aristotle Politics Book IV

From Descartes, Rousseau & Hume, to Bentham, Kant, Hegel and all those who have followed in their footsteps, such as J.S. Mill, Marx & Keynes, this includes not a few amongst those of the Right and of Libertarians as well (Mill in particular, is admired by many among the Right and Libertarians, as a paragon of ‘Classical Liberalism’ – but in fact he was not, he was the one who ended the movement and in his own life as well, going to the grave as a socialist).

The people who learned their reasoning from these guides, are people who, in all of their fundamentals, promote the rule of unreason, the arbitrary desire over reality and that is the rule of power, it is the elevation of the arbitrary to a ‘respectable’ option, or as the New York Times said last year, it is using ‘ "Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth"’, and sadly the most successful means of peddling it, is that of America’s chief contribution to modern philosophy, Pragmatism, best summarized by one of its originators and popularizers, John Dewey – the Father of Modern American Education (you wonder why our schools are what they are), as being

“There is no absolute and unchanging truth, but rather, truth is what works”

, or in other words “What works at the moment, is what is ‘true’ enough” – which amounts to the highly ironic elimination of principle… on principle.

Pragmatism buys them the ability to decide upon how one particular thing appears at that particular moment, without worrying about the next moment; it frees them from having to be consistent in either thought or deed that extends beyond the moment, and as we see daily, such a narrow minded, short term view, is compatible with Power only, and is entirely incompatible with liberty.

But it takes thinking beyond the moment, it takes having a regard for what is true, over what you wish were so, to be able to even form complex conceptual hierarchies, such as the Good, Beautiful and True, to see the unity between them, let alone concepts such as Individual Rights, Property Rights, Right Reason and Natural Law. The left is literally blind to the fact that an Income Tax is a violation of Individual Rights or that Property Rights are the basis of Liberty. Do most conservatives see the ties between these concepts today? Sadly, not so many, no... but that is because they haven't been taught them, our schools having discarded all reference to such matters over the last century or two, but they could understand them if taught, while the leftist, bound to what works for the moment, will see no further than the tangible particulars in front of their face and burning in their desires. Individual Rights and particularly Property Rights, require a respect for Reality, a passion for Truth and an understanding of, and willingness and desire to abide by Principles which extend beyond the given moment, they are the means of pursuing happiness, which cannot be had without them.

Such a short term, narrowly focused view gives a person a dangerous sense of certainty, a hubristic approach to life that says “If I don’t see it, it ain’t so”, as is on display with quick witted but exceedingly shallow sorts such as Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher, to whom some of the wisest people in all of history, such as Thomas Aquinas are dismissed out of hand

“They believed in talking snakes… I should listen to him?!”

. It can also be seen more alarmingly in those many instances of regulations gone wild, such as are pointed out in John Stossel’s “Illegal Everything, again and again you see a perspective which refuses to look beyond the fixed particulars involved. 'Something is being sold without a mfg license”, the fact that it's Lemonade in a lemonade stand, or Girl Scout Cookies being sold on the front lawn of two children.. cannot make it past their particularized and dis-integrated point of view.

Their self-satisfied, self-sufficient and underfunded excuse for ‘common sense’ is what enables the leftist to believe that when Bill Maher refers to Sarah Palin as a despicable conservative, he is simply ‘speaking truth to power’ (what an embarrassingly childish phrase, I've always expected it to be followed by "But MOM! I'm ELEVEN years old!"), and justifies any other insult that comes to mind.

That is the Left. It is always and relentlessly seeking to breakdown any and every far reaching or long term rule or custom or anything else which holds up standards which are concerned with the long term. Modesty, manners, respect for parents, respect for authority, postponing engaging in various activities until an adult or married or anything else – to whatever extent something is based upon the long term and wider truths, by their very nature they are in opposition to and frustrate what can pragmatically be done now, right now, to make something work! - for the moment.

There is no need for conspiracies here, no need for organized cabals, it is simply what results when you seek what you want, more assiduously than your respect for what is and must be – when you put your desires over what you know to be True, you will begin a progressive collapse from the highest, broadest and deepest of integrated understandings possible of life and your place in it, downwards to the shallowest, shortest term, most particularized of desires focused upon pleasure and power you can achieve for the moment – that is just the way ideas work out when put into practice. The expediency of the moment is the fulfillment of the desires they seek - that is the only ‘Truth’ that can be cared about by those who willfully seek the short term over the long term, stimulation over happiness – Principles, in-depth concepts, logic, even reality itself, come into opposition with the Left, and it is unavoidably so.

The best way to rid ourselves of the Proregressive Left, is through the same method that they used to gain a foothold in America in the first place – through Education. But this time that Education must be one that respects reality, as a whole, rather than one that denies it, one track of thought at a time.

Left Alone
So how do you respond to the left, whose accusations are not based in reality, but only in how they arbitrarily want reality to be? One clue can be found in one of the Founding Fathers of Western Civilization, Aristotle, who said that the only proper response to an arbitrary statement, was to not respond to it, but to dismiss it out of hand as being arbitrary, and he’s right.

You cannot correct the arbitrary – it isn't that it's false, it's that it isn't even false - correction requires an adherence to reality that the arbitrary has by its nature discarded. It's as if someone told you they were using 2+7 = 4, not because they thought it actually added up to 4, but because they wanted it to, they like 7's and don't think it's used often enough. What can you do with that? You can't argue with that, that would require their having a concern for what numbers actually signify, they don't care if it adds up, they like the look and they want you to accept their arbitrary whim. As Aristotle said, you can't argue with that, you simply dismiss them. However Aristotle was never faced with people who buy ink by the barrel and video by the mega bandwidth… we do have to respond, but how?

Don’t bother pointing out that their statement is false – that implies an attempt at logical reasoning which they never even tried for, and as Rush found out, it only spreads the accusation - as with our arbitrary mathematician, they don't care that 2+7=4 is wrong, they just want people talking about 7's, and your arguing with them about it accomplishes their purpose. That is ‘the How’ of their method, that is how they enlist your aid in helping them to spread their accusations, like a virus - you spread it by replying to it, your treating their arbitrary positions as worthy of arguing against, always, always works to their favor in the end.

Don’t play their game, make them play by yours, and you do that, not by responding that contraception is not a right, but by asking them to define what a Right is, and then asking them to define the basis for that. Don’t reply that contraception is not a right, laugh at them - after all they did just say something no more sensible than 2+7=4 - and say something like:

“Contraception’s purpose is to turn procreation into recreation... you want a constitutional right to recreational equipment? You're seriously asking for a governmental policy on recreational sex? What next, Dept of Homeland Orgasmic Delight?!”

, and then bring them back to reality,

“It's not possible that we're talking about the same things here, what is it that you think a Right is?”

, and if they balk,

" What, you just want to hear the sound of your own voice? Let's not waste time, make this mean something, what do you think a Right is?"

The real answer to the question of ‘how do you win an argument with a proregressive leftist?’ is that you cannot win an argument with a leftist, the Left cannot be defeated… but it can be dismissed, it can be left behind, it can be replaced, by refusing to carry it any further forward on the strength of your own willingness to grant them legitimacy.

The truth is that we’ll never be able to defeat the left, but as its adherents disappear through embarrassment and attrition, it can be replaced with people who respect reality and revere the Truth.

Allow the Left to be left behind.

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.