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Causing Offense from the High Ground
In recent passionate, well-written, and engaging posts, Susan Quinn and “Martel” (I can only assume his first name is Charles) call for a new boldness, a kind of rhetorical trench warfare that rejects the strictures of nobility, decorum, and the high ground in favor of what the left has demonstrated actually works: insults, personal exposé, and relentless attack.
There’s a lot to like in this. I agree that timidity is a signature trait of conservatism, ill-suited for engaging an opponent only too ready to abandon any pretense of reason and moderation and dive down into the muck. Calls to meet our political foes on their own level are growing more common and more strident – largely, I’d argue, because the left has sunk to such depths of discourse that effective yet principled engagement seems impossible.
Something needs to change, with that I absolutely agree. But I wonder if perhaps, by calling for a lowering of our own standards (and that is how I see it), we are taking the easy road, sparing ourselves the discomfort of doing what is consistent with the call to boldness yet also in keeping with our higher standards of reason and discourse.
Whatever happens in the political arena, we conservatives are losing the cultural battle and, with it, the war for western civilization. And we’re losing it with hardly a metaphorical shot fired, because of that very timidity that I’ll join with Susan and “Charles” in decrying.
Before I encourage any conservative to abandon reason and decorum and surrender the high ground, I’d first ask him this: Have you spoken plainly and boldly about the cultural battles we’re losing, without regard to whom you might offend? Have you really tried to engage the cultural enemy bluntly, and in a way that might risk making you unlikable?
Here are some fronts in the culture war, and the stands I think conservatives should take, loudly, plainly, and boldly:
- Men and women are different, with different strengths and interests and needs. Telling men and women otherwise is setting them up for unhappiness and failure. We’ve been misleading our kids about this for decades, and we’re paying for this in broken homes and broken lives.
- Homosexuality isn’t normal. That isn’t to say it’s evil, or wrong, or bad, but it isn’t normal human sexual conduct. Portraying it as as normal as heterosexuality is misleading and confusing. Timmy may have two mommies, but that’s the rare exception, and not how humans normally function.
- The “trans” movement is a destructive farce, and a barrier to dealing effectively with mental illness and sexual confusion. When it involves children, it’s particularly abusive and destructive.
- Global warming alarmists are being ludicrous when they pretend that their weak models can even begin to predict climate change, much less the cost of climate change, a half a century in the future. Impoverishing the world now to address this poorly supported hypothetical crisis is bad for everyone – and most particularly for the world’s poorest people.
- High minimum wages rob the weakest, least employable members of society from the necessary opportunities for advancement, while simultaneously hurting businesses, slowing the advancement of the marginally employed, and destroying jobs. No one actually benefits from high minimum wages.
- America does not a have a racism problem. America has a racism industry. Racism is being kept alive by those who profit from victimhood status, and it’s time to stop treating the race-baiting profiteers of hate as if they were on the side of the angels.
- The teachers’ unions are destroying education in urban America, particularly for our poorest and most vulnerable children. It makes no sense to be pro-choice about the life or death of an unborn child, but anti-choice when it comes to the next 18 years of that child’s life. Let parents pick their schools, and let failing schools fail.
- If requiring a photographic ID for voting is racist and discriminatory, then requiring a photographic ID for a gun purchase must also be racist and discriminatory. So why are liberals in favor of making it harder for black people to own guns? What’s with that?
- Letting boys in the girls’ locker room is ridiculous, dangerous, and a frankly stupid idea. It isn’t going to happen.
- America’s universities are afraid to let young people hear conservative ideas because the faculty know that conservative ideas are better than progressive ideas, and that the latter can’t compete on a fair playing field. Suppressing the competition of ideas keeps students ignorant.
You get the idea. There are all sorts of things that we can say that will make people uncomfortable and get us talked about, but that don’t require us to embrace anything distasteful. The left says so many stupid things, it’s easy to find ways to contradict them that are both truthful and sure to upset someone.
I think we can cause plenty of offense without surrendering the high ground. I don’t think we’re trying very hard.
Published in Culture
Here’s my thought. If we want a political party to reflect the values we support, those in elected office should be up front saying the things they know to be true. Those things that were included in the OP are a starting point. If the Republican Party is that Party then all those elected should acknowledge that list or face opposition from all conservatives who believe that list reflects truth. This has been missing. I also think there is much to support among the ideas set forth by @Martel and @susanquinn. Do both.
Dear Both of You: I think you agree, mostly (and certainly about ends).
One of the biggest and best reasons that the American people (enough of them, anyway) elected Trump had nothing to do with specific policies. Instead, they sought to bash down the barriers to open debate that the left had erected. Trump may not have been the perfect tool for the job (remains to be seen), but he was the only bash-ready one on offer. Whether we like Trump, loathe him, or just regard him with uneasy fascination, the Donald bashed, is bashing and will bash some more though Lord only knows how long he’ll be able to keep it up. So: Carpe Diem!
I see two distinct but linked efforts that need to be made. One is to defend conservative ideas. The other is to promote the free exchange of ideas and information that allows conservative ideas to compete and—insofar as reality is conservative—to win.
First, there is the defense of conservative ideas. Strategies can be different depending on who you are and what circumstances you find yourself in, and whom you are intending to influence. All of them are, in their place, valid, and more of them would be available to us had the danger to free speech and robust dialectic been recognized sooner.
There are actual Leftists, the activists, the politicians and other public figures who can be more aggressively argued with…there are the thugs, with whom there is no point in arguing…and then there are the people who listen to NPR, read the New York Times and vote Democrat with a confidence born of ignorance. Most of us are probably going to be working on the problem at this third level—the level of personal life and relationships.
I know that it is this latter group that can be affected by reason or even simply by our willingness to speak up and name ourselves, because I was one of them. The professional progressive’s syllogism— all conservatives are horrible, this person is conservative, therefore this person is horrible— only works if non-horrible conservatives don’t declare themselves.
Reticence has very valid excuses: it seems silly to contradict every little thing, life is short, why ruin the picnic, plus no one likes to be thought of as racist/sexist/homophobe/hater of poor people…and that’s before we get to the threatened or actual punishment visited upon heretics.
Having had a tiny taste of this last, I can understand why people whose livelihoods are at stake shut their mouths…though happily not, as it turns out, their minds. (“Hence,” I tell my liberal friends, “Trump.”)
On the other hand, I can attest from that same personal experience that when other people witness the attack of a SJW/Thug on a nice, reasonable human being, that in itself is mind-opening and mind-changing.
So Henry is right: ordinary conservative people engaging in day-to-day social intercourse should pipe up and counter the quotidian and usually mindless utterances of leftist friends, relatives and colleagues, and for the most part they should do so in a reasonably well-mannered fashion.
If I look back at my years of automatic left-liberalism, I can think of moments in which I had the “wait…what?” feeling that a little polite push-back can induce. Like that time a black FBI agent informed me that no, he planning to vote for McCain. (And yes, it was embarrassing to be caught out in race-based presumptuousness!)
To fail to speak can be a kind of lie, and there’s a commandment… But it is okay to be strategic when speaking the truth. If, in normal conversation, I can think of that FBI agent and content myself with creating just a sliver of daylight between an ordinary left-ish person and his/her notions, I’ll probably do more good than harm.
Second: there is the matter of defending the open dialogue itself. It’s connected because, in a free exchange of ideas, conservatism (and Western Civilization) wins.
Nice Left-Liberal Friend: “Trump is dreadful!”
Me: “He is something, isn’t he?”
NLLF: “Did you hear about this dreadful thing Trump did/said/tweeted?”
Me: “Holy Moley. I know just what you mean.” (Well, aren’t there plenty of things Trump does that I would prefer that a POTUS not do/say/Tweet?)
Me: “The thing is, Trump is not the problem. Trump is a symptom.”
NLFF: “Yes! A symptom of America’s racism/sexism/Islamophobia…”
Me: “Well, partly. But I think he’s more than this. I think Trump is like a fever that signals the presence of an infection. Open conversation and debate are America’s immune system! And anything that suppresses speech is akin to AIDS!”
NLFF: “Oh, you mean like Trump not letting cameras into the press briefings!”
Me:”Yeah, and the violent riots on college campuses that keep speakers like Ben Shapiro and Charles Murray from speaking…”
Getting a progressive to affirm free speech and the First Amendment is important—more important, IMHO, than getting them to approve of Trump. Trump is temporary (4-8 years) but the American Constitution is, I fervently hope, permanent.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand your response. I do believe that, for the vast majority of conservatives, it is a fear of appearing intolerant and bigoted that prevents them from saying, for example, that they think this trans nonsense is just that: nonsense. I don’t think most people expect to suffer violence as a result. I think they fear being ostracized.
That’s the point I was making. The fact that some people do experience violence doesn’t make that point any less valid. Most people don’t, and wouldn’t, experience violence. But we’ve been conditioned by the dominant pop-cultural drivers (e.g., and most conspicuously, entertainment media) to believe that only a bigot would oppose novel expressions of human sexuality as anything other than normal. It’s that fear of standing out, being uncool, being boorishly old-fashioned, causing offense, that keeps so many of us quiet. Not a fear that the people around us will strike us.
Now let me relate that back to the greater point of my original post. Before we do something really radical, we should exhaust do some obvious things better than we have. Before we adopt techniques to which we quite rightly object, we should take full advantage of those options we do have that are consistent with our values. We should speak up, and stop letting the cultural transformation juggernaut roll over us.
I mean no disrespect, Henry, but how will we know when this time has arrived? To some degree, we have spoken out about these issues. How many people, websites, blogs, twitter feeds and Facebook posts do we need to make to convince ourselves that we have exhausted our efforts to do things better? I so want to agree with you; I’m just not convinced.
If you’d omitted the please be honest part, I’d have been happy to let that go by. I’m sorry, D, if the comment stream has become a little hard to parse. But, for the record, you’re making a logical mistake in your reading.
Here is the phrase of yours that I quoted, and my response to it:
The fact that there are some conservatives, who are not “rabble-rousing pundits,” who say these things is beside the point: they aren’t common, and most conservatives don’t say these things. A few quiet, thoughtful men do — and Charles Murray is the best example. Some radio talk-show loudmouths do, and some sensationalist conservative firebomb-throwing speakers do. But normal conservative people don’t, either because they don’t care or because (what I believe) they don’t want to deal with the pushback and the diminished respect they might experience.
I hope that’s clear enough now.
D,
I do appreciate you taking the time to comment, even if we might be rubbing each other the wrong way and generating a little more friction than is necessary, given how much (as @katebraestrup observes elsewhere) we undoubtedly agree on almost everything. I’m going to cut short the rest of my responses, and address only one more point from your comments — mostly to avoid boring everyone.
(In the following, I’ve elided comments to capture the points on which I want to comment.)
Part of what I’m trying to say in the original post is that we don’t need a megaphone. Most Americans are far more conservative than the nonsense being spouted by the left. I think what is so often missing is a nucleus around which less activist conservatives can gather, something to make them feel safe expressing opinions they hold but are fearful of sharing.
This isn’t a new idea. It’s the Emperor’s new clothes. It’s Edmund Burke on the triumph of evil. It’s an interesting and oft-overlooked detail of the dreadful Milgram experiments that showed that, yes, while people will do terrible things when they think they’re obeying authority, often all it takes to stop them is one voice of reason mounting an objection.
We are cultural sheep being slaughtered by progressive wolves. We don’t have to become wolves to stop it. We just have to stop being sheep.
Susan, nothing in that paragraph strikes me as a bad idea. And, truly, if that’s what you’re calling for, then you and I actually are in agreement.
It’s calls for a politics of personal destruction, for civil disobedience, for giving the left a taste of its own medicine, for adopting the destructive and dishonest tactics of Alinsky and his ilk, to which I object. Because it’s incumbent on us to exhaust the options we do have, the ones that are consistent with our values and our greater integrity, before we resort to such desperate measures.
If you aren’t calling for things like that, then you and I are on the same page. (And, either way, our goals and values are undoubtedly similar, even if we may differ in our tactics.)
This is true, I think, and sounds straightforward. Remember though that the end being agreed to is a restoration of a constitutional system that places process(means) above outcomes(ends). I always get nervous when promoting ends.
One issue I see when it comes to public debate is the Bubbling of American life. Elsewhere, @MJBubba and I have talked about how difficult it is to listen to NPR. I used to listen to NPR all the time. Now, I can only endure it for a few minutes. I can only assume that leftists feel the same way about Fox news.
Partly, the problem is aesthetic. I’ve come to loathe the aesthetics of NPR—the soothing, tweedy older voices, the nasal millenials. I haven’t quite gotten used to all the cleavage on display on Fox, however, and I can’t imagine that curious left-liberals aren’t turned quite thoroughly off by that alone.
I keep imagining billboards… with simple, factual, challenging but not intrinsically offensive messages. They could even be open questions, e.g. “Have you actually watched the Planned Parenthood videos?” “How many immigrants should the United States admit every year?” “What is the Democrat’s plan to protect African Americans from being victimized by violent crime in Chicago, Baltimore and other American cities?”
Exactly!
Susan, your original post never called for violence. Nor, I think, did Martel’s. But both hinted at a kind of escalation to meet the enemy “head-on,” as you put it. In Martel’s piece, there’s considerable hinting, particular at the end, that it’s our reluctance to descend to the same level of barbarism as the left that is holding us back. He closes with:
Your post and Martel’s were more the impetus than the target for my own: I’ve heard other conservatives clearly and unambiguously call for a descent into the cesspool of leftist mayhem. I want us to work a little harder where we are. Or a lot harder, actually.
Right—that’s why I’m inclined to see mine as a two-pronged effort. First, to persuade people of a specific view (e.g. “police officers are not the primary threat to African American life”) but second, and
probablymuch more importantly, “America depends upon open and free debate protected by the First Amendment.”By the way, it was Jordan Peterson’s ringing call to “never apologize” that stiffened my spine when it came to dealing with my colleagues. We think we’re being reasonable, considering the opponent’s feelings and point of view, we think we are going to find common ground. That’s because we think it’s a conversation.
When it comes to the true-blue SJWs, it is important to know that it is not a conversation. When it was my turn in the barrel, I was informed (in that deceptive, caring liberal-voice) that my failure to engage and affirm a narrative that had not even been voiced caused “harm.” Apologizing would definitely, as Peterson points out, be taken as weakness. And you’ll notice that they don’t apologize. At most they express regret that you feel what you feel—and they frequently take the opportunity to name just what those feelings are. E.g. “defensiveness” and “white fragility” etc.
If you find yourself in a “conversation” with any of these people, do not engage and never, ever apologize.
For those among you who feel strongly about loving your neighbor, I remind you (as I so often must remind myself) that the masochist does the sadist no spiritual or moral favors. It isn’t love to allow someone to abuse you. We owe it to the neighbors on the left as we owe it to all sinners— insofar as we have the power, we should seek to make abuse more painful for the abuser than for the abused.
Nor do I, Susan. I’m delighted by the Ricochet crowd and by both the tone and the thinking I encounter here.
How will we know when we’ve exhausted our conservative options, and it’s time to try unconventional tactics more in keeping with the left’s — possibly including some things that we truly don’t want to play a part in America’s political discourse?
We’ll know when we’ve actually spoken up, even at the risk of causing offense and hard feelings, damaging relationships, and putting ourselves at risk. Kate said it, above:
That’s hard to do. It’s easy, as others have pointed out, to do it here on Ricochet. I do it on Facebook as well, and I know it rankles some of my less conservative friends. I run into people in my community whom I know are liberals and who read my posts, and there’s sometimes a little bit of tension there (though not as much as I’d expect).
But, much more often, I run into people who read my posts and tell me how much they like them, and how, sometimes, they’ve strengthened them in their own opinions and made them more willing to express conservative ideas in potentially hostile situations.
The big challenge, I think, is making the leap Kate describes in that paragraph above: saying what all of us here believe in social contexts where people don’t expect the dominant paradigm to be challenged. That’s hard. It’s probably easier, frankly, to meet an ugly leftist activist head-on, matching ugly for ugly, than to voice a sensible but never-spoken opinion in a social setting among normal people who simply assume no one would ever speak up.
I just think we’re all better off if we conservatives overcome our reluctance to risk minor offense in service of a good cause.
I think so too. But I don’t underestimate the difficulty. The problem is that you—or at least I—get mad. And once I pull the cork…
I also know that, when I began to slide to the right, it took time for the arguments to soak in. Things that now seem blindingly obvious to me were novelties at first. I was motivated to understand—not everyone will be, except (and this is important) by their wish to remain in relationship with you, either forever or for the duration of the cocktail party.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere one of the advantages I had was that I worked with conservatives and loved them (still do). So the syllogism didn’t work for me. Even if you don’t want to get into a long argument about gun control with a progressive at the company picnic, you could counter remarks like “oh, those damned Republicans!” simply by saying “I’m a Republican.” Smile lovingly, and wander off to help serve the hamburgers or whatever. Confounding the syllogism won’t persuade the hardcore SJW (who believes that Western Civilization is a gigantic conspiracy masked by, among other things, manners) but it will make it more difficult for him/her/they/xhe to persuade the normal people.
Incidentally, if you happen to be gay, trans or Of Color—even better! In fact, confounding the syllogism may be the one really good reason I’ve got for remaining in the Unitarian -Universalist church!
This is a very good point, Henry. I would not participate in violence, nor encourage it. Even for me and my arguments, that’s too large a step to take. I think one of us needs to create a detailed scenario that would illustrate what we are talking about: the conversation, back-and-forth of an encounter, with two sides (or more participating).
Excellent idea. In fact, such a “use case” or storyboarding technique might be a valuable tool for equipping conservatives with arguments, and for giving examples of presentation techniques that might actually persuade people. Imagine such a resource — maybe even with short videos acting out the exchanges….
I. Like. It.
Now if I can just figure out how to work it in with my day job…. ;)
Hey, @martel, Henry and I have this great idea for you to work on . . .!
Bootcamp for conservative warriors. I love it!
I won’t repeat the same arguments already made, which will only elicit the same responses. Mr. Racette and I have both put forth our thoughts. Instead, I will make the following observations.
First, to the passage quoted from the OP. Most conservatives/classical liberals don’t take every opportunity to spout their political views. I don’t sit down at a dinner party with friends and start running down the talking points of the OP. The leftists are the ones who think everything is political, remember? The rest of us have lives outside politics and friends with differing views. There’s a time and a place for political discourse and that is the time and place where the shouting-down, the violence, and other consequences happen. That’s where the megaphone comes in.
I don’t seek out controversy but don’t shy from it when it finds me. That’s what happened to Bret Weinstein, Christian bakers and florists, and countless others who were simply going about their business and were not “rabble-rousing pundit[s].” Poke me, and I poke back. If the opportune moment arises, I’ll vent my political views.
Second, I have learned something about persuasion from the guys mentioned here and something about manning the barricades in the culture war from this guy and his guests. Their insights and methods are of practical utility and I have put them to good use. Learn about them and try ’em; they might help. Spoiler alert: quoting Burke isn’t part of it.
Finally, since Mr. Racette likes to quote Burke, I’ll see your Burke and raise you a Wittgenstein:
Here’s some folks to sing it for you. See if you can find some Burke set to music.
One of my favorite pundits, Mark Steyn, once observed that, when Islamic extremists sought to censor, through violence, the publication of cartoon depictions of Muhammad which they found offensive, the best answer was for every newspaper to do what Jyllands-Posten did, and run the cartoons. Because, as he pointed out, “they can’t kill all of us.”
I’m not suggesting that anyone sit down at a dinner party and “start running down the talking points” of my post. That would be silly. But the sensible alternative is not this:
That only makes sense, D, if you want to abandon the field of polite discourse, and leave all the normal people, the ones who don’t engage in shouting down and acts of violence, out in the cold.
No, saving common-sense politics, even disagreement, for the battlefields at the edge of civility is a losing proposition, because those people have already demonstrated that they’re ready and willing — probably eager — to go further than most sensible people want to go.
I mean, by the time you find yourself talking to a woman wearing a vagina hat, wouldn’t you be thinking that it would have been nice to have a civil, if perhaps slightly tense, discussion about the biological reality of sexual identity with friends in a normal social setting?
And there are lots of such opportunites. Caitlyn Jenner is in the news now, purportedly considering a run for public office. When that comes up in public — and it already has, in my experience — I take the opportunity to say that I don’t think it’s wise, particularly, to give a man who is mistaken about his own sexual identity the authority he’d have as a Senator. Then we can talk about my belief that such sexual identity confusion is a psychological problem — and I can tell them about the horror stories of children being led down this dismal path in the trans-clinics that are sprouting up like toxic mushrooms.
I’d rather have that conversation than try to make a similar point to a guy who thinks he’s a lesbian because he likes women who believe they’re men. Or whatever.
I meant to say something about this, too—if everyone sews a yellow star on his jacket, the fascists can’t find their targets.
I don’t think timidity is a signature trait of conservatism at all. I think it is restraint. I think our lack-of-action Republicans (and conservative Republicans) show fear, not timidity. However, I believe their fear is of what the MSM thinks of them, not the voters who elected them.
Now that the left and their allies in the MSM have taken their gloves off, we need to abandon our restraint for the fight ahead. Trump-though not conservative-is the person fighting back, and I love it!
Why do we have to choose between fighting from the high ground and from the gutter? Let’s do both. We can make principled arguments on policy while at the same time exposing individual politicians’ hypocrisy and incompetence. We can find out how much Chuck Schumer’s grandkids’ private school tuition is without publicizing the address of their school. We can publicize which wealthy liberal open boarder advocates have walls around their houses and which wealthy liberal refugee advocates are moving because the refugee horde is surrounding their palatial villa and then finally returning to America for the same reason. We don’t have to toilet paper these rich liberals’ houses. I wouldn’t advise it; these gun control hypocrites would have their security squads shoot you dead. Let’s simply expose them for the frauds they are.
You know, a lot of them are normal people. From the part of my comment you didn’t quote:
You steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that you can learn from others. Your ideas about persuasion are neither founded on experience nor on the best scholarship. You can choose to apply the hard-won lessons that others have learned through experience and research. Alternatively, you can continue using the same strategies and tactics that have been failing our cause for years and consequently obtain the same dismal results.
Carry on.
The one big advantage they have is speaking in unison. The Dems hang together while we are split. Just look at the health care bill lying fallow in the halls of Congress, for example. During Obama’s eight years did we listen to the pundits on the left constantly criticize him? No way, even when they knew he was wrong. Meanwhile, you can turn to just about any channel and watch as our own Republicans berate this president. Together we stand; divided we fall. The Dems know that and use it against us. We absolutely must keep our eyes on the ball and get over the petty complaints about his personality or twitter methods.
I agree. It makes sense to show how liberals advocate things they don’t want to embrace themselves. I don’t consider that fighting from the gutter if it relates to policy and the positions they take. Doing it simply for character assassination doesn’t sit well with me, because I want us to talk about the ideas, and not the imperfect people who carry them. But, for example, pointing out that the same Congressmen and movie stars who favor increased gun control enjoy the protection of armed guards makes a lot of sense.
I think it’s interesting, and in a way typical, that a lot of people seem eager to take the fight into the belly of the beast, to meet the ugly leftists on their own grounds and using their own tactics — and yet seem reluctant to engage in a civil but uncomfortable debate in normal social settings.
My children have heard me say, over the years, that “it’s easier to be great than good.” What I mean by that, I’ve explained to them, is that it’s easier to imagine doing the great heroic act than it is to simply be good, day after day.
People who call for a new political party to replace the GOP are, I think, demonstrating this principle. I believe that it is far more plausible to pour time and energy into reforming the Republicans than it is to pour far more time and energy into creating a new party to the right of the GOP (an effort that I am convinced would be certain to fail). But the grand gesture feels better.
One writer here has pointed out that the dinner table isn’t the place for political discourse, that it’s something more appropriate when you’re on the front lines, arguing with leftists. I disagree: it’s far more productive to sway the people around us to our cause than to engage in a shouting match with crazy radicals.
If you don’t seek out controversy, and if you wait until you’re poked before you poke back, then you can go through many a day without ever discussing a contentious issue, because most people don’t want to talk about this stuff. Your average conservative may not like what’s going on, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to bring it up and risk a public disagreement, particularly when there seems not point and no one’s going to change his or her opinion because of it.
But people do change their opinions, and the best way to get them to do that is to deal respectfully with them, to educate them in small doses, to listen to them and understand their positions and then respond to them. It’s not a loud process, but it’s sometimes a stressful process. But it’s worth doing, because we won’t win the culture war by getting into messy altercations with crazy people. We’ll win it by encouraging sane people to begin to speak their minds.
It isn’t enough for us to be passive, or purely reactive. We have to begin engaging, and setting an example of thinking people challenging the unthinking progressive wave that has, in recent years, washed over our culture.
In my opinion.
Character assassination: I have proof your son is a drug addict.
Fair game: Your son was arrested for participating in an anti-Trump riot. You advocate “peaceful protest”.
It’s simple. I wanna know everything liberal elites don’t want us to know about their and their families’ conduct, legal and otherwise.
If there’s a recount in a Senate race, I wanna play legal hardball on which ballots count, like liberal Democrats do.
If you’re a Republican who refuses to vote to repeal and replace Obamacare, you probably won’t need that plum committee assignment or any funds to run for reelection. It’s time to metaphorically crack the heads of anyone who stands in the way of common sense reform.
Well, I guess I’m more interested in talking about the ideas. I really don’t see how someone’s child’s misbehavior reflects on that, not directly. Maybe I’m missing something. But I saw more than enough of that during the vicious Sarah Palin take down, and I guess I don’t want to participate.
Then you don’t want to win. End of conversation. Good luck.