Keeping on the Offense: More Lessons for Our Side

If we are going to win this thing, this battle to retake our culture and our country, you are going to have to learn to love to fight.

This battle can’t be left to a few champions who do battle on the airwaves or on cable or on the Internet, or who just do their part tweeting and Facebooking. While we Constitutional conservatives, Tea Partiers, or whatever we call ourselves have been punching above our weight – the merely crappy debt ceiling deal would have been an unholy abomination of a deal if not for the intransigence of our Congressional allies supported by our voices from outside the Beltway – the fact is that we need more warriors. That’s you.

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And to be a warrior you need to want to fight. You need to need to fight. I’m not talking about punching and kicking – though if someone wants to go there, hey, let’s rock. This is spoken or written combat, whether the battlefield is a cocktail party or a Facebook page. And it’s vital. These are serious issues that are worth fighting over. Our Founders didn’t think they were making a country for a bunch of simpering, goody-goody wimps who go all wobbly at a harsh word or a raised voice. Democracy requires guts. Nut up.

People whine about fighting, cry over “bickering,” stammer out clichés about “bipartisanship,” “compromise” and being “reasonable.” Well, I reject bipartisanship, compromise and reasonability, and so must you. I want to fight and to win; death or glory. Compromise is for losers – half a turd is still 100% turd. But enough about the debt ceiling bill.

Now, people who don’t fight for a living, for whom conflict, advocacy and argument are not part and parcel of their everyday lives, the strategy and tactics of ideological battle can be intimidating. You need to get past that discomfort; expanding on my prior Big Government post “Going on the Offensive,” here is some basic training in political fisticuffs.

The first step is to understand the strategy for regular folks getting involved in the battle. What you want to do is help increase the strength and effectiveness of the overall Constitutional conservative movement using the tools everyone has access to – social media and personal interaction. As you get more involved, you may move on to bigger things – like public speaking or appearances on conservative internet and radio shows. Do you think the well-known people doing those things now always did them? Most started out as regular folks who got mad and started sounding off with a computer or at a Tea Party event.

But to start, the key is your small-scale interaction with people you know or encounter in daily life. You have incredible power in this arena – face-to-face and/or social media communication with those who know you is the most effective way to change minds of the undecided and to back-up those allied with you. But remember, your objective is to reinforce those who agree with you and sway the uncommitted. Those so dumb they actually believe liberal nonsense are beyond your help; don’t ever try to convert them. Your interactions with them should either raise the morale of our side, or convert the neutral – usually by demonstrating how ridiculous the lib’s pinko agenda is.

You will eventually have to fight, to get into the ring and battle with the views of our liberal/progressive/commie opponents. If you look weak and react meekly, our allies will lose heart and the uncommitted will look for the strong horse. You have to win, and that means fighting. It can be uncomfortable, unpleasant, even enraging – at least for normal people. Some of us love it. Regardless, you need to be ready.

Note what is missing from this discussion – substantive facts. These are not irrelevant – they are critical. You need to educate yourself on things like our Constitution and the Founder’s vision, on the global warming scam, on the war on terror, on the issues of the day. Effective argument and advocacy require you to have a solid understanding of these things, and the conservative alternative media provides you with a wealth of the facts and concepts you need to understand before you enter into the ring.

With your substantive knowledge in hand, you are ready to start. Here are some tactics you need to recognize. I see them all the time, not only in the political arena (You can monitor my liberal abuse on Twitter) but in court too. And here are also some battle drills to allow you to respond, counterattack, and seize the initiative.

Shifting Arguments: One thing you’ll see all the time are liberals who shift their argument when you make a point, usually to an ad hominem attack (see below). For example, they blather on about some commie nonsense – “The economy is roaring back!” – and then you mention that the stock market fell 500 points and the lib replies that “You Tea Partiers are terrorists!” It’s annoying, so expect it and be ready to counter it.

Remember, you are not trying to convince the lib of anything. The lib is a tool…in several senses, but the one that matters here is that the lib is a tool of instruction for those uncommitted and a tool to use to support those on our side. You do what you do in an ambush – you turn into the ambush and charge firing. Call them on it – “Why are you changing the subject? Why don’t you want to talk about the stock market disaster and Obama’s 9%+ unemployment rate?” Don’t follow when the lib leads you away; drag that pinko twerp right back to where you can hammer him.

Ignore the nonsense, and reinforce the weakness and evasion of your opponent. Those on your side want you to point out the evasion; the uncommitted need to see that the lib can’t defend itself. And it will annoy the lib. So it’s a winning tactic all around.

Outright Lies/Inaccuracy: Libs lie. Sometimes it’s intentional. Libs are inaccurate. That’s because many of them are idiots and believe nonsense. There’s nothing like being lectured about Saddam Hussein’s lack of WMD by some goateed hipster doofus whose military knowledge consists of picketing an ROTC office on his college campus when your job in the Gulf War was WMD defense. Lies and inaccuracies need to be called, and it’s best to do it in a way that shines a spotlight on your opponents’ dumbassary. In the example above, I called for a show of hands of everyone who was a chemical-nuclear-biological weapons defense officer with service in the Persian Gulf. Then I suggested anyone without his paw in the clouds ought to shut the hell up. No one remembered what the off-duty barista had been yammering about.

False Premises: Similar to lies and inaccuracies, but more pernicious, are false premises. A false premise is an assumption that you are intended to accept and which then constricts and limits you. For example, libs often argue under the false premise that global warming actually exists. A recent false premise that gained a lot of traction lately is that the budget cannot be balanced by cuts alone. The idea behind false premises is to pretend that “everyone knows” whatever is being asserted so that you can’t even begin to counter it. If you accept a false premise you’ve already lost – your allies will get frustrated and the uncommitted will buy into them.

Drive your liberal opponents nuts by not merely refusing to accept false premises but by aggressively pointing them out and rejecting them. Watch those pinko twerps fuss and fume when you announce that “Global warming is totally real – I know because my unicorn told me!”

They’ll likely respond with their pseudo-scientific talking points – remember, in their world, we conservatives hate science – but you cannot get let yourself get trapped in a study versus study argument. Yeah, real science – and our freaking eyes – demonstrate that climate change is a towering scam of almost incomprehensible foolishness, but talking about studies is boring. Remember, you’re not there as part of some college dorm bull session where you are engaged in a collective journey of discovery unravel eternal truths.

You are there to support your allies and convert the unaligned. So instead of talking about fake tree ring studies, compromising emails and imaginary hockey sticks, talk about how if it’s hot it’s global warming and how if it’s cold it’s global warming and wonder how anyone can believe something where any and all fact patterns supposedly conclusively prove it. Call nonsense nonsense.

Undermining a bogus premise makes liberals foam at the mouth, so you should do it as often as possible. For example, in the debt ceiling fight, the premise was that the current level of spending was somehow so sacrosanct that it was literally incomprehensible for anyone to advocate cutting it. “You can’t cut your way to a balanced budget!” they would cry. Well, of course you can. You’d have to cut the federal budget by about 40%, but you could. You’d just make a whole bunch of deadbeat Democratic constituents very unhappy that the gravy train has pulled out of the station, taking their handouts with it.

That provides you a great opportunity to attack an even deeper and more pernicious premise – that the federal government ought to be paying for the food, shelter and/or medical care of anyone who isn’t an injured veteran. Talk about blowing liberal minds – and opening those of the uncommitted! By attacking the false foundational premise of the New Deal you undermine their most treasured and, until recently, untested beliefs. Many Americans have never been exposed to the idea that people ought to look to themselves for support rather than Uncle Sucker – the mainstream media and academia are the status quo’s top cheerleaders. Opening the eyes of people is part of the magic of undermining false premises – along with really annoying the lefties.

Ad Hominem Attacks: So, you’ve refused to accept the lefty ruling class premises set forth by your Prius-driving, COEXIST sticker-having opponent. And now he’s mad. His mind can’t accept that you have rejected the concepts he holds most dear; he will react with an impotent, sputtering anger and basically start calling you names. Racist, Islamaphobe, Nazi – you’ll hear them all. And of course, there are the fruits of the New Civility – hostage-taker, terrorist, Teabagger. Remember – we’re all crazy.

There are a few options when the other guy starts calling you names. First, you don’t need to get all flustered by this breach of decorum – I often lay right back into them. Again, this isn’t a debating society. If you look weak your own side loses heart and the uncommitted want nothing to do with you because you look like a loser. Plus, calling a moron a moron can be truly satisfying.

Or you can own it. Called a “racist” by some commie twerp? Laugh – and label everything he says as “racist” to show how ridiculous it is. Labeled a “Nazi” by some No Labels dork? Discuss how National Socialism is still socialism. They will vapor lock. Dubbed a “Teabagger”? Express wonder that a liberal has finally found a perversion he and his cohort don’t wholeheartedly embrace. Humor and a refusal to care are powerful tactics to defeat obnoxious name-calling gambits.

In some venues you may chose the high road – I hate the high road, but it needs to be in your tool chest. Call your opponent on his rudeness and mention that it simply shows that he can’t argue his case. In places like court, you need to do this as judges frown on you responding to an ad hominem assault with a comment like “Hey stupid, maybe you should kiss my ass.” Courts are no fun. Regardless, assess your audience and do what will make you look best and what will make your opponent look worst.

This is not an exhaustive, in-depth course in fighting with liberals. You learn to do it the same way you get to Carnegie Hall – practice, practice, practice. But the tactics aren’t nearly as important as attitude. These people are wrecking your country – you need to want to stop ’em. You need to want to fight. Now go get them.