How to Win a Fight With a Conservative

Author

Introduction

Many are asking if our political discourse has gotten too heated. And those people should go to hell!

—Stephen Colbert

So you want to smack some sense into those clueless conservative morons (or morans as they would spell it). Good for you!

Was it your loudmouthed uncle’s ridiculous rants about that socialist Kenyan Nazi in the White House that pushed you over the edge?

Was it those Tea Partiers parading around with their Keep your government hands off my Medicare signs that presented a clear and present danger to your sanity?

Or was it the mere ten seconds you accidentally spent watching Fox News that made you want to shout epithets and throw furniture at your TV?

All of the above?

You’ve heard all the conservative arguments: Liberals are godless socialists who are fixing to bring Grandma before a death panel; liberals are pot-smoking Bible-bashers who are coming for your guns, your wallet, and your fetuses and will turn everyone gay; Obama is a tyrannical dictator who has done absolutely nothing and is destroying America.

Whether you’re a liberal, progressive, Democrat, independent, or someone who’s just tired of conservatives and their idiocy, chances are those righties have driven you mad as hell, and since you picked up this book, you probably can’t take it anymore.

But if you’re like most people, your past attempts at butting heads with conservatives have probably gone one of two ways: (1) you’ve tried reasoning with them, only to come away with that concussive feeling of banging your head against a wall of steel-reinforced ignorance; or (2) you’ve tried screaming at conservatives, only to make yourself hoarse while they go about their business of fouling the air and treading on the poor.

Either way, who could blame you if you’ve decided that arguing with conservatives is a hopeless cause? You probably figure it’s best simply to avoid them, just as you would a crazy person shouting at pigeons in the park (because sometimes it’s better to leave Glenn Beck alone with his thoughts).

But unfortunately, that’s part of the problem with political discourse in America today. Too many reasonable people shy away from debate and let their more determined and vocal right-wing rivals spew their nonsense with impunity. Left unchallenged, it then spreads like crabgrass across the political landscape. Soon it’s everywhere—sprouting up at neighborhood barbecues, surrounding you at the office water cooler, or, when you’re least expecting it, creeping into your Facebook news feed.

By continuing to stay silent, you let them win. That’s why if you want to fight the right, you must stand up and speak truth to stupid.

We won’t lie to you. Beating conservatives into submission is a tall order, especially in this political climate, with ignorance on the rise, reason on the decline, and right-wing douche-baggery at an all-time high.

It’s hard to argue with fact-allergic, reality-impaired imbeciles who are fed a steady diet of misinformation and paranoid delusions from Fox News, right-wing radio squawkers, and loons like half-governor Sarah Palin and half-wit Michele Bachmann.

As Bill Maher put it, Trying to get today’s Republican to accept basic facts is like trying to get your dog to take a pill. You have to feed them the truth wrapped in a piece of baloney, hold their snout shut, and stroke their throats. And even then, just when you think they’ve swallowed it, they spit it out on the linoleum.

So what’s an honest, conservative-loathing American to do?

The answer is to fight them with laughter. That’s where this book comes in handy. We’re not talking about turning political debate into a joke or making a mockery of serious issues. It’s about learning how to wield humor as a weapon, cultivate your sense of irony, and sharpen your arguments with witty retorts. It’s about learning to lighten things up as a way to maintain your own sanity and disarm your opponents.

Mark Twain once said, The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. It’s especially true in political debate. Just think of one of the most effective lines ever used in a presidential debate, when Ronald Reagan was asked during his 1984 face-off with Walter Mondale if his advanced age was a liability. I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign, Reagan said. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.

In addition to helping you wage comedic warfare, this book also offers other handy tips that will help you outwit, out-mock, and outrage your conservative rivals. We will show you how to:

Learn basic rules of engagement, including how to frame arguments to your advantage, point out hypocrisy, and properly ridicule your opponents when necessary.

Explain why the Left is right and the Right is wrong with the dueling Conservative and Liberal Manifestos.

Throw winning comebacks at Tea Partiers, Bible-thumpers, economic ignoramuses, Obamaphobes, and other purveyors of conservative nonsense.

Determine if you suffer from argumentile dys-function and, if so, learn how to avoid deadly pitfalls, such as promoting conspiracy theories, using Nazi analogies, or making the mistake of arguing with idiots.

Identify bullshit arguments, slice through Swiss-cheese logic, and expose fallacious reasoning.

Survive family sparring matches, manage workplace squabbles, and even learn to cope if you’re sleeping with the enemy.

Entertain your friends and terrify your enemies while arguing politics on Facebook and Twitter.

Use conservatives’ own words and deeds against them with the help of a handy guide to some of the most ridiculous, moronic, and laughable things today’s conservative icons have said and done.

Should all else fail, hurl imaginative insults at your knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing opponents by selecting from a handy cheat sheet containing 125,000 winning putdowns.

Politics was never meant to be a spectator sport. Political debate is simply too important to be left to the so-called experts in Washington and the media, who invariably just screw it up for the rest of us. That’s why it falls on ordinary citizens like you to take the fight to the Right and defend America against every intolerant, corrupt, arrogant, greed-mongering, Fox News-parroting, Scripture-spouting, science-hating, reality-denying ideal for which they stand.

If you don’t, the morans have already won.

CHAPTER 1

What It Means to Be a Liberal

Somebody came along and said ‘liberal’ means ‘soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on Communism, soft on defense, and we’re gonna tax you back to the Stone Age because people shouldn’t have to go to work if they don’t want to.’ And instead of saying, ‘Well, excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, Leave-It-to-Beaver trip back to the fifties,’ we cowered in the corner and said, ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

—NBC’s The West Wing

No one can pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but sometime in the last thirty years—between Ronald Reagan’s withering ridicule of all things liberal, George W. Bush’s bullying crusade to stamp out dissent, and the Tea Party’s demonization of the Left as enemies of liberty—conservatives gave liberalism a giant wedgie.

Liberalism never saw it coming. It was too busy flexing its muscles and gazing at its navel, when conservatives snuck up from behind, grabbed it by its tighty-whities, and hung it up on the flagpole. There, liberalism kicked and flailed, while conservatives got everybody to laugh and point. Then, to add insult to injury, they stole liberalism’s girlfriend and lunch money.

Time was, liberalism was a word that conjured such core American principles as social justice, national compassion, and the rule of law. Democrats and even some Republicans used to wear the liberal label with pride. But then conservatives had an idea. What if liberalism could be turned into an embarrassing perversion, like pedophilia, or a disease, like leprosy?

And so they reinvented the word liberal as a catch-all expletive, a sort of shorthand way to describe spineless, godless, elitist, lazy, tie-dyed, pony-tailed, hemp-clad socialists.

To be honest, liberals have done a crappy job defending themselves in the face of this assault. They’ve countered by painting conservatives as heartless, bigoted, illiterate, inbred, unmedicated, homeschooled, backwoods hatemongers. Which, of course, is completely true. But liberals still struggle when it comes to standing up and defining their own core beliefs.

This is true for your average liberal on the street and the Democratic Party as a whole. Despite scoring some big victories, like President Obama’s epic win in 2008, liberals have run into hard times trying to advance their values in the face of relentless conservative opposition. The fact is, liberals often get outmaneuvered by more aggressive and nimble partisans on the Right. As Jon Stewart once put it, It’s not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It’s that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse’s office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.

That’s why, if liberals hope to be persuasive and start kicking some serious conservative ass, they need to stand tall, fight back, and confidently declare who they are and what they stand for. In short, they need to have some balls, preferably not glued to their thighs.

As a first step in girding for battle with conservatives, it’s essential to have a firm fix on your own beliefs. Take the following quiz to determine where you fit in the larger liberal mix.

What Breed of Liberal Are You?

Choose the answers that most closely match your ideological leanings.

1. Which bumper sticker would you most likely put on your car?

2. An asteroid is headed for Earth. You have a seat on the last shuttle off the planet. If you could bring only one book with which to build a future civilization, what would it be?

3. A second civil war has just broken out in America. Who is to blame?