Conservative Boot Camp

I engage in debate with self-defined liberals on a regular basis, both in person and online.  One of the things that I often notice during these debates is the presence of a glaring contradiction in the thinking that my opponents apply to their arguments.  For instance, I was having a conversation with my more liberal daughter the other day, and we got to talking about urban sprawl.  She took off on that idea and started talking about how it would so much better if we, as a society, were to return to small - small communities, small spaces, small footprints.  Her major complaint was about people who wanted to live far out in the sticks but still wanted all the amenities of city life - city water, city streets with sidewalks, city services such as police, fire and garbage, city sewers, etc.  From that point she went off on a tangential rant against big business - you know, the whole “large corporations are bad because…” thing that you hear from a lot of the young people of today.  Corporations don’t care about anything but their profits; corporations are immoral; corporations rob the vitality from the people and communities in which they exist/do business.  I suppose I could elaborate on that theme, but I’d rather not do so - it’s hackneyed, trite and boring to me.  Plus, I’m sure you’ve probably heard it all before.

Waiting until she paused in her rant, I asked her a question which had the effect of stopping her in her tracks - it was a question she couldn’t answer because it spoke to the basic inherent contradiction in her thinking.  The question was: “Tell me, since you’re so opposed to big business and big corporations, why is that you support bigger government through government takeover of businesses, through increased government regulation and through increased government taxation to pay for it all?  Said another way, how do you justify attacking GM, Starbucks and AIG, while supporting cap and trade, mandatory volunteerism and “

This, for her, is one of the underlying defects in her thinking about the world.  Until I pointed it out to her, she didn’t see the inconsistency in her logic.  She supported this line of thinking magically, by which I mean illogically, in order to justify her feelings.  I could tell that she wasn’t happy about being confronted by my hard-line logic, but as the conversation proceeded, I think she calmed down about that.

Let me give you another example of what I’m addressing.  This past week, there was the whole Miss USA controversy.  Perez Hilton (Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr.) attempted, in view of the entire world, to slam what he perceived as intolerance on the part of Carrie Prejean, the entrant from California in the contest, by being incredibly intolerant of her.  He called her ‘bitch’, and then let it be known that he really wanted to all her ‘the C-word’ but toned it down to ‘bitch’.  So, Mr. Lavandeira thought it best to fight intolerance with greater intolerance.  Does anyone elses see the contradiction there?  I’m sure lots of you do.

With virtually every liberal with whom I have a debate, I’m able to find at least one, usually more than one, glaring contradiction in logic on their part.  Personally, I think this is because more liberals than not are predominantly emotive personality types, while I am a predominantly rational personality type.  Other people have said it before, but it deserves to be repeated - liberals operate from their feelings, while conservatives operate from their thoughts.  Since thoughts are more rooted in logic, they’re less likely to contain grand contradictions.  Feelings, on the other hand, are by nature illogical and therefore full of contradictions.