I have been talking about politics with my liberal friends for years.  Of course, it is almost like talking to a wall, and I have always wondered why that was.  For me, a political discussion revolves around historic facts and economic arguments–arguments based on evidence.  I can have the same discussion with the same liberal again and again, and the facts just never seem to sink in.  “The evidence shows you are wrong”, and yet they continue to argue.  Bizarre.

I can learn from my children.  They are young adults now, and believe me, the environment in colleges today is much more hostile toward logical thinking than it was a generation ago.  In my generation, the college paper was a liberal rag, and the conservative college paper was banned from having an office on campus, but distribution of the conservative paper was tolerated.  As “tolerant” liberals control a higher and higher percentage of key faculty positions, less and less freedom of expression is tolerated.  Now the conservative college paper is not allowed on campus at all.

From this hostile environment, emerges a conservative who is not willing to give up his values, just because they are unpopular.  With some keen observations:  “Don’t bother with evidence”, because liberals today are completely averse to thinking, evidence carries no weight with them, so don’t bother.  “Liberal arguments and thinking are keyword based”, this is why they are unshaken by evidence–so long as the argument sounds right, contains the proper keywords, then it must be true.

So, how to argue with a liberal?  find a keyword that rings “bad”.  Favorites are “segregation”, and “bias”.  Simply reword the liberal’s argument, using the negative keyword:  “so what you are saying is that if we segregate students based on gender, then that will create two separate but equal environments, each of which is better for the segregated group”.  Argument won.

What a simple and brilliant observation.