How Can Conservatives Win the Debate?

[don-o]

How Can Conservatives Win the Debate?

by Arthur C. Brooks - 30 Apr 2016

http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/04/how-can-conservatives-win-the-debate.html

My American Enterprise Institute colleague, Jonah Goldberg, recently wrote a book entitled The Tyranny of Clichés. One of the clichés is that conservatives are rigid, judgmental ideologues. Progressives, by contrast, are praised as flexible pragmatists who seek practical solutions and go wherever the data lead them.

Year after year, this tired old narrative yields an equally tired piece of advice: If conservatives want to win again, they need to forget the moralizing and deal only with facts and figures.

This is a misunderstanding. Conservatives are not too moralistic—they are not moralistic enough! When it comes to the kitchen-table policy issues that affect most American families, progressives make bold proclamations about fairness and social justice that sail by, virtually unquestioned. Conservatives, on the other hand, come across as wonky, unfeeling materialists whose primary focus is money. The left talks about the human experience while the right talks about GDP growth, tax rates, and spending levels.

This is one of the greatest political ironies of our time: In fact, it is materialistic to presume that money and the redistribution of wealth alone can solve tangled social problems. It is materialistic to conflate human dignity with one’s position on the income scale, and to assert that anyone is oppressed if others earn more than they do. But when progressives present their views to the American people, they often wrap these fundamentally materialistic premises in richly moral language. And voters reward them for it.

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[geronl]

That is because there is no debate. The left controls the schools, colleges and media and they will never allow any debate

[don-o]

That is because there is no debate. The left controls the schools, colleges and media and they will never allow any debate

And television controls the minds. And all our politicians tailor their messages for television.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

My opinion, go with your own personal point of view. Why are *you* a conservative? Get real, be honest, insightful, and lay it out for them. My own worldview was shaped by a personal recognition that giving people thing does nothing for people. They are taught nothing, build no character, etc. Letting people earn things is much better and gives them self esteem. Fact and figures will convince nobody, never has. I'm a serial internet arguer who's been arguing back and forth on the net since around 2000. Never convinced anyone with facts and figures.

Take guns, you can quote facts and figures on guns all night and day, nobody will ever be convinced, ever. However, explain your own POV, why you like guns and think the 2nd amendment is an important right.