Strategies for debating with lefties

Do your homework on the various topics that are likely to come up. In most cases, there really aren’t that many of them.

America is the best country in the world

  • Name a country with a better track record on anything:
    • Opportunity for upward mobility
    • Feasibility of following any career choice
    • Individualistic spirit
    • Ability to speak one’s mind

Trump was a superb president

  • Foreign policy
  • Trade
  • Deregulation
  • Border wall
  • Best economy ever
  • China virus vaccine
  • 3 Justices and hundreds of judges
  • Energy independence
  • Religious freedom

Election integrity

  • Affidavits
  • Changed dates on ballots
  • Other fixed errors
  • Dead people
  • Double counting
  • Groups of near-100% Biden ballots
  • Dominion software
  • Rejected by other countries (Dominion software and mail-in ballots)
  • All mistakes were in Biden’s favor
  • Republican observers removed
  • Counting stopped
  • More ballots show up in the middle of the night
  • Judges changed rules before and after the election
  • Other improbables: Turnout in Milwaukee compared to, say, Cincinnati (similar demographics) 

Racial supremacy

  • Define racism: discriminating against people based on their race.
  • Don’t let them try to redefine it. It’s like any other ism, like ageism.
  • Police brutality
  • Nothing in any of the cases put forward as proof of police racism actually demonstrate any racism. All they really show is that resisting arrest is a bad idea.

Global warming

  • The computer models are flawed
  • The data over time does not correspond to the dates of increased CO2 from industrialization
  • The real evidence points most strongly towards other factors such as solar activity
  • The people claiming to have a case for man-made global warming stand an awful lot to gain from advocating that position. Many of them are also lefties themselves, who desperately want it to be true.

Immigration

  • Path to citizenship is there for a reason
  • Importance of assimilation
  • Why do so many people want into USA, if we’re supposedly such a lousy country?

Capitalism

In America, “the poor” = “the young”. So much ability to change one’s lot in life through hard work!

Socialism

  • Failed every time it has been tired
  • Immoral, for it treats its citizens as slaves

Socialized medicine

  • Nothing ever runs better when run by the government than when run privately
  • Socialized medicine makes sure that every one has equal medical treatment—which is universally lousy!
  • Universal health insurance is the most preposterous idea ever: supposedly people have a right to a particular manner of financing something?
  • Insurance with pre-existing conditions is not insurance
  • The main drivers of health care costs are the out-of-control liability laws, combined with third-party payments built into the current (highly regulated) health insurance system
  • Developing new drugs and treatments is expensive and entails risks. 

Entitlements

How is anyone entitled to anything? How is it a good thing to force other people to give some of their money to other people? Isn’t that a type of slavery?

Education

  • Get government out of education altogether.
  • By now there are SO MANY examples where the quality of private education, home schooling, or many charter schools is far superior to government schools—and with so much less indoctrination!

Go on the Offensive

Ours is the moral and ethical high ground. You do not ever have to apologize for wanting everyone to be free. They are the ones who want to force others to do their bidding—how dare they hold such contemptible position?

Federalism!

Why not return the various roles that government has assumed back to the states? That approach keeps the politics local. Plus, if one solution really is so much better than another, we will get to see that proof manifest itself.

The immorality of slavery

It’s easy to find yourself defending capitalism on economic grounds, but we really need to educate people about it moral superiority to any other system. In essence, any other form of government is at least somewhat a slave state.

Use their words against them

Racist

  • The way to not be racist is to be color blind
  • “I maintain that no race is at all inferior or superior to any other”. Can you state the same?? Why not?? If you cannot, then you are a racial supremacist, a bigot, a racial chauvinist, etc.
  • History of the democrat party and racism

Science

Watch for opportunities to point to empirical data and studies contradicting their position (they are legion). If they object, you can immediately play the “follow the science” card.

Means by which to pivot

Onus of proof

They are the ones saying that one group of humans knows so much better how others should live their lives that they should indeed force their will on those others. OK, prove it! On what are they basing that assertion?

Hypocrisy

Look for opportunities to point out hypocrisy in their position. These days, there are examples everywhere. 

Don’t put up with their logical fallacies

Straw man, appeal to authority, non sequitur

If they make these sorts of non-hostile mistakes, identify them as such and explain why they are invalid. The discussion can otherwise proceed normally.

Ad hominem, invective, interrupting

End the argument. You might say something like: Why can’t your side have a civil debate?