Rightwords... Prudent Conservatism

Even rational discussion is thwarted.

After many months of reading and commenting on various sites I have observed a consistent approach to argumentation by leftwing believers. Behind their mode of response is an unexpressed need for moral support from their friends, so they are primarily playing to their own audience. Here are the tactics I have identified so far:

DT1. You know you are on the right track when all they can serve back is vituperation. This inevitably occurs when they have no real retort.

DT2. You will also soon realize that your most telling arguments are simply ignored. They will dig up a side aspect to challenge you with.

DT3. Another tactic is obviously to take one small part of your comment, and work on it very hard, ignoring the real content of your statements. This diverts the argument to an inconsequential subset of issues.

DT4. The next tactic is to play the sources game. Their sources are sacrosanct and yours are rubbish, by definition. Or, if you haven't posted a reference, you are in the wrong.

DT5. Yet another is to simply ignore your comment, knowing that others will take up the battle and use all of the same tactics, until you are being pulled left and right.

DT6. And then there is the caveat syndrome. You will be accused of being arrogant and overbearing if you don't use weasel words like IMO, or about, or perhaps, or approximately, etc. Again, this diverts the flow away from the argument.

DT7. The next one of these tactics is personal denigration, which is the coward's way out, but it is quite common.

DT8. And yet another tactic that occurs frequently is the oblique shift of the argument: You argue about X forcefully, and suddenly you are presented with Y, and Z off the wall, and a response is, of course, demanded. This again diverts the argument into a kind of chaos, or many-forked road, with no pattern other than to defeat you by asking for answers to questions you aren't prepared for, and then claiming you must be wrong altogether since you can't answer ALL questions.

DT9. Another tactic surfaced recently, that of the “reverse quote”. You make your statement, and they turn it around and accuse you of exactly the same thing!

DT10. Mistakes in spelling, typos, and misques in posting are also an excuse for replies that do not recognize your argument, but divert it into criticism.

DT11. The big lie! Keep repeating the same false mantra over and over again as the answer to all challenges. Or even a whole series of big lies that cover most issues is even more effective, since it is difficult to defeat 10 lies on 10 subjects all at once, and many sheep will actually believe the lies sooner than the truth, since it fits there preconceptions of what should be.

DT12. Another DT type has been showing up lately. That of a rant going on for several hundred lines, closely spaced and hard to read. In fact, most people don't get beyond the first ten lines. Seeing one of these rants seriously raises the question of sanity of one who would spend the time to write such.

In a sense, it is instructive to see these sly, dishonest, and diversionary tactics in use, to catalog them, chuckle at them, and then, simply to ignore them. There is no such thing as a rational debate, it is all about who can get in the most licks for their audience!

If you can add to my catalog, please do. It is fun to discover these tactics. I have begun to number them as above. Just like the old joke about professional comics at a convention. Someone says “Number 54”, and everyone laughs!

How grown men can post the screeds they do is beyond me; that is why I have decided it is all part of a kiddie circle response as seen from the left.

# posted by Mannning @ 1:29 PM