Encounters
- Engaging Our Opponents Face-to-Face
February 2019
Humor at a Greenie’s Expense
from a reader:
Humor at a Greenie’s Expense
from a reader:
- There's some farmland in Watsonville [Editor’s note - northern California, WAY inland] that keeps getting flooded because Santa Cruz county is not operating a pump station the way they should be. Now there are some environmental groups who've caught wind of an opportunity to restore (or create) a wetland over the intermittently flooded farmland. The other way to go would be to operate the pump station to better drain the farmland and keep it in production, but that doesn't get any environmental groups a big fat grant. I pointed out to the environmentalist who was discussing all this that the farmers might like to keep farming the land, and he immediately came back with, "Well, sea level is predicted to rise 5 feet, so it's no use pumping!". When I asked him how soon that would happen, he said, "In 50 years," to which I responded, "Sounds like about the same as the expected lifespan of new pump infrastructure... might be worth continuing to farm while they still can." To which he replied, "Well I'm on a County commission and we're supposed to factor Climate Change into all decisions." I didn't keep pressing him, but did a little digging with another local "climate change" person who at least appreciates science.. apparently sea level in the area has risen only 2 inches in the last 100 years. He he he.
June 2018
Think for Yourself
I recently worked a booth at a festival where most of the crowd was young and liberal. Once again, I was able to open some eyes by administering the World’s Smallest Political Quiz. Most of the respondents thought of themselves as liberals beforehand, but many ended up in the libertarian quadrant on the results chart.
My basic point for the day was, ‘Think for yourself’ – something I picked up from cult de-programming literature. I told each respondent, ‘if anyone like the Left tells you what to think or how to vote, or that you must vote Democrat, tell them no, you are a self-governing individual and you think for yourself.’
Some points that came up that day, and my responses:
Think for Yourself
I recently worked a booth at a festival where most of the crowd was young and liberal. Once again, I was able to open some eyes by administering the World’s Smallest Political Quiz. Most of the respondents thought of themselves as liberals beforehand, but many ended up in the libertarian quadrant on the results chart.
My basic point for the day was, ‘Think for yourself’ – something I picked up from cult de-programming literature. I told each respondent, ‘if anyone like the Left tells you what to think or how to vote, or that you must vote Democrat, tell them no, you are a self-governing individual and you think for yourself.’
Some points that came up that day, and my responses:
- ‘There’s too much money in politics.’ – Get the government out of what it’s not supposed to be doing and you’ll get the money out of politics.
- ‘Socialism is economic justice’ – Let me ask you a question: should people who work twice as much get paid twice as much? Isn’t that justice? ‘That’s a loaded question.’ You’re right, but it shows you that pure equality is not justice.
- ‘I’m a democratic socialist’ – Democratic socialism – where has that ever happened? Lenin thought he was a democratic socialist, he had ‘democratic centralism’ which wasn’t democratic at all. The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea says they’re democratic.
- ‘The people I’m talking to are democratic’ – Sure, they’re telling that now, but how will they end up? You can’t name me a single communist dictator who willingly gave up power.
- ‘The people I’m talking to are democratic’ – Sure, they’re telling that now, but how will they end up? You can’t name me a single communist dictator who willingly gave up power.
- ‘I’m a libertarian socialist’ – That’s when the state withers away, but it never happens. Things never get beyond the dictatorship of the proletariat. ‘We won’t do the dictatorship of the proletariat, we’ll just skip that part’ – Sure. How are you going to abolish private property like it says in the Communist Manifesto without the dictatorship of the proletariat? (You can see that a lot of people calling themselves ‘socialists’ are idealists and haven’t thought about what they’re saying very much.)
- ‘You can’t be free unless the government gives you healthcare, education, and a job.’ - You make it sound like you can only get these things from the government. It’s only recently people started thinking this way. We have an opportunity society where people can work for these things themselves. We’re for as much self-reliance as possible.
- ‘It’s not true the Left tells people what to think. Everyone always thinks that people on the other side are told what to think’ – Actually, is true. I once knew a guy who is Jewish. I asked him why he votes liberal. He said, ‘All the Jews at my temple are liberal, so I’m liberal, too.’ The Left has succeeded in making its ideas ubiquitous, just like totalitarians do. Everyone has to be politically correct or you get ostracized. The Left shuts down free speech on campus – anyone who thinks different gets shouted down or disinvited. Once I was at a leftist rally and started talking to a young woman there. Her minder came over, glared at me, and took her away. And you’re telling me the Left doesn’t tell people what to think?
- For the ones who thought of themselves as liberal and tested that way, I asked them to think about how much freedom a public policy proposal takes away to impose a Big Government solution on everyone. Several of these respondents tested below the ‘freedom’ line on the results chart, so I teased them by saying ‘you need to be checked for authoritarian tendencies.’