Me Among The Lefties

Recently, PJMedia’s Poohbah Roger Simon (not everyone knows that his first name is Poohbah by the way) wrote an excellent post called “Preaching to the Choir,” about how difficult it is to reach the opposing side with reasoned argument. The recent shock and awe expressed on the left by the serious challenge to Obamacare in the Supreme Court shows how true that is, how deaf the left is to conservative opinion. Lefties were seriously taken aback by jurist questions that would have been commonplace to them if they’d only listened to responsible voices on the right.

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Recently, I was interviewed, as I occasionally am, by my friends at WorldStreams radio (you can listen at the link). WorldStreams’ Dari and Said strike me as charming and delightful people of good will, but if they were any further to the left they’d be in orbit. Most of my conversation with Said dealt with novel writing and other non-political matters this time out, but toward the end there were some telling exchanges. At one point, for instance, I mentioned that I had done some videos for Glenn Beck’s GBTV. Said started storming about Glenn — how horrible he was; a poison on the airwaves. I immediately started storming back, saying, “You’ve never seen Glenn Beck! You liberals know who you hate, but you don’t actually know what they believe!” Or words to that effect — I don’t remember exactly. In any case, the exchange proved Roger’s point: how you gonna reach the opposition if they’ve convinced themselves you’re evil without even listening to you?

That said, Said also asked me how I would build compromises between liberals and conservatives. I told him I would first ask: “What are the major problems we’re facing?” I believe many of them would agree about that. Then I would ask: “How can we fix those problems without jeopardizing individual liberty? What creative solutions can we come up with that don’t involve expanding the government?” I’ll bet I could get somewhere — assuming none of the people in the room was a politician!

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