Monday, November 28, 2005

Arguing Made Simple

Arguing with an extreme position is easy. Very easy.

Arguing with a mainstream position is more difficult.

So what to do? Simply assign to your political opponents an extreme position, and argue against that. Much easier than trying to come to terms with what your opponents actually argue.

It's easier, of course, when you are arguing against a large movement like, say, the left.

For a demonstration of this technique, let's check out Jennifer Roback Morse's latest article.
The Left can not accept that we are born as either male or female. You might expect me to say that the Left hates gender. But to say that is to accept their terms for the debate. Gender is for nouns. We come in two sexes: male and female.

The Left hates sex because men and women are so different that they can never be made equal in the way that the Left demands.
You see how that works? Now the nice thing about making it "the Left" is that there probably are some people on "the Left" who have that opinion. Is it a mainstream "Left" view? It doesn't matter! What matters is that arguing against hating the fact that we have males and females is a heck of a lot easier than arguing for women making less money than men for doing the same work.

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