Decoder Rings
Managing Conservatives 101: How to Win an Argument
It’s the Catch-22 of public discourse
When I argue, I believe in the points I bring up and consider them essential to understanding the issue. I mean, of course I do. What other way is there?
The conservative way.
Think of it as a lousy debate class. The truth doesn’t matter, everything is just a wall of irrelevancies to muddy the water and force you to fight on their terms. And it’s a fight you can’t win. They’ve been honed by Fox News, talk radio, PragerU, and the right’s ability to think in lockstep.
It’s mind-bending how they all know the same talking points. Talk to ten of them long enough, and you’ll get nine near-identical renditions. Literally.
It bugs the crap out of me.
In politics, as in theoretical mathematics, my goal is to find general, overarching principles rather than getting bogged down in details. I call these “decoder rings.” (For example, “On the UnGodliness of Alternative Energy and The Most Important Number In American Politics Is 73”.) They provide insights to cut through the thicket and go straight to the core issues.
This particular decoder explains why reasoning with a conservative is so frustrating: there are no good-faith arguments because none of it has any actual bearing on their beliefs. You can disprove every word they say, and it won’t matter.
For illustration, consider the recent abortion firestorm.
“Science has proved personhood begins at conception”
Actually, no. It hasn’t. Personhood is an incredibly complicated question that overlaps biology, philosophy, religion, and more.
So why bring it up? William F. Buckley, Jr. defined a conservative as “someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” But science isn’t in the stopping business. It’s also seen as a threat to religion, and is no place for black-and-white thinking. It’s all shades of gray. Nearly every rule has exceptions, and 100% certainty is rare. Philosophically it’s a poor fit.
But none of that is a problem if you aren’t actually trying to prove anything.
It’s purely a debate technique — in a scientifically illiterate nation, even a relatively simple concept can cause the conversation to run aground. But even proving a statement entirely untrue wouldn’t matter because science was never fundamental to their belief. For conservatives, both their religious and political stances are matters of faith.
“Democrats support abortion to kill Black people”
This argument seems insane on its face. The GOP percent share of the Black vote is in the single digits, and minority outreach has never been a significant priority for the party of the Southern Strategy. As Reagan advisor Lee Atwater said in 1981:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****, n*****, n*****.” By 1968 you can’t say “n*****” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.
Based on voting percentages, more Black people means more Democrats. But still, I’ve noticed an uptick in conservatives bringing up Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger and the eugenics movement.
Why would someone who likely doesn’t know Margaret Sanger from the Masked Singer bring her up? Because liberals will take the bait. You might try to point out that Planned Parenthood has turned its back on her, or that a lot has changed since she stepped down as president in 1959. For example, the Democrats were still the party of racism and the Klan. Now, the old racist “Solid South” is solidly Republican, and the KKK votes GOP.
But once you go down any of those roads, you’ve already lost. It was always absurd and irrelevant, just a smokescreen to hide the right’s weakness on race.
“I shouldn’t have to pay for it.”
That is, it’s not so much abortion itself that’s the problem, just using tax money to pay for them.
Bullshit.
It’s evident from the legislation. I’m sure they genuinely consider funding Planned Parenthood offensive, but the laws being drafted now are total bans, not spending restrictions.
On this point, liberals often bring up the Hyde Amendment. But it’s a losing strategy, because despite Hyde some federal funds are used for abortion. On the other hand, most government spending on abortion is in the states, which shouldn’t matter given the conservative reverence for “states’ rights.”
The Bill of Rights, as interpreted by the right
Conservatives regularly quote the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
While I believe the nation’s founders were the best the 18th century had to offer, they were ignorant savages by 21st-century standards. Their attitude toward women was Neanderthal, and medical science was in its infancy. How about we agree not to take health care advice — particularly on women’s health — from these guys?
Also, the true meaning of our founding documents is always hazy, making it impossible ground to fight on with self-proclaimed experts. But the authority is supposed to be the Supreme Court, and they decided via Roe v. Wade that abortion is constitutionally protected.
Which is irrelevant.
The right’s stances on the establishment of religion, free speech, gun ownership, etc., make it clear they have no use for the Bill of Rights unless they agree with the interpretation.
In their formulation, no federal law they disagree with applies. But when it comes to states taking on liberal priorities like police reform or marijuana legalization, the 10th Amendment is nowhere to be found. Mitch McConnell has already announced the GOP will push for a nationwide ban if Roe falls.
A democracy? No, we’re a constitutional republic!
We are a country where 60% believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. As for the supposed “extremes,” 20% think it should be available on demand, and only 8% believe it should be illegal in all cases. The most fringe of all positions is driving the agenda. The former party of the Moral Majority is now the party of the single digits.
When I was younger, the right claimed authority to rule because they were the majority, and liberalism being incompatible with democracy was a talking point. Now they are in the minority, and the word democracy is increasingly replaced with republic. Hence America is now referred to as a constitutional republic, and “democratic values” are replaced by “republican values.”
Why? Apply the decoder — because they never cared whether they were the majority or not
Because God said so
OK, now we must have gotten to an honest answer: they believe it’s wrong because it’s in the Bible.
Except it isn’t.
Let that roll around in your mind for a minute: the Good Book is very, very long, yet there’s not one word about abortion in all those verses. There are passages implying life begins at conception, but others imply — or even state outright — the opposite.
However, religious arguments are almost always no-win situations, especially with people whose faith in God is so absolute even He can’t change their minds.
When nothing matters, nothing they say matters
The point of this article isn’t to help you win arguments with conservatives, just to let you know why you can’t.
As I mentioned at the top, even proving something they say is false or irrelevant beyond a shadow of a doubt will have no effect because it has nothing to do with why they believe what they do. It’s just a piece of information, possibly random, that they’re throwing into the air to confuse the issue. Their beliefs and opinions are set to whatever the current orthodoxy calls for and will instantly change when that orthodoxy changes, but not before. Anything they say otherwise exists purely as ammunition for debate.
It’s frustrating.
Nonetheless, feel free to argue. I do and have even changed (a very few) minds. Every rule has exceptions, after all. Just understand what you’re up against. You can only convince someone to rethink their position if there was a think in the first place.
