Let me say it again: there are so many examples of great thinking and great writing available on the Web arguing in defense of both Judeo-Christian morality and the goal of our Founding Fathers as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. (A note before proceding: it’s probably true that most Americans today are very confused about what Judeo-Christian morality is let alone what the vision of the Founders was. I’d refer them to the archives of this website so they can peruse the hundreds and hundreds of articles I’ve linked to over the years on many topics.)
The information war is all about getting our side’s best arguments out there so more of the uninformed and misinformed can learn what they currently do not know.
Jim Goad has provided a fine example of the kind of great thinking and great writing I’m talking about with his post “How to Deal With the Brainwashed.” Here is an excerpt:
I awoke this morning to the creaking sound of the Western mind closing shut. I felt it squeezing in on me like a car crusher. Public discourse is more controlled and political dissent more squashed than at any point in memory. Try as I may, all the evidence suggests we are on the brink of an ideological Dark Age the likes of which America has never seen. It seems we’re only inches away from living in a world where stating the obvious will be criminalized.
Online, the chief enablers of this situation are the smirking young progtards, who are unwilling to even touch any viewpoint that hasn’t been spoon-fed to them in school or beamed into their eyeballs via TV. Their brains have never hatched a single original idea in their lives. They are mere hollow carriers of infectious ideas, not so much Trojan horses as little pink Trojan ponies.
The modern young leftist is a weak, wretched, psychotic creature, at once nasty and cowardly. Notice how these bespectacled, bearded nerdlings didn’t have one shred of bravado until they had the full weight of the government, media, and academia on their side. They are the sort of cowards who were terrified to make a peep until it was absolutely risk-free. They are extremely bold—at least behind a keyboard—until directly confronted when there’s no crowd around to protect them. A lone earthworm has more spine than any hundred of them.
Bandwagon-riders that they are, they tell everyone who doesn’t think in lockstep with them to “Get with the times,” which is a dishonest way of saying, “Be a conformist like I am.” Hence their smugness as they tilt at windmills that were destroyed generations ago. They are still deluded that they are fighting the power rather than working for it—often without pay or benefits.
It’s one thing to be unwittingly brainwashed, yet quite another to assent to one’s brainwashing once it’s been made clear. These hateful little fuckers are defiantly brainwashed, and whether it’s cognitive dissonance or doublethink or pathological lying, they’ve made it impossible to rationally engage with them. Believe me, I’ve tried. For decades. Honestly. Foolishly.
It took decades for me to realize I was dealing with fundamentally dishonest people. I naively thought I could politely discuss ideas with people for whom “reason” is a dirty word. But you can’t debate the brainwashed. Their cognitive dissonance is too powerful. The truth doesn’t matter to them at all. This is why, in nearly all cases, they will flee from the gentlest offer of an earnest discussion. There is to be no debate. There is a reason they won’t engage, and it is not because they are certain they are correct. Censors are motivated by insecurity in their own beliefs, but they are not remotely honest enough to admit it.
Their holy cause is all that matters to them, and they feel they’ve already established—or, rather, declared—that the cause is unassailable. And anyone who challenges the cause must be vilified. So they don’t ever engage in debate, only vilification.
I’ve already excerpted too much — you’ve got to read the entire article here — it is fun throughout. The piece starts strong, stays strong, ends strong. The list of fifteen things following his statement “You’ve heard the lies again and again” is the kind of section that you’ll want to read more than once. Enjoy.
Image credit: takimag.com / shutterstock.
