I actually agree with the book's critic. One of the biggest problems that liberals have nowadays is their abject refusal to acknowledge the specific issues of conservatives. (Conservatives also have this problem with liberals but in a different way.) Take the abortion debate: By refusing to directly confront the conservative side, that abortion is murder, the liberals have lost a whole set of very powerful tools which they should instead have kept at their disposal.

I always prefer to take exactly what right-wing conservatives are saying and go at them directly from that point. Example: Abortion is murder? So, what is miscarriage--manslaughter? Should women who miscarry be investigated to make sure they didn't directly cause the miscarriage? Maybe they miscarried because they deliberately didn't take care of themselves? (And don't kid yourself, there are extremists on the right who believe that's exactly true.) Anyway, because once you go right at that Abortion=Murder debate, you've got 'em right where you want 'em. Right where they have to admit that women are the reason there are abortions. Pregnant women are the ones who get abortions, and if you're gonna be strict about it, you have to blame the women, not the doctors.

You can get a real right-winger to admit some truly crazy shit at that point. Like how birth control=abortion. How sex before marriage=abortion. It's hard to keep a straight face sometimes.

Note: I prefer left-wing vs right-wing for any of these discussions. Liberals and Conservatives both have a long history of respectable positions and people, whereas the extremist wings are pretty much all shitheads who have, for some reason, been allowed to control the debate. Which has to stop--we need to get back to thinking of Liberals as the side that produced Kennedy, and Conservatives as the side that produced Goldwater (who I've always respected).

My favorite argument to get into, though, is one over Ronald Reagan. Saint Ronald Reagan, and how the right-wing thinks they should all be like Saint Ronald Reagan. It's an easy argument to destroy though--just point out how many times he raised taxes.

For that matter, Kennedy was certainly not pro-choice.

Life is complicated. Both wings refuse to acknowledge that because it's tooooooo haaaaaaaaaaaaaard to argue complicated stuff. Or both wings are too stupid, which is my belief.

I won't be buying this book; it would give me apoplexy.

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