State of the Union

Washington Post Shills for Terrorists

Argue Louder

By Clark Stooksbury • March 30, 2009, 4:39 AM

Shorter Andrew Breitbart(via Big Hollywood): Obama won because leftwing trolls wrote mean comments on conservative blogs and conservatives play too nice:

A digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing. Read the comment sections of right-leaning blogs, news sites and social forums, and the evidence is there in ugly abundance. Internet hooligans are spewing their talking points to thwart the dissent of the newly-out-of-power. . .

Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy – us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency – and the humanity – of George W. Bush. . .

The American right is in a heap of trouble in a media age that doesn’t shun the goons and liars that have poisoned the political process and won the American presidency by breaking the rules of fair play. It is time to fight back, but it won’t be easy. The enemy is willing to do and say anything in order to win.

So the Democrats won because they cheated, not because conservative Republicans came to power and ruined the country. It is becoming clear that most conservatives aren’t interested in learning from the Bush years, and any dissenter must be a troll or perhaps a traitor. They remind me of the legal addage: When the facts are against you, argue the law. When the law is against you, argue the facts. When both the facts and law are against you, argue louder.

Posted in Conservatism, media.

15 Responses to Argue Louder

Tony J says:

March 30, 2009 at 10:50 am

Right-Wing blogs (with the odd obvious exception) are notorious for either not allowing comments, or for swiftly banning anyone who doesn’t chug the Kool-Aid and parrot whatever the latest GOP talking-point might be..

You simply don’t find this on the vast majority of Left-Wing sites, where you’re allowed to say more or less whatever the hell you want and are expected to stand or fall by the strength of your arguments and the validity of the evidence you use to back them up.

But since this is undeniable, and embarrassing, the response of hacks like Breitbart is just to lie about it and project the worst faults of the Wingnutosphere onto the Left. Black is White, Up is Down.

Predictable just about covers it.
Thomas O. Meehan says:

March 30, 2009 at 12:08 pm

Tony J has a good point. Taki’s site is excellent but they closed down comment because they couldn’t cope with a few Nazi’s trolls from Storm Front.

I don’t mind the practice of banning abusive or nonsensical commenters. It’s just a form of housekeeping. I have heard many accounts of paleo-cons banned from large “main stream,” conservative sites. This seems unconscionable to me if the commenter is advancing reasoned argumentation,
Bob Weber says:

March 30, 2009 at 2:21 pm

Ron Paul supporters were pretty much banned from RedState and Free Republic. Support the Party line or else.
Bob Weber says:

March 30, 2009 at 4:35 pm

It’s also rather amusing to see the Official Right play the role of Official Victim.
obi juan says:

March 30, 2009 at 4:46 pm

I rarely visit Taki’s site anymore. Half my reason for going was to read an article and watch the comments. Shutting down the comments was a terrible move. Most people just ignore comments they don’t agree with and move on.

Volokh is also really bad with comments. They are enabled for most things. But if the topic is Israel then it is usually disabled. And far from “stopping trolls” it seems only to be a measure in controlling the discussing.
rawshark says:

March 30, 2009 at 5:12 pm

‘This seems unconscionable to me if the commenter is advancing reasoned argumentation,’

There is no reasonable disgreemant allowed on right wing blogs. They make fun of you and if that doesn’t work they ban you. No one is allowed to present a contradictory point.
Right wing blogs are an extension of right wing radio, they are not the opposite of left wing blogs. Right wing blogs, like all right wing infortmation pushing, is a long form of the two minute hate. “This sucks and here is who to blame for it”, could be the title of any post on a right wing blog except there is no need to say who is to blame. It’s always Goldstein.
Pingback: Is the Blogosphere Really Liberal? « Not so Subtle
Dennis Dale says:

March 31, 2009 at 1:50 am

…the presidency – and the humanity – of George W. Bush

Oh the humanity!
TomB says:

March 31, 2009 at 6:53 am

rawshark wrote:

“There is no reasonable disgreemant allowed on right wing blogs.”

Pretty clearly not the case here, shark, as I think you’d agree.

Funny too, this magazine is so identified as being of the “paleo” stripe of right-wingery/conservatism, and yet it sounds like it’s one of the most open and courteous conservative spaces around. Not unlike how Buckley used to be with Firing Line inviting and treating all and sundry fairly. And yet look at what his magazine became.

Seems to me you have to make a distinction, shark: Maybe … right wing-blogs or spaces infected by neo-conservatism … and those that aren’t.

Indeed, aside from a few of their substantive positions maybe it’s just the *way* that neo-conservatives seem to conduct themselves that is most off-putting to me. I have no problem being steadfast and even aggressive going after or defending a position—look how greatly Buchanan does it—but I have a serious problem with the scorched-earth verbal tactics of the neos. No different from those of the New Left really, which of course is fitting.

It’s almost as if they seek to win their arguments by merely driving everyone out of the debate with them out of disgust and unwillingness to descend to their level.

Cheers,
TomT says:

March 31, 2009 at 9:42 am

Andrew Breitbart said:
“Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy – us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency – and the humanity – of George W. Bush.

Political leftists play for keeps. They are willing to lie, perform deceptive acts in a coordinated fashion and do so in a wicked way – all in the pursuit of victory. …”

Mr Stooksbury, you made it appear that he said, “Obama won because leftwing trolls wrote mean comments…” and “So the Democrats won because they cheated…”

Those of course, are lies, because Mr Breitbart never said those things.

Mr Stooksbury, you said, “When the facts are against you, argue the law. When the law is against you, argue the facts. When both the facts and law are against you, argue louder.”

You left out a MAIN LIBERAL TACTIC, which is look into the camera and LIE with a straight face, while pretending to be something they are not.

As far as I can tell, the first post, and the first 9 replies, above, bear this out.

If there are any LIBERALS here, that would be the signal for them to attack me personally, or create the ILLUSION that I don’t think that there are Republicans or Conservatives who lie.

If there are replies from haters of Conservatism, expect comments like, “Well, you’re not very smart, or you’re crazy.” Or, my favorite, “We cherish lying, but you people who aspire to a higher morality should hold yourselves to a standard we can never acheive. Therefore, we will make up lies, pretend to be you, and spew our garbage onto the American landscape.”

We conservatives refer to these as SEMINAR CALLERS and SEMINAR BLOGGERS.

It would do no good to tell you to look into a mirror, because like vampires, your dishonesty is invisible to yourselves.
MattSwartz says:

March 31, 2009 at 11:08 am

I don’t do the red-team/blue-team thing very frequently, but I’ll add my support to the notion that Takimag has gone downhill since they removed the comment threads.

Why not just censor the racists, or the boors, or nobody at all? Reason’s blog does okay, and I don’t think they take down anything unless users are being defamed through impersonation.
Tony J says:

March 31, 2009 at 12:19 pm

Thank you, TomT, for providing the clearest possible example of wingnut projectionism in the raw.

“We cherish lying, but you people who aspire to a higher morality should hold yourselves to a standard we can never acheive. Therefore, we will make up lies, pretend to be you, and spew our garbage onto the American landscape.”

As a description of the average right-wing troll, I couldn’t have done better myself. Salut.
Jesse Walker says:

March 31, 2009 at 6:17 pm

In defense of Taki’s, there comes a point — we’ll call it “the Little Green Footballs horizon” — where the creepiest commenters start to define the character of the site. Taki’s was very close to crossing that line. Shutting down all comments was a drastic move, but I understand why they did it.
Thomas O. Meehan says:

March 31, 2009 at 10:05 pm

My impression of Takimag’s maladroit handling of comments comes from personal experience. A few trolls kept attacking Dr. Gottfried. This lead Spenser to ban everyone who posted on one given night, whatever the content of their comments. So I, and I assume a number of other regular posters were cut off. This was particularly galling as I defended the good Dr. and never posted anything obscene or defamatory. Emails to Spenser went without the courtesy of a reply. Eventually Takimag changed servers and my URL was no longer on their banned list.

I still visit Takimag and enjoy Taki’s columns in particular, having read them in the Spectator for years. It seems to me that Spenser is the only person running the site, so anything too taxing of his time and attention goes by the board. This results in a rather amateurish effort, witness their video efforts. This is too bad as there are some really first rate minds involved.

I have no idea what their budget constraints are, so perhaps I’m being a bit hard. Still, how tough can it be to find just one adult to monitor and edit one’s comments section?
Thomas O. Meehan says:

April 1, 2009 at 10:30 am

TAKI ALERT! The site now hosts a series of NRO spoof posts. They’re titled National Disgrace on Online. The photo’s identifying Goldberg, Podhoretz, et al are so bad that I first took them for impersonators. Quite a hoot!

Some may question this tactic but I for one think this is very much in the spirit of Taki himself and jolly good fun. Too bad I can’t comment.