Muggings

Ann Coulter's new book on left-liberal racial demagoguery is out, and needless to say, The Hive is buzzing angrily. A few snippets from the reviews at Amazon:

"Horrible misrepentation of facts, far-fetched and mendatious, see no purpose or literary value to this hateful pile of words. Anyone with any knowledge realizes this is a completely false fabrication."

"Hateful, racist, lacking many key facts. People need to stop giving Ann Coulter so much attention and having her on tv shows like "The View" and just let her and her horrible, racist/hurtful opinions go away."

"Coulter is a dishonest woman and a bad writer. Her fifteen minutes of fame were up years ago. Can we please find a conservative who will honestly deal with the subject of race and politics?"

"Poor Ann. Attention "seeker" that she is tried to become relevant at this particular time as she does every 4 years. Her and Dick Morris must have a love child."

"More of Coultergeist's "red meat" to stir up the base. Too bad she exposed herself for for corruptocrat that she is with her endorsement of Etch-a-sketch, the author of socialized medicine in this country, and her love for "Big Government" Krispy Kreme."

I suppose I need not mention that not one of the one-star reviews of the book was listed as coming from an "Amazon Verified Purchaser." The immortal words of Eric Cartman come to mind: "Your tears taste delicious."

I haven't done many book reviews here at Liberty's Torch. (I still do the occasional one at SmashWords, where my crap is on sale.) Neither am I in the habit of quoting other writers' "book reviews," as I did above. But the morning brought a bit of cheery news from The Other McCain, in which he cites:

... the liberal’s quick resort to insults when confronted face-to-face by conservative arguments. Merely by disagreeing with liberalism, you see, you are categorized in the liberal mind as inferior, and if you should ever start winning an argument, this provokes the liberal to begin shouting insults: By calling you names, the liberal expects to discredit you, so that the merits of your argument can be ignored.

Even more important, the liberal hopes and expects that his vilifications will induce you to silence yourself -- something he'd do for you if he could, but sadly, the law still lags behind left-liberal "wisdom."

A bit later in his post, McCain provides the text of a reply email he sent to such a left-wing troll:

Who the hell are you, and why are you sending me this e-mail? Do you have nothing better to do with your life than to scour the Internet, looking for people you disagree with, so that you can send them insulting messages?

What manner of foul hatefulness or psychiatric disorder inspires your antisocial habits? Are you addicted to dangerous drugs or in the thrall of some bizarre sexual perversion?

Seek professional help, before it’s too late.

Utterly perfect, but that's no more than I would expect from Stacy McCain.

Yes, there is a lesson here. Indeed, there's more than one.

***

Ann Coulter is reviled by the Left because she's feared by the Left. She's one of the few commentators on the Right who can demonstrate a complete mastery of the facts on any given issue and is willing to whack the Left across the snout with a rhetorical tire iron. Other conservative spokesmen are entirely too courteous toward folks who've defined us as stupid, evil, or both. Ann gives as good as she gets, especially in her dissections of the Left's favored rhetorical gambits. To borrow a line from Robert A. Heinlein: She has courage, that cabbage.

It's critically important that we in the Right learn from Ann Coulter and other, similarly courageous conservatives. Their influence is all out of proportion to their numbers. Yet what they're doing is copying an Alinskyite technique -- "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it" -- and improving upon it by adding facts and reasoning. And they're having fun doing it.

To reply to an Internet troll as Stacy McCain did is in that pattern. It's talionic justice -- and it infuriates them no end, because our adoption of their tactic puts them on notice that the jig is up.

They are largely unwilling to reason.
They can't overcome conservatives' command of the facts.
They're unwilling to cite history, because history is always against them.
Best of all, their morals are defective -- and when illuminated for general display, are all too obviously so.

Draw the moral.

***

You may have heard the Left referred to as "bookless." It's a concise description of an ideology that can no longer defend its positions with facts and logic, and thus has ceased to make use of those tools. Time was, prominent left-liberals tried to do so, and wrote voluminous tracts about the necessity of this or that massive government program or intervention. But their ivory towers have suffered the supreme penalty of political ascendancy: they've come crashing down, their theories refuted by the verdicts of reality. The sole substantial defense any left-liberal can offer for the Leviathan State today is that millions of people have become dependent on it -- a conservative argument for its perpetuation despite the havoc it has wrought.

Contrast that slender reed with the torrent of beautifully written, meticulously researched and reasoned books from such figures as Ann Coulter, Mark Steyn, Mark Levin, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Jonah Goldberg, Tammy Bruce, Bernard Goldberg, and numerous others.

The Left is without a rational response to the Right. So it resorts to non-rational tactics: defamation, vilification, threats of violence, and occasionally violence itself. Conservative luminaries' prevalent response to these things, until recently, has been to attempt to placate the attackers. I have only one question: Why?

We're winning. The Left knows we're winning. Its leading lights are foaming at the mouth from their frustration over it. Their denunciations and demonizations of us are the best imaginable evidence. Any good general will tell you: Reinforce your successes!

The time for treating those who would silence us -- indeed, who would destroy us if they thought they could get away with it -- with the courtesy due decent, respectful adversaries is long past.

***

Hate mail is a fact of life for conservative commentators. I get my share, which is proportional to my infinitesimal influence over the national discourse. I've learned to chuckle over it, and pass the most amusing bits to persons I know will enjoy it as I do. I've come to regard it as my most valuable and reliable indication that I'm having a positive effect because, as has already been said many times in commentaries of this sort, "if you're taking flak, you must be over the target." I'd imagine Ann Coulter enjoys her hate mail just as much. She'd better; she must get a ton of it. But no doubt she already knows what I'm ranting about here. Her columns and books testify to that.

Need a new hobby?