The Rush Limbaugh Gauntlet

Truth carries with it a terrible responsibility. It is easy to condemn an argument in ignorance.

To fight the war of ideas, one must understand the nature of the battle. Currently the champion of the conservative platform is Rush Limbaugh. Over the years he has convinced the people that...

1. Reaganomics is the conservative platform
2. Liberals don't have ideas
3. The term liberal is an insult
4. That conservatives have an idea
5. The government should be run like a business

Ironic, I found this quote from Limbaugh in his latest propoganda... "You know, I've always told you, when somebody says something about you, and you scream the loudest, that's the indication, "man, they must have hit gold, must have hit the bull's eye with the criticism." The Clinton administration and all of its members have tried for years now to build a legacy where one does not exist. "

Does anyone see an idea there?

To understand the method of the conservative debate, one need only look at the modern philisophical view of Post-Modernism.

This leads to the question, what is post-modernism? At present, it is a form of radical empiricism, which is to say that if all knowledge is a posteri, or that which can be obtained from the senses; and if in experience, all things are subject to change; then there can be no truth. This argument, first popularized by David Hume in his work “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” (1748) has been utilized by the post-modernist in the argument that any anthropological study of society is by necessity influenced by the culture of the anthropologist, and hence a distortion.

This argument is usually advanced through the inherently self-conflicting methodology of decontextualization. (If as the post modernist suggest, methodology is counter-productive to understanding how things work)

The process of decontextualization is that of finding the exception in a given generality, and then pushing that exception to the point the entire work appears absurd. To defend the ground of the post-modernist, the general rule is to never accept or reject a statement, as this would in turn be a statement that one could attack. Other key concepts to decontextualization include using non-familiar terms within a text to make it appear obscure, to write statements open to broad interpretation, and of course, to never allow anyone to clarify the statements of the person making the decontextualization argument.

The best defense against this form of debate is logical analysis.If the person making the debate is resorting to insults, then point out that this is a logical fallacy. Furthermore, refuse to let them speak for you, if they insist on distorting the idea you are trying to make, point out that this distortion is actually the argument that they have made, and that they are defending and promoting this view, not yourself. Finally, if they claim to have an idea, make sure that they state the idea, and then decontextualize the idea, do not however resort to insulting thier integrity, that is a logical fallacy.

The other side of this is the use of visualization and imagry in language. Freedom for instance is a powerful word, Though to be honest, I'm not sure exactly what the conservative platform means by this term, or democracy