Neo-neocon, A Connecticut Yankee’s lessons from trying to talk to a liberal

Neo-neocon is pondering how to talk to liberals tonight. I’m struck by her saying her liberal friends accused her of going over to the dark side because one of my friends who voted for Obama is now disgusted with him and sent around to her friends, including me, Robin of Berkeley’s recent post at American Thinker matching Obama’s behavior with the symptoms of various mental illnesses, “A shrink asks: what’s wrong with Obama?” Like neo-neocon, my friend thought she would get a rational discussion. Instead, ka-boom! from the liberals, who, wait for it, accused her of going over to the dark side!

My post answering neo-neocon on how to talk to liberals instantly transformed into my thoughts on how to talk to people who disagree with you on the basis of propaganda rather than information and who hate you with a passion — since I rather get that from both sides of the political spectrum — see above, “conservative lesbian” — and will take more time to finish than I want to spend right now. It is quite late and I need to get a full night’s sleep and wake up before my father does, so I am going to pass the baton to the capable hands of Mark Twain and my favorite chapter from his book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, “Sixth Century Political Economy,” in which the Boss advocates the virtues of the free market to a blacksmith who favors protectionism. Spoiler alert: he wins but fails to consider how badly he frightens his audience in the process and they turn on him to save themselves — a pitfall to talking to liberals that it is worth assessing and avoiding to this day.