Intermarkets' Privacy Policy Support
Donate to Ace of Spades HQ! Contact
Ace:aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com Recent Entries
DONALD JOHN TRUMP, THE 45th AND 47TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, SWORN IN FOR SECOND TERM; "CONVICTED FELON" TRIUMPHS OVER CORRUPT MEDIA AND CRIMINAL DEEP STATE
Biden Pardons: Fauci, Cheney, Milley et al Cannot Refuse to Testify About their Illegal Actions Now that They Have Immunity Due to Their Pardons Mid-Morning Art Thread The Morning Report — 1/20/25 Daily Tech News 20 January 2025 Sunday Overnight Open Thread - January 19, 2025 [Doof] Gun Thread: T-Minus 17 Hours Edition! Food Thread: "Unidentified Slime," My favorite Ingredient! First-World Problems... Senile Octogenarian Molestation Suspect Begins New Career As Constitutional Scholar Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024 Captain Hate 2023 moon_over_vermont 2023 westminsterdogshow 2023 Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022 Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022 redc1c4 2021 Tami 2021 Chavez the Hugo 2020 Ibguy 2020 Rickl 2019 Joffen 2014 AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups
|
« "I Will Not Rest" Until World's Problems Are Solved, Says Man Whose Chief Preoccupation is Resting |
Main
| AOSHQ Decision Desk: August 5 2014 Primary Coverage »
August 05, 2014
Atheist Conservative: The Best Conservatives Are AtheistsOkay okay okay, hold up. I lied. He doesn't say that. But I think it's a good piece so I wanted to give it one of those headlines -- you know, dishonest ones, because Lies Get Attention -- of the sort I see so frequently around the Internet. [A]theists on the Right hold a wide variety of personal philosophies. There is only one thing that they are all likely to have in common: an interest in seeking a secular foundation for the ideas of the Right. Which turns out to be very important. It should be noted, of course, that religious people do not rely exclusively on religious precepts to make their cases. They, too, point to observable evidence and make secular (math-based, policy outcome based) arguments. So I think he might be overstating here, but I think his point is sound, because of this: In the end, it doesn't matter if a Christian Conservative makes the most empirical, science-based, logical argument possible while arguing with a secularist. Because the secularist will only see -- All People Are Bigoted -- a "Christian Conservative" who is just saying a bunch of dressed-up religious nonsense because his "God" (in quotes) told him to say it. You can quote Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson's skepticism on global warming to him, and what will that jackwagon say? "What is he, like a preacher in a mega-church"? It's not "better" or "worse," of course. The fact is -- I think this is so important, and, even though we all kind of know it, we all frequently forget it -- people are not convinced by logic or empirical proofs most of the time. Some of the time, yes. But most of the time, here's how people are convinced of something: Because someone who is much like them, and who they acknowledge as being Part of Their Tribe, tells them it's true, and so they think, ah, well maybe that's true then. One point I've made about arguing while angry is this: It's impossible to convince someone who's not angry of anything when one is oneself angry. It's not because the angry person is irrational. Very often an angry person -- while feeling the irrationality of emotion -- is able to adequately conjure up all the arguments his Not Angry self composed at an earlier time, when he was as as calm and cool as as penguin smoking a reefer. It's not that the angry person can't make logical sense. He frequently makes very good logical sense, especially when he's just arguing things he's long stated or written while in a less angry state. The trouble is, the Angry Person is of a different tribe than the Not Angry Person -- at least for the duration of that argument. That is, the argument will fail, not because it's "not logical," but because a necessary precondition to any kind of persuasion is seeming a great deal like the person one wishes to convince. And when one's angry, and the other's not, the other just is on an entirely different emotional wavelength. He sees the Angry person as "different," and, ergo, not to be trusted. ** I think 88% of all persuasion actually just takes place on this subconscious, emotional level of affinity. The arguments put forward don't usually convince the other person; rather, simple human affinity convinces the other person. If you've convinced him, he may repeat your words when he makes the argument himself; but the actual words you said to him will be have been a very minor contribution to his being convinced. Andrew Breitbart actually consciously went out of his way to hire people for his site that didn't look like the average conservative. Like Dana Loesch. Some kind of Goth Girl, right? Not very typical. It wasn't that he didn't like how the average conservative looked. It's that he sensed -- correctly, I think -- that conservatism needed not just different kinds of arguments but different kinds of people making those arguments. I think he figured that the people who would be convinced by a sort of standard conservative figure already had been convinced by a sort of standard conservative figure, and if you wanted to reach people who hadn't been convinced yet, you had to look look for people they'd accept as Sort of Like Me. By the way, I have no problem being inconsistent on this score as regards, say, championing a black conservative candidate over an equally qualified white conservative candidate, despite thinking that's not a rule one should take too far in general society.* The black conservative candidate is going to be able to convince more people, people who haven't been convinced yet. And anyone who says that that's untrue, that their arguments will be exactly alike so what should it matter that one is black and one is white?, really isn't thinking very hard about what human beings are actually like. Human beings are not particularly logical creatures. Sure, we are capable of logic. But logic is hobby. We live in emotion and human connection. That's our day job; our dalliances with perfect logic are occasional weekend jaunts. So it's not the case that atheists are "better" conservatives, except in this way: It is far more likely that an atheist (or just a secularist or agnostic) can persuade a fellow secularist than can a Christian. Tribal identity is a central part of the human experience. We can decry it, we can rue it, but we can't overlook it.
It's more a defensive observation -- sometimes I hear that we (as a movement) have to be "more like Mark Levin," which is something I dispute. I like Mark Levin. When I'm angry about something, and he's talking about it, I enjoy hearing my anger stated eloquently. When I'm not angry about something, and he's on, I tend to turn him off quickly. Just not in the mood for it. This isn't a claim that Mark Levin isn't important -- he is. What I dispute is the idea that it would be helpful if most commentators were like Levin. You need a lot of different pitches -- different in emotion, different in tone, different in populist vs. "elitist" appeal, etc. -- to reach a lot of different types of people. And we really all quite different. We respond to different things. Think about it:The Big Bang Theory is the most popular sitcom in America -- and in fact the only real break out network phenomenon I can think of since Friends -- and about half of you haven't seen it, or kinda hate it. There's just so many different sorts of people, and they have different preferences in political appeal, just as they have different preferences in entertainment. | Recent Comments
WisRich:
"Its DONE. President Trump!! ..."
IC - Cope Harder, Liberals: "Huzzah!!!!! Finally! ..." Deplorable Ian Galt: "Dones!. ..." haffhowershower: "Artillery! It is done! ..." m: "WE GOT US A 47! ..." L - When will we hit rock bottom? Not today: "Joe now moving to touch the youngest Trump daughte ..." "Perfessor" Squirrel: "Interesting. Trump's left hand was NOT on the stac ..." Soothsayer: " biden wanted to sniff Tiffany Trump... ..." Thomas Bender: "It is accomplished. ..." Cicero (@cicero43): "{{{{TRUMP}}}} ..." Diogenes: "God Bless America!!! ..." bluebell: "Praise God! ..." Recent Entries
DONALD JOHN TRUMP, THE 45th AND 47TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, SWORN IN FOR SECOND TERM; "CONVICTED FELON" TRIUMPHS OVER CORRUPT MEDIA AND CRIMINAL DEEP STATE
Biden Pardons: Fauci, Cheney, Milley et al Cannot Refuse to Testify About their Illegal Actions Now that They Have Immunity Due to Their Pardons Mid-Morning Art Thread The Morning Report — 1/20/25 Daily Tech News 20 January 2025 Sunday Overnight Open Thread - January 19, 2025 [Doof] Gun Thread: T-Minus 17 Hours Edition! Food Thread: "Unidentified Slime," My favorite Ingredient! First-World Problems... Senile Octogenarian Molestation Suspect Begins New Career As Constitutional Scholar Search
Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Primary Document: The Audio
Paul Anka Haiku Contest Announcement Integrity SAT's: Entrance Exam for Paul Anka's Band AllahPundit's Paul Anka 45's Collection AnkaPundit: Paul Anka Takes Over the Site for a Weekend (Continues through to Monday's postings) George Bush Slices Don Rumsfeld Like an F*ckin' Hammer Top Top Tens
Democratic Forays into Erotica New Shows On Gore's DNC/MTV Network Nicknames for Potatoes, By People Who Really Hate Potatoes Star Wars Euphemisms for Self-Abuse Signs You're at an Iraqi "Wedding Party" Signs Your Clown Has Gone Bad Signs That You, Geroge Michael, Should Probably Just Give It Up Signs of Hip-Hop Influence on John Kerry NYT Headlines Spinning Bush's Jobs Boom Things People Are More Likely to Say Than "Did You Hear What Al Franken Said Yesterday?" Signs that Paul Krugman Has Lost His Frickin' Mind All-Time Best NBA Players, According to Senator Robert Byrd Other Bad Things About the Jews, According to the Koran Signs That David Letterman Just Doesn't Care Anymore Examples of Bob Kerrey's Insufferable Racial Jackassery Signs Andy Rooney Is Going Senile Other Judgments Dick Clarke Made About Condi Rice Based on Her Appearance Collective Names for Groups of People John Kerry's Other Vietnam Super-Pets Cool Things About the XM8 Assault Rifle Media-Approved Facts About the Democrat Spy Changes to Make Christianity More "Inclusive" Secret John Kerry Senatorial Accomplishments John Edwards Campaign Excuses John Kerry Pick-Up Lines Changes Liberal Senator George Michell Will Make at Disney Torments in Dog-Hell Greatest Hitjobs
The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny More Margaret Cho Abuse Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed" Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means Wonkette's Stand-Up Act Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report! Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet The House of Love: Paul Krugman A Michael Moore Mystery (TM) The Dowd-O-Matic! Liberal Consistency and Other Myths Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate "Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long) The Donkey ("The Raven" parody) |