Conservatives are always challenging people to a “debate” on the issues. It sounds so reasonable! Just an old-fashioned Lincoln-Douglas exchange of ideas and concepts, right?
Like most ideas on the right, it’s a load of swill. Conservatives are not interested in a real debate.
When they challenge the left to a debate it is an attempt to elevate their nonsense arguments or to pull you down into the filth with them.
A debate challenge or request from a conservative brings to mind the old adage: “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
It is not a coincidence that the entire ideology behind the founding of Fox News was to “debate” key issues in a “fair and balanced” manner.
What happens, practically, when a liberal answers a conservative debate demand?
Suddenly, the idea of whether climate change is real becomes a debated object, or maybe the argument is whether tax cuts magically spur economic growth, or if having more guns in society is really bad. (For the record: climate change is real, tax cuts don’t magically create growth and more guns means more dead innocents).
Calling for debate, which you’ll see often not just in social media or in web comments but from leading conservative pundits and politicians, is a sucker’s bet – for the left.
They don’t care about your point of view. They’re not going to be swayed by your position. They simply want to denigrate your position, even if it has been easily proven by objective facts, or to elevate their crackpot conclusion to legitimate status.
While there is some value in political debate for politicians running for office, so the public can see would-be leaders espouse their views and defend them from an attack, very few of us normal people are doing that.
For the vast majority of upset conservatives (and they’re always angry about something or the other), “debate me” is a cry for help. It’s a sign an argument is weak and cannot stand on its own, so they hope to tear down everything else next to it.
It’s stupid, and liberals should reject it. Gravity is not up for debate. The Earth orbits the sun. Climate change is real. No debate will change any of this.
One of the first political bloggers in the world, Oliver Willis has operated OliverWillis.com since 2000. Contributor at Media Matters for America and The American Independent. Follow on Twitter at @owillis. Full bio.