If you want to tell me I'm wrong, I'm ready, willing, and eager to hash that out with you. That's a good argument. If I'm wrong, I need to know it. I should not transmit ideas which are wrong.

The argument I loathe, and you will see me get my hackles up over this again and again, is that I shouldn't say something, not necessarily because it's wrong but because of reasons that have nothing to do with rightness or wrongness, like group solidarity, loyalty, defending our Strongest Generals, and so on.

If I'm wrong, I should be told so.

Please stop telling me, however, that there are reasons besides being wrong to stop staying something.

As far as I'm concerned that is the only reason. You're either right, or you're wrong.

This solidarity crap? I've had it up to my neck with it.

This is an idea of the Left and I'll be god-damned to Hell before I accept it for myself on the right. This kumbaya, "let's all get on the same page and relentlessly propagate the agreed-to consensus" is for lefties.

And I don't want to hear that it works. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I think it's creepy myself.

Let me tell you, once again, that in college I become sort of conservative. Like my second year, and then increasingly every year thereafter.

Before that, I was pretty liberal.

If you've always been conservative, then you can tell me a great many things about doctrine and such, but one place I will always have more experience than you is in terms of conversion and persuasion.

Because I went through a conversion myself. I was persuaded myself. I have only anecdotal experience; but I do have that anecdotal experience.

Anyone who's always been Solid Red doesn't have that experience.

So you can tell me you know more about conservative doctrine (this concession is easily made-- I am not a deep thinker on conservative doctrine at all) but unless you've actually changed your stripes, you cannot tell me what arguments work on persuading someone to move from liberal-ish to moderate to conservative/moderate to finally conservative.

And I will tell you this: The giddy thing about a conversion is the liberation from complete and utter bullshit -- accreted dogma, groupthink, it is so because we have said it is so.

Anyone who moves from liberal to conservative will always describe it as liberating epiphany, of breathing free air.

So please listen to me, if on nothing else at all, when I tell you that this dopey attempt to pound people into accepting the groupthinkby appeals to solidarity and appeals to authority (authority which is not universally conceded, even on the right) is a loser.

Only a few people who are truly unhinged find they can no longer live under one set of dogmas and then fly to embrace, passionately, a whole 'nother set of dogmas. Andrew Sullivan did this, but he's, frankly, a nutter. He always needs a wooby.

For most people, they convert when they want to escape a set of dogmas and then live under fewer dogmas, or even none at all.

They do not wish to jump willy-nilly and embrace a whole new set of dogmas.

The personal is not, as the left says, the political. A personal regard for a Figure of Authority, like Rush Limbaugh, cannot and must not be turned into some kind of endless crusade to merely vindicate, personally, the pantheon of accepted conservative heroes.

Heroes can be wrong and villains, occasionally, can be right.

I'm not a fan of Limbaugh. Never have been. Please stop with the endlessly-multiplying list of things I am required to believe, or to be, to be a member of this party.

Is being a Dittohead now on the list? Some think so, based on the reaction to my defense of Limbaugh below. Apparently my defense wasn't strident enough, and included some unacceptable nuance, and hence it is UnConservative.

Since the argument is forever made about "what it will take to change this country," let me share with you my own insight as a liberal-turned-conservative on this point:

What is required is as small a buy-in as possible and not, as some of you would have it, as large and voluminous and as detailed a buy-in as possible.

If you want to move someone to the conservative side, you must first convince them that conservatives are not, as the media claims, crazy or weird. That is 90% of the battle, actually, as Breitbart knew, and as he made it his life's mission to prove.

The next 10% is to offer up the smallest buy-in possible. Here's what we believe, basically: freedom, respect for citizens in their capacity and wisdom to manage their own affairs, modesty of government ambition and modesty in the government's appraisal of its own ability to manage large ventures, and the basic idea that the government exists to keep the order so that men and women may face each other as free citizens in the public square and make voluntary transactions and decisions between each other, with as minimum government intrusion and "oversight" as possible.

The rest of it? People may buy in as they please. People will buy in as they please, so there's no sense demanding they must believe a through z too. They will wind up believing b, d, g, i, m, and l as they choose, and as it appears to them.

But this massive checklist some people are now building -- that to be a conservative you must now accept...

1. That Rush Limbaugh is the First and Foremost thought-leader among conservatives,

2. That the state has a compelling and legitimate interest in monitoring women's use of non-abortifacient birth control,

3. That you must be rural and Christian to be a truly good citizen of the nation...

...and all the rest of it?

For God's sakes. Is it not elementary that the fewer things you demand someone believe will result in the largest number of conversions?

What is the actual Big Thing necessary for a conversion to Christianity? Is it a long laundry list of detailed items on this or that?

Or is it John 3:16?

You make more sales at a lower price point than a higher one. In terms of belief, and dogma which must be accepted, many people seem to think that a higher price point actually results in more sales.

I do not understand what experiential evidence or analogy one would use to prove that case. I do not believe any such evidence exists. It flies in the face of everything we know about sales.

And life, for that matter.

Once someone is open to the idea of conservatism at all, that person will likely start believing in all sorts of conservative things he once discounted as preposterous. Because, previously, the only reason he never entertained such ideas was because he'd been made to thin they were crazy, stupid, hateful, and so forth.

But he probably won't believe in all of it.

There is an idea brewing that you need people to buy into all of it or else they're "not real conservatives" and will "sell you out."

Well, may be. But the, I am now thinking that as far as conservatism goes, as far as the thing that I stress, myself -- respect for the citizen to live his own life as he chooses -- that drugs ought to be legalized.

Shall I begin insisting that no one who disagrees with me on this point is a "real conservative"?

Of course not. There's plenty of room for debate. It would be absurd to insist that such a thing now become Central Foundational Conservative Doctrine.

But then, I think the same thing about a lot of things people are now telling me are Central Foundational Conservative Doctrine.

Defend Rush to the hilt? Why? You're going to have to accept that while some like Rush a great deal, to some, like me, He's Just A Guy With A Microphone. Could care less, if you want to know the truth of it.

Should I similarly defend every single thing Hugh Hewitt says, too? No? Okay, what's the difference, apart from Rush having better ratings?

This endless conflation of intellectual beliefs and preferences with some kind of moral virtue like courage is tedious.

I'm tired of it. Yes, I know if i disagree with you on x or y that means not that we have a disagreement, and that we've come to this with differing underlying assumptions and priorities (my priority now being more "liberty" than "order," for example), I will be called a coward and the rest of it.

Can we have an end to this sort of argument by insult? People are willing to discuss issues even contentiously, with no hard feelings or anger, as long as personal factors like virtue or courage are not dragged into it.

We disagree. Am I actually a bad person, or a cringing coward, for disagreeing?

Does that mean I'd somehow be a braver man for merely nodding my head along with whatever a commenter might say?

Please tell me I'm wrong if you think I'm wrong.

But please, for the love of God, stop telling me I'm a coward or I have some bad motive (kissing up to the MSM!) whenever you think I'm wrong.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (818)
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When David Letterman caught hell for making some crude joke about one of Palin's underraged daughters, he said something that I thought was pretty true. Paraphrased, he said something like, "These are jokes. I can't defend any of them."

What he meant was that most jokes -- certain all jokes at someone's expense -- are inherently three things: unfair, unwarranted, and untrue. Jokes like this are about hyperbole. Jokes conjure up, briefly, an alternate-reality world in which it is posited that absurd facts we know to be false in this world are actually true.

When David Letterman said whatever nasty thing he did about Bristol, or Willow -- I forget who -- of course none of it was actually true. The true facts of anything would not be the joke. The joke is always the departure from the facts.

All the late-night comedians' monlogues follow the same pattern every night: Brief digest of a news item, in one sentence. This digest is more or less true (if incomplete). The next part is the Fake Thing, the Made-Up Thing, the departure from reality. This is false, and, typically, it's mean.

If anyone thought that you weren't joking here -- if it were possible that your joke was interpreted to be a true account of the facts -- you could easily be hit by a defamation lawsuit, and you could very easily lose.

After all, you'd said something untrue and nasty. Without the special category of "joke" surrounding it, it would be libel.

So that's what Letterman said, and while I do not find him funny, I actually, to this day, find him somewhat self-reflective and admirably self-examining about things like this. He's lost his funny, long ago, and now makes mechanical jokes without humor or talent, but when you trap him on something like this he tends to say something reasonably smart.

He's right. You cannot defend any of these. You can't defend them as you could defend a straight statement. The straight statement you intended to be true. You probably think it is true. You probably also think it's fair.

But a joke? If someone asks you to "defend" it, you can't defend it in the same way -- except to the extent you say, "Look, it was just a joke."

In addition, there's a sneaky little cruelty in humor that it's not the fairest and most defensible jokes that are the funniest. Usually it's the nastiest, most indefensible stuff. Not always, of course. Some jokes just cross the line or lose the room.

But most of the time an absolutely safe, inoffensive-to-everyone joke is not going to get laughs.

Most of the time, if someone, somewhere, isn't upset by it -- or we could imagine they would be upset with it, if they heard it -- it's not going to be funny.

It might be cute. It might merit a smile. It might get a grinning nod of approval.

But the biggest laughs usually come, unfortunately, when you're being unfair and a little mean.

That's the nature of it. You can't defend any of these.

Regarding Rush's joke about Sondra Fluke being a slut: This joke didn't work for me and I wouldn't have told it. It's not funny. The emphasis of it really just seems to be finding a way to name-call her in the thin garbings of a "joke."

It's also in the "not worth it" category because you just know that whenever you touch the Holy Trinity of Race, Sex, or Religion your enemies are going to demagogue it to the ends of the earth.

That said, I tell a lot of jokes myself. Most of them are, in some way, unfair. Many of them do not land. Some of them are Not Worth It.

They say in medicine you're not a doctor until you kill your first patient. And you're not a humorist unless you've told not one but dozens of bad jokes that get crickets.

Just because a joke fails to land, or isn't worth it, or isn't much of a joke, you haven't committed a moral outrage. You haven't proven yourself a bad person or a callous person or a hateful person.

You are guilty of exactly what you're guilty of -- of telling a bad joke that doesn't land. And that's it.

It's not a hanging offense. Some jokes don't work. There is no way to tell jokes off the cuff, just riffing right off the foam of your outer brain, without telling a bad joke or going too far or whatever.

Well, there is a way: Don't tell jokes.

And many people don't joke around, especially not when being broadcast, so they never have to worry about that.

But if you are joking around a lot, you're going to do it. Probably pretty frequently.

There are two problems here: The first is the left's typical He Said A Dirty Word faux-outrage. Ridiculous. Grow the hell up, idiots.

You have Bill Maher calling Sarah Palin a "c*nt" (no joke at all, except for the shock value of the word) and no one's getting on him for apologies. And when the right got on him for it, he doubled down, defended it, and did it some more. Plus, snarked at us for being so dumb.

And Rush can't call this girl adult woman a slut?

Grow up. The Never Ending Tantrum act is tedious.

I don't think the right way to defend this is to insist it's right or noble or proper to call this girl a slut. That just doesn't sound right to me.

I think the proper thing to say is "It's a joke, sometimes they're a little mean, sometimes they don't land, no one really gets hurt."

It's a joke. A bad joke? I think so. But so what? The difference between a good joke and a bad joke is not moral intent or the character of the joke-teller or his status as "enlightened" or a "hater."

The difference between a bad joke and a good joke is not whether it's mean or not.

Most jokes are mean-- including most of the good ones, too.

The difference between a good joke and a bad joke is merely something with no moral or character component at all -- craft. Whether you figured out the exact right way to frame the gag for maximum humor and maximum defensibility.

That's not a moral or a character issue. That's just an issue of joke construction and editing.

People make fun of the infamous opening, "It was a dark and stormy night," for being melodramatic and cliched. (Why? That has always struck me as a rather good opening sentence.)

But that sentence is never faulted for being immoral, or hateful, or displaying a low character.

The fault in that sentence (again, I sort of don't see the problem myself) is simply an intellectual sort of problem, of craft and composition and few other things which are entirely removed from considerations of morality or character altogether.

"Polishing" and "punching up" a sentence or gag are not questions of the heart. They are questions of craft, only, with no moral implications whatsoever.

I didn't like Rush Limbaugh's joke. So what? What we could say is that "He didn't spend enough time polishing that joke and getting it ready for the public." Fine, he should have spent some time working the joke.

But that doesn't mean he's a bad guy.

Here's the thing: I don't see how yet, but I know this to be true.

I know, if I think about it, and bother trying, I can write a series of jokes -- maybe a fake essay written by Sandra Fluke -- which will be far, far worse than merely calling her a "slut," and it will actually be funny.

So the problem is not calling her a slut. It can be done. I don't know how yet, but I know if I set to mind to it I will call her the most acrobatic, schwanz-slinging gutterslut the world has ever known and it will be funny.

And it will be funnier precisely because it is so terribly unfair and nasty.

Yes, cruelty is an inherent component of humor. A lot of people who don't sling jokes don't know this, or won't accept it, but anyone who spends a lot of time writing jokes knows that cruelty is, unfortunately, a basic widget in the humor toolbox.

The question is not about morality or character. It's about how many hours I'm willing to put into this to make the joke work.

Could I "defend" it? No, as Letterman said, you can't "defend" any of these things.

You can only say what comedians say when they've hurt someone: Look, I'm sorry, these are just jokes.

The Unstated Assumption That The Liberals Press and That Rush Won't Concede.

Some people you're "allowed" to be nasty about -- Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, etc.

You don't have to be a genius to figure out that if someone is on the right, the liberal media considers them fair game for nasty jokes.

Including Craig Kilborne's "Snipers Wanted" joke about Bush.

But certainly people don't usually make fun of heroes. I could, I guess, sling jokes at Lance Armstrong and his cancer, but most people would say: Uh, I don't get it. What are you trying to say? What's Lance Armstrong done to deserve this?

And this the thing: The left is conferring "hero" status on Sondra Fluke, and that means, like Lance Armstrong, she is just too much the Moral Wonder to joke about.

Barack Obama was similarly decreed off-limits by leftist comedians. In that case, they were saying "He's such a hero, I just can't think of any jokes I can tell about him."

What Rush is doing here -- which I do support -- is denying this assumption.

She's not a hero, nor does she get the special protective bubble of a hero.

I can think of funny things about her. She's kind of fat and her face looks like an unappealing shoe I wouldn't want to wear, for example.

But no, I don't concede she's Off-Limits, and neither should Rush.

She's not a hero. She's just a Chubster looking for some camera time. She also makes things up left and right. She's a bit of distaff Baron Munchausen.

As you can see, I really haven't spent much time myself thinking of the right jokes to tell about her.

But yes, when the right ones are thought of, damnit, they're going to get told, and repeated, and passed around.

Posted by: Ace at 10:42 AM | Comments (760)
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What'll be on them? I don't know.

Breitbart had no "5" setting. It was always "11." One of the fun things about him was that everything was The Greatest Thing In The World. Or, the Worst Possible Thing In The World.

So I have no idea where this will come down. I have trouble imagining the Magic Red Button Solution to everything, where we just got lucky enough to have Obama confessing political sins on videotape.

That seems so enormous I just can't believe it. No one gets that lucky is my motto.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:52 AM | Comments (297)
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Thanks to the genius of Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke has gone from a one day story to poster child for the conservatives supposed hatred of sex and sexual active unmarried women.

Georgetown University officials have released a statement defending law student Sandra Fluke, calling Rush Limbaugh’s attacks “misogynistic” and Fluke “a model of civil discourse.”

...

Appearing on NBC’s “Today,” Sandra Fluke said she was “stunned” and “outraged” by Limbaugh’s comments, which she deemed “an attempt to silence me, to silence all of us from speaking about the healthcare we need.”

Fluke, a third-year law student, testified about GeorgetownÂ’s policy on contraception during an unofficial hearing last Thursday that was led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). She argued that birth control should be covered by health insurance at religious institutions.

Now Obama is personally calling Fluke. No doubt they intend to make her the Rosa Parks of conservatism war on contraception and sex or something.

So in a short time the story has gone from Obama's attack on religious freedom and overreaching regulatory state to prudish conservatives who hate sex and attack sexually active women. Oh and Rush Limbaugh. Seems only Obama and Limbaugh benefit from that. Funny how that works out, huh?

We really need to decide what we fighting about in this election. Is it the economy and Obama's unprecedented power grabs or the sexual morals of America? When we make this decision we should keep in mind that Obama and the Democrats want it to be the latter.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:19 AM | Comments (439)
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Last night Greg Gutfeld, Bill Schulz, Andy Levy, Thaddeus McCotter, Ann Coulter, and Kurt Loder payed tribute to Andrew Breitbart, who was instrumental in the development of the show and who was also Red Eye's very first guest. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 07:34 AM | Comments (168)
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Last Spring, I was in Pella, Iowa at the premiere of Sarah Palin's movie. I didn't get tickets to the movie because it was going to start promptly at 5pm, and I had enough job responsibilities that I wasn't going to be able to scoot out early. So I just went over for the after-movie festivities.

So I'm in the crowd, when all of a sudden I see "that haircut" along with the carefully cultivated five o'clock shadow that were hallmarks of the Late Great Andrew Breitbart. He was just circulating through the crowd who were waiting for Sarah & Todd to leave the theatre. I managed to work my way over to him and introduce myself. When I told him that I'm a minor-league coblogger at the AoSHQ, he replied with something like "Hey I love that site! I don't know if I've read your work or not: Do you COMMENT there too?"

Dude was in on the joke, and he said it with that Breitbart smile on his face.

I only met the man the one time, but I wanted to share the story today because I think he really liked the treacherous hive of scum & villiany that comments here at Ace's. He wasn't blowing smoke up your asses, I honestly think that he liked you. And that's a good way to remember the man.

Godspeed, Mr. Breitbart.

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 04:47 AM | Comments (219)
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Happy Friday.

Blatant pants-so-on-fire-they've-set-the-building-on-fire-too lying in the President's official campaign tumblr on the contraception mandate. Liberals can't win without lying.

Pethokoukis' latest post on Obamanomics. It's long, but there are charts. Gotta have a chart man.

Pentagon has mothballed a 15 year-old, $5 billion laser missile defense project for lack of funding.

Arctic ice is at a seven-year high. Also, did you know that the North Pole was free of ice in the winter of 1958? There have been many stupid predictions of an ice-free Arctic over the years.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:01 AM | Comments (248)
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In Memoriam

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:49 PM | Comments (953)
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Ben Howe put this together.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 03:28 PM | Comments (488)
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I know everyone is in mourning over the loss of Andrew Breitbart, but I thought I would make the day better by letting everyone know that Joe Arpaio has decided to help the GOP take back the White House by reopening the issue of the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate:

Arpaio on Thursday unveiled preliminary results of an investigation, conducted by members of his volunteer cold-case posse, into the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate, a controversy that has been widely debunked but which remains alive in the eyes of some conservatives.

At a news conference, Arpaio said the probe revealed that there was probable cause to believe Obama's long-form birth certificate released by the White House in April is a computer-generated forgery. He also said the selective service card completed by Obama in 1980 in Hawaii also was most likely a forgery.

"We don't know who the perpetrators are of these documents," Arpaio said, although he said he doesn't think the president forged the documents.

When asked why he decided to open the investigation Arpaio said it was in response to a request by a local TEA Party group and wasn't motivated by a need to distract from legal issues resulting from DoJ investigations.

Maybe it was motivated by a need to distract voters from the primaries and the endless debates. (Just a thought)

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:19 PM | Comments (294)
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