Accuracy vs Effectiveness in Rhetoric
After listening to Hugh Hewitt talking about the Discovery Wacko a few nights back, I felt a little bad for my original title of Al Gore's Legacy for this blog post about the nut who took hostages at the Discovery Network. So I changed it. Hewitt's point was that we shouldn't mirror what the left does when they blame the actions of some nut on the conservative movement. Environmentalists in general don't call for violence or hostage-taking, so it's inaccurate to blame them for the actions of an individual.
Plus Al Gore has much more to his legacy than just making a propaganda film. From inventing the internets to scoring female massage therapists to his poetic remark, "What about the Dingell-Norwood bill?", there's much more to Al Gore's legacy than mainstreaming environmentalist lunacy. And that's not mentioning his inspiring an epic tale much greater than Love Story―Man Bear Pig.
While Hewitt's point is well taken, I think it is made with his judge hat on rather than his persuasive hat. Sure, he'd throw a case out of court if someone wanted to bring charges against those whom James Jay Lee claimed were the inspiration for his actions. But after reading this post by Melissa Clouthier on how to instruct those living in their own constructed world like leftists do, I think that accuracy may have to take a back seat to rhetoric in order to teach wisdom. Excerpt:
One of my children has autism. An autistic child is inside his own head and lacks a certain self-awareness. So, for example, when the child does repetitive behaviors called "stimming" like rocking in place or flapping his hands in front of his eyes, he doesn't realize what he's doing. A parent might say, "Johnny, stop swaying" or "Stop flapping" and the child will continue. He doesn't know that he's doing anything.
Modeling normative behavior can help-but only if the child is aware of the normative behavior. That is, if he is not "seeing" it, he cannot model it. He is internally focused and that's the problem.
So how do you get that child out of his head? You mirror his behavior. Try it some time. A child who is swaying or flapping will show a dawn of awareness when the parent or teacher mirrors what the child is doing in front of his face. So, in my house, I will start flapping my hands in front of my face and my son will get a sly smile of awareness and he'll stop. He gets out of his own head for a minute, registers his behavior and quits. It is very effective. In fact, it is far more effective than modeling...until the unwanted behavior stops. Once the child stops the asocial behavior, he will start watching for different behavior. Awareness comes first.
You can see where I'm going with this. From what I can tell, and it's a scientific fact to boot, leftists lack empathy. That is, they cannot put themselves in someone else's shoes and modify behavior based on how they would feel if the behavior was turned toward them. They are rather autistic about their intellectual and social behavior. They'll tar and feather a whole segment of people based on the action of one crazy and not even bat an eye. However, when their own crazy gets caught, they want the more reasonable and reasoned and logical response of not smearing a whole group of people (say, all people who watched and liked the Al Gore movie An Inconvenient Truth).
So I think we can point these influences out as long as we don't harp on them too much or imply that some kind of legal indictment is in order for those doing the influencing. You might even be able to elicit logical thinking from your opponent in the form of a verbal response which may then be used later when someone makes a similar illogical claim, e.g., a Glenn Beck fan said something racist, ergo... etc. If you still think that modeling normative behavior is the only way to go and doubt that this behavior mirroring can be wise and effective, ask yourself if you think Solomon was really going to have that chick's baby cut in half.
