While our political system is based on objective debate, many on the Left now want to shut down discussion and silence dissent.

END OF DISCUSSION: From the Heckler’s Veto to Removing Microphones, the Left Isn’t Interested in Opposing Views http://t.co/LtaDtnyXIG

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) July 20, 2015

...While it is true that attempts to marginalize political opponents isn’t the exclusive domain of progressives, in the last couple of decades it is the political left which has perfected these tactics to an art form. Perhaps it is because these latest efforts reflect a full manifestation of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. An important strategy from this famous anarchist is to avoid at all costs an honest debate over whether socialist policies actually work.

And it’s not just conservatives who are sounding the alarm. Bill Maher, the left of center host of his own show on HBO has said that liberals are too easily offended and that an overly politically correct society actually breeds more hostility between the parties. Jerry Seinfeld, lifelong Democratic and famous comic, has said that he doesn’t play college campuses anymore because students have been brainwashed into being offended at almost anything.

While political correctness is a national problem, it is much worse in California. Indeed, for all the alleged “openness” of the California lifestyle, here are the three things about which you cannot possibly have a rational discussion with a liberal: Global warming, immigration and traditional marriage....

Hot Topic: Should the GOP De-Emphasize Social Issues?

◼ For the last 10 days, we’ve had something of a running debate among GOP columnists on the question of whether Republicans should de-emphasize social issues as part of a broader political strategy to appeal to more voters. - PJ Media Editors

What was truly noteworthy about this debate was the respect all columnists gave each other despite the passions unleashed by the nature of the argument. It should stand as an example for all conservatives to follow when debating issues among ourselves.

Join the discussion.

Food for thought

◼ GOP Hipster Makeover? - Stephanie Mencimer, Mother Jones
◼ Why victory in 2012 requires a truce on social issues - Cynthia Yockey, aconservativelesbian
◼ Morning Jay: In Defense of the "Truce" Jay Cost, Weekly Standard
◼ 10 more reasons for a truce on social issues so we can handle the fiscal ones - Cynthia Yockey, aconservativelesbian
We must create prosperity and it’s going to require all our attention.

Agree? Or disagree?

How to Understand Rush Limbaugh

◼ How to Understand Rush Limbaugh - commentarymagazine
One of the many strategic errors made by the Obama administration in the early days of 2009 was its decision to take on talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh—though it was, perhaps, hard to blame the president and his people for trying. After all, they were riding the wave of a big electoral win and feeling pretty invincible, with large majorities in both houses of Congress and a messiah in the White House, and Limbaugh had just stunned the country, days before Obama was inaugurated, by summarizing his feelings about the new president in four simple words: “I hope he fails.” Limbaugh impatiently brushed aside the happy talk about compromise and bipartisan cooperation and scoffed at the claim that Obama was a pragmatic, post-ideological, post-partisan, post-racial conciliator and healer. Instead, he saw every reason to believe that Obama would aggressively pursue a leftist dream agenda: an exponential expansion of government’s size and power, a reordering of the American economic system, and a dismantling of America’s role as a world power. Limbaugh was not alone in such views, but he was the only major figure on the right willing to stick his neck out at a time when the rest of the nation seemed dazed into acquiescence by the so-far impeccably staged Obama ascendancy.

Such was the mood of the moment that it seemed a sullen breach of etiquette to utter any such criticism. In any event, the White House quickly concluded that Limbaugh’s statement was a rare blunder and that hay was to be made of it. What better way to sow division among the Republicans, and confine them to a tiny corner of American political life, than to identify Rush Limbaugh as the “real head” of their party and brand him as an unpatriotic extremist and sore loser—or, in the light-touch description of longtime Clinton adviser Paul Begala, as “a corpulent drug addict with an AM radio talk show”? If they could succeed in this angle of attack, they would kill two birds with one stone, marginalizing their most popular antagonist while rendering the opposition party impotent with embarrassment and internal squabbling. Each Republican would face a choice of embracing the glittering “new age” of Obama and gathering a few scraps from beneath the Democratic table or following Rush into the fever swamps of an embittered permanent minority and getting nothing at all.

The Democrats’ strategy backfired.... read the rest

◼ You may also like How to Understand the Tea Party