How to Argue like a Leftist

The Left uses a convenient method to prove a point. First, take the facts, then remove any data which contradicts your claim and provide what is "Left". Here are some examples of how this is done.

Example 1: Budget Spending

Leftist Premise: Defense spending is the biggest part of the Federal Budget.  

They will present a budget chart that looks like this to support their premise...

Leftist Conclusion: Clearly, Pentagon spending is more than half of our budget spending. Therefore my argument is valid and anything that follows it is also true, such as...

• That's too much to spend on defence
• Military contractors are overpaid
• We don't need a big military
• We are an unethical global hegemony
• We're racist

It's all perfectly logical, right?

No, it is built on a foundation of bull and the substance of their argument drops in quality from there on. Some of their conclusions may have merit, but by using deceptive evidence they errode the value of their own argument.

The graphic is not the "Federal Budget", it's only the "Discretionary Spending" portion of the Federal Budget. The full budget looks like this...

Defense spending drops to a distant third place at 16% of total spending after Social Security with 33% of total spending and running a close second is Medicare at 27% of total spending.

Consider for a moment what this means,

• 60% of all Federal spending does nothing except rob Peter to pay Paul. That is the vast majority of "work" that our Federal government does.

• This activity produces no real wealth it merely transfers ownership of wealth while taking a substantial cut for overhead costs.

• These programs have no actual accounts or deposits for the beneficiaries. They are both effectively Ponzi schemes.

• Neither Social Security or Medicare are mentioned in the Constitution, while a Common Defense (the military) is specifically mentioned.

So, the Constitutionally mandated military has taken a back seat to some creative financial products that are not mentioned in the Constitution. Weird, right?

It's not that I am against a social safety net or senior citizens. I realize they worked hard all their lives for their Social Security benefits. The problem is the architecture of the system. We pay it in reverse. We should be "investing" for the future, rather than paying off the past. This allows small sums regularly invested over a couple decades to grow into a sizable sum, and the investor can retire on the principle plus interest.

Social Security takes money from worker's checks and pays that money directly to beneficiaries. There is no "investment", nothing to grow, and no principle for interest to accrue upon, instead we are just performing account swaps. As long as the workforce is growing at a healthy pace, account swaps work fine. Unfortunately, we have a stagnant work force and a growing number of increasingly compensated beneficiaries. That is unsustainable.

I'm not for punishing grandma and grandpa. I'm against fraud, and that is what the Leftist Budget Spending argument is based upon. Any system that requires constant rescue is not financially sound. The Social Security architecture must be changed in a fundamental way to address its structural deficiency. Adjusting this requirement or tweaking that benefit only prolongs the systemic failure and allows the resulting damage to grow exponentially.

Example 2: The Clinton Budget Surplus

Leftist Premise: Bill Clinton produced a budget surplus.

Speaking of fraud, here is another accounting irregularity. How many times do you have to repeat a lie before it becomes true? Infinity + 1, but you can make a bunch of wishful thinking people believe it's true way before you reach that critical mass.

Simply follow this recipe...


First, propose that there is going to be a surplus

Second, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,  repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,  repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...

Third, claim there was a surplus. Even a decade later...

Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...Draw it in a chart! Or two, or three hundred...

As long as the chart includes a surplus, then there had to be one! Yes, sirree. There had to be a surplus. Liars can figure, but charts can't lie!

Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...

Leftist Conclusion: The "investments" (Pronounced: spending) and "cuts" (Pronounced: reduced increases) that Bill Clinton succeeded in placing in the budget did what no President had accomplished in decades.

In truth (the untarnished variety), a budget surplus" should (theoretically) produce a REDUCTION in national debt, just as the inverse a "budget deficit" produces an INCREASE in the national debt. This is fairly basic arithmetic. If the surplus fails to REDUCE the national debt, I argue that the surplus is imaginary, accounting hocus-pocus, or just damn good propaganda.

If we are shoveling more debt on our unborn children many generations hence, then a surplus is nothing to brag about and it certainly is not a surplus of anything but all-natural organic bovine produced fertilizer.

So, let's take a look at the effects of the Clinton Surplus....

Ta-Da! No budget surplus. None at all. The "surplus" is accounting flim+flam=fertilizer. For an explanation of how the equation worked out to be flim/flam= (half) truth, see Bill Clinton says his administration paid down the debt.

Example 3: Right Wingers are Sociopaths

Leftist Premise: Those espousing Right wing ideas are murderous neo-nazis, while the Left is the abode of loving, maternal farm folk and working class heroes. 

Look at the death toll results for Left wing dictatorships vs. Right wing dictatorships in the Western hemisphere the Left has a much lower body count. (Paraphrased)

- Claim made by Thom Hartmann on his RT show The Big Picture

Okay, Thom, you have me there! You are absolutely correct. No doubt about it, the facts are behind you on the claim that Leftist dictators have killed far less than Right wing dictators in the Western hemisphere. You win!

However, when we remove your "Western hemisphere" filter and look at THE REAL BIG PICTURE rather than what is left, you're full of all-natural organic bovine produced fertilizer...

When we look at the BIG PICTURE, Right wing dictators are monsters following in the footsteps of Elmo!

But now for the only question that I have LEFT, what kind of asshole justifies any dictators and calls himself a patriotic American, Tomm? 

Okay, she's acting like a dictator but that's as reprehensible as you playing apologist for one. You and Nancy Pelosi suck, Tomm, and here is why...

Left wing, Right wing, East wing, Wingding, or Chicken wing, we should tolerate no dictators! We're Americans, Tomm! We believe in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness! Not the Nancy Pelosi Nanny State, Equality of Outcome, and Universal Healthcare. 

Oops! I forgot that this is How to Argue like a Lefty, not with a Lefty. Anyways, that's how you do both.

Next: How to Argue like a Right Winger

(Because they suck too!)