Friday, September 30, 2011

The Jersey Girls method of argument: You can't disagree because of the sacred status of the questioner – or else we'll cry

I knew all along there was something wrong about the audience "booing a soldier" during last week's Republican debate, but couldn't put my finger on it (you can read some thoughts on gay marriage here). Fortunately, Ann Coulter stepped in:
…the audience was not "booing a soldier" during one of the video questions, as the media, president and vice president have alleged. The audience was booing the soldier's demand that Republican presidential candidates commit to not overturning a sleazy partisan vote taken in the twilight days of the heavily Democratic 2010 Congress.

In my job as communications director of Defenders of Republicans Unfairly Attacked by the Media and Then Immediately Sold Out by Their Fellow Republicans (DORUAMATISOTFR), I am required to point out that the question and audience reaction went like this:

"In 2010, when I was deployed to Iraq ..."

(No booing.)

"I had to lie about who I was ..."

(No booing – despite the fact that not talking about your sex life with your co-workers is not lying about who you are. In fact, many Americans manage quite easily to go days and days without talking about their sex lives with co-workers.)

"because I'm a gay soldier ..."

(No booing, although we didn't ask and would prefer that you not tell.)

"and I didn't want to lose my job."

(No booing.)

To recap: So far, a remarkably boo-free interaction.

Finally, we got to the question:

"My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that's been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?"

Then there was booing. And for good reason.

It is beyond absurd to demand that Republican candidates pledge not to consider altering a recent rule change overturning a military policy that had been in effect from the beginning of warfare until the last few weeks of the 111th Congress.

Of course there was booing for that!

At the time of the vote – five minutes ago – only eight Republicans in the entire U.S. Senate supported eliminating Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It's safe to assume that no one on the stage supported this sexualization of the military, except maybe one of the nut candidates polling at 3 percent.

This is not an anti-gay position; it's a pro-military position. The basic idea is that sexual bonds are disruptive to the military bond.

Soldiers, sailors and Marines living in close quarters who are having sex with one another, used to have sex with one another or would like to have sex with one another simply cannot function as a well-oiled fighting machine. A battalion of married couples facing a small unit of heterosexual men would be slaughtered.

That's why instead of pushing openly gay servicemen on the military, patriotic gays should come out against girls in the military. Fair is fair. (In 1994, the first year servicewomen were allowed to serve on naval aircraft carriers, 39 women assigned to the USS Eisenhower alone ended up pregnant.)

But liberals enjoy engaging in wild social experiments with other people's lives, safety and money in order to feel better about themselves. So now the next Republican president is going to have to repeal open sexuality in the military along with Obamacare.

Let's just hope the Germans don't start feeling militaristic before then.

What if, instead of asking Republicans to agree that gays should forevermore serve openly in the military, the soldier had asked Republican candidates for president to promise not to repeal Obamacare – or agree to establish Marxism in America? Would liberals demand that Republicans not "boo a soldier" in that case?

This is the Jersey Girls method of argument: You can't disagree because of the sacred status of the questioner – or else we'll cry.

Step Two is to demand abject groveling from all other Republicans, on behalf of people they've never met.

…The reason liberals have to engage in these bullying tactics in political discourse is that their ideas collapse whenever exposed to the warm breeze of logic. Their hysterical sobbing blocks reason.

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