Liberal Sophistry:

This is a series of articles dedicated to some useful social-psychology and the ways liberals attempt to engineer social change. 

"Liberal Sophistry,know your enemies..."                                          - A Fortscribe orginal done in collaboration with Perankhscribe

Concept 1: Inoculation

Those who have studied social psychology will be familiar with the concept of inoculation.  Inoculation is a form of persuasion through which a group seeks to resist outside influences that might run contrary to their beliefs.  It works as such: first you take a belief that you want to establish and protect.  For the purpose of example, lets take the belief "smoking is undesirable."  If you told a group of young kids that smoking was undesirable without offering an explanation, those kids might agree that smoking is undesirable.  Later however, when these kids grow older and this belief is tested, they won't be able to articulate the reasoning behind why smoking is undesirable. Its not hard to guess what might happen next.

While the idea that offering evidence to support a belief makes that belief more resistant to change is far from ground-breaking, social-psychologists discovered something interesting.  The quality of the evidence is not especially important for many situations.  Its more important to have an argument at hand to protect a belief, even if the belief and defending argument are bunk. 

How to do this though?  Well in medicine we use the term "inoculation" to describe how we use a weakened germ to prepare a body's defenses to fight off real germs.  Psychological inoculation is kind of similar.  We make people practice defending their belief against weak arguments.  So in our smoking example: try telling the kids something that disagrees with the belief "smoking is undesirable."  We could tell them something like "smoking makes you look cool." This is  a really weak argument since most chain smokers don't smoke two packs a day to look cool.  Hence, its easy for the kids to defeat the argument and reinforce the belief that "smoking is undesirable."  

The more practice we have in destroying weak arguments against our beliefs, the more sure of those beliefs we are. When a conditioned person is forced to hear a real argument against their belief, the conditioned person is likely to be so sure of their viewpoint that they do not believe that it is necessary to consider further arguments against their belief; no matter how compelling counter arguments are.

People can sometimes be forced to rethink their belief systems if they are approached with care, but when was the last time the media or any politician really challenged you to think for yourself?  Inoculation is the perfect tool to enslave people who want to feel informed without doing the work to reason out their own perspective.  Take a complicated political issue, offer your perspective and then defend that argument against weak counter-arguments.

While I can't argue that only liberals use inoculation, its been my experience that inoculation is often associated with liberal agendas.  This can be especially frustrating because the many liberals fall for this and combine their new-found ignorance with a pompous "smarter than thou" routine.  Surely you know who I am referring to.  These are the people who are so thoroughly convinced of their logic that they go out of their way to castigate anybody who disagrees with them.  Bush is a moron - *squawk* - Rush Limbaugh is a liar - *squawk*- Republicans are racist Hay-seed Hics from flyover country.  Great stuff from people who view themselves as "open-minded" and tolerant.  However, this is just the sort of logic one would expect from inoculation.  Just a particularly nasty variety just tacks on destroying the bearer of logic when no good arguments against their logic can be found.

As conservatives, we must be extremely cautious when liberals define our political issues for us.  Case in point, issues like the war in Iraq are being debated on topics like "One can oppose the war in Iraq and still be a patriot!"  Topics like these evoke stupid arguments the conservative can never win.   Of course there are patriots who oppose the war in Iraq.  That is not critical to the issue of whether or not we belong in Iraq!  Its a distraction.  Furthermore, by making people defend anti-war dissent as something that is not necessarily unpatriotic, we are also inoculating people to defend scum bag anti-war protesters.  Not just your moderate peace-loving idealist but also the radical flag-burning heathen variety that put cement on railroad tracks to derail troop transports. (Of soldiers returning home no less!)  If a liberal presents to you a no-win scenario as credence for their beliefs, remember to go back to basics and consider its relevance.

Combating inoculation and sophistry is a true art.  I will not pretend to be a master of it.  Here are some basic tips that might help you as you face their tactics. 

Spend the time to reason out your own viewpoint by questioning presented evidence. When possible devise your own unique arguments and if you want to be truly informed research the topic further.   If debating a victim of inoculation, try to approach the topic in a unique way to better avoid triggering their conditioned response.  When possible challenge your adversary to reason out their conclusion step by step.  Most people, even some of the crazy liberals are not entirely stupid.  Of course, you can't win with everyone.  Some people are really that stupid.  Don't let it get to you.

NEXT TIME:  Paired stimulus association.  The real usage of subliminal arguments.