{"id":1997526,"date":"2023-08-11T07:26:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-11T11:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/next-time-youre-sparring-with-a-leftist-try-asking-a-question\/"},"modified":"2023-08-11T07:31:54","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T11:31:54","slug":"next-time-youre-sparring-with-a-leftist-try-asking-a-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/next-time-youre-sparring-with-a-leftist-try-asking-a-question\/","title":{"rendered":"When sparring with a leftist, ask a question."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnext-time-youre-sparring-with-a-leftist-try-asking-a-question%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1997526&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>In\u200b June, a British \u2062teacher <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2023\/06\/19\/student-called-despicable-by-teacher-after-questioning-peer-who-identifies-as-a-cat\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reprimanded<\/a> two\u200c 13-year-old students, labeling \u200bthe \u2063teenagers \u201cdespicable.\u201d Their offense? Asking a simple \u2063question.  <\/p>\n<p>Following an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/next-time-youre-sparring-with-a-leftist-try-asking-a-question\/\" title=\"When sparring with a leftist, ask a question.\">eighth-grade \u201clife \u200beducation\u201d \u200dclass<\/a> about \u201cidentity,\u201d one \u2063of the students asked \u200da\u200c classmate: \u201cHow\u200c can you identify as a cat when you\u2019re a girl?\u201d The two\u2062 students\u200d disagreed with the lesson, asserting: \u201cIf you have a vagina, you\u2019re a girl and if\u200b you have a penis, you\u2019re a boy.\u201d The teacher told the inquiring students they would no longer be \u2063welcome at school if they continued to \u2062express their opinion. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-70208554\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-26f5837512ab8a1ec5b1c25d0cf9dd70 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-26f5837512ab8a1ec5b1c25d0cf9dd70\"><\/div>\n<p>If only such stories\u2062 were anomalies.\u200d Yet, \u200cas Americans know all too well, there\u2064 is now often a \u2062steep price to\u200d pay for questioning the zeitgeist when it \u200bcomes to sexual or racial ideology. Conservative thinkers are maligned and assaulted. In the social sciences and humanities in \u200bthe United States and United Kingdom, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/we-have-data-prove-it-universities-are-hostile-conservatives-opinion-1573551\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">75 percent<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/majority-of-academics-support-discriminating-against-conservatives-study-shows\/\" title=\"Majority of Academics Support Discriminating Against Conservatives, Study Shows\">conservative academics<\/a> say their departments are a hostile \u200benvironment for their beliefs. Conservative students regularly self-censor, as do federal\u200d employees. <\/p>\n<p>As painful as this is, those teenage British girls are onto something. Indeed, they\u200c employed a rhetorical strategy as \u200bancient as the very beginnings of our philosophical tradition \u2014 that of the great Greek philosopher Socrates, who unveiled\u200b the foolishness of his interlocutors not\u2064 by shouting insults or fist-pounding but \u200dby asking honest and penetrating questions. Conservatives cornered in spaces of conformist ideology, \u2064be\u2064 it schools or workplaces, \u200cwould do well to master \u2063this\u00a0powerful rhetorical weapon. <\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Socrates Started\u200b the Questions<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cIs it possible for a \u2063person, if he knows a\u2063 thing, at the same time not to know that\u2064 which he knows?\u201d The answer, of course, is no. Socrates knew the answer when he queried his rhetorical sparring partner in Plato\u2019s <em>Theaetetus<\/em>. But by pointedly asking Theaetetus, Socrates pushed him to defend an indefensible position and \u2063thus dismantled\u2062 the relativism of the sophists of \u2062his day by forcing them to admit the reality of the law of noncontradiction.  <\/p>\n<p>Though \u2063many Athenians found\u2064 Socrates stupid, \u200cabsurd, and even \u2063repulsive, his greatest student Plato understood his genius. \u201cI am ashamed before\u2063 him and before \u2062no one else, for I know in my conscience\u200c that I cannot refute him. \u2026 Sometimes I wish he were no longer among the living. \u2062Yet if that should \u200bhappen\u200c I know I would be even more distraught. I just don\u2019t know what to do with\u200d this \u2062man!\u201d he explained in the <em>Symposium<\/em>. The frustrated Athenian leadership did: They \u200deventually tried\u2062 Socrates, convicted him of impiety and \u201ccorrupting the youth\u201d of\u2063 Athens, and sentenced him to death. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-e9ba4380e4ed6fbef8c68e94ed8b6fb2 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-e9ba4380e4ed6fbef8c68e94ed8b6fb2\"><\/div>\n<p>Some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/one-of-bidens-top-advisers-leaves-white-house-to-shill-for-corporate-america\/\" title=\"One Of Biden\u2019s Top Advisers Leaves White House To Shill For Corporate America\">political philosophers<\/a> believe the\u00a0legitimacy of\u2062 Socrates\u2019 trial and\u2063 death\u00a0and\u2063 his upending of traditional Athenian public life\u2064 remains the most important question of Western civilization, as political scholar Glenn Ellmers argues in his new book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.encounterbooks.com\/books\/the-narrow-passage\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>The Narrow\u2062 Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility \u2064of Political\u200d Philosophy<\/em><\/a>. Ellmers cites political thinker\u200c Harry Neuman, who succinctly\u2062 describes the \u201cSocratic question:\u201d \u201cPolitics always has been, and always \u200cwill be, this belligerent \u2062determination to empower one\u2019s gods, to ram them down the enemy\u2019s throat by legal enactment enforced by police-military power.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>That seems an apt description\u200b of our\u200d current \u200bpolitical moment, in which students, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.metroweekly.com\/2021\/11\/loudoun-county-school-board-settles-with-teacher-who-was-suspended-for-refusing-to-use-trans-students-pronouns\/#:~:text=The%20Loudoun%20County%20School%20Board,students'%20correct%20names%20and%20pronouns.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">teachers<\/a>, and employees\u2063 are regularly coerced to bow in obeisance to the woke gods of gender, sexual, and racial identity. And woe to those who don\u2019t bow. Many face such severe threats to\u2063 their\u00a0professional and personal lives that they keep silent rather than oppose the regime\u2019s \u200dgods. <\/p>\n<p>The more our culture is\u200c severed from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/d-w-wilber-theres-a-cancer-eating-at-america\/\" title=\"D.W. Wilber: There's a Cancer Eating at America\">traditional religious faith<\/a>, which gives us meaning and identity\u2062 (and teaches love even for one\u2019s enemies), the more secular society \u200cwill seek to find \u2062belonging in what Ellmers calls \u201ca \u200dholy \u2062community of citizen-believers.\u201d This\u200b explains, for example, why the woke faithful are\u200c uninterested\u200d in charitable debate or persuasion of their opponents but seek only to dominate. <\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Ask Questions\u00a0of the Woke<\/h2>\n<p>Almost two-and-a-half millennia removed from Socrates, his\u2062 disinterested approach still carries remarkable rhetorical weight. Consider, for example, the results of simply asking those persuaded of transgenderism\u2019s legitimacy, \u201cWhat is a woman?\u201d Conservative commentator Matt Walsh <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/video\/vi2952774169\/?playlistId=tt20256528&#038;ref_=tt_ov_vi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">certainly\u200d confounded quite a few people<\/a> by asking that\u200d simple question.  <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-100efa3dfeb7ef86007ce63f27c52d6c fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-100efa3dfeb7ef86007ce63f27c52d6c\"><\/div>\n<p>The same question netted similarly bizarre results when \u200dSen.\u200b Marsha\u200b Blackburn, R-Tenn., <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BWtGzJxiONU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">requested<\/a> that \u2063then-Supreme\u2064 Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson \u201cprovide a definition of a \u200bwoman\u201d\u2062 during her nomination \u200chearing. \u201cI\u2019m not a biologist,\u201d Jackson, the\u2062 supposedly first black female Supreme Court justice, meekly retorted. <\/p>\n<p>There are many other exemplars of this tactic beyond transgender insanity. Academics \u2063Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter, for example, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?app=desktop&#038;v=0250e2SnAYE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">consistently\u2063 ask unsettling questions<\/a> about race in America, \u200dincluding,\u2064 \u201cIf America is irredeemably racist, why do so many non-white people\u200b immigrate here?\u201d\u200b Or, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3x5vKN3ZNDM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">alternatively<\/a>, \u201cDoes \u200csuffering confer\u200b authority on the sufferer?\u201d\u200c In a \u200c2021 speech later adapted into an article for First Things, Lowry asked, \u201cJust how\u2063 important is race? Is it an objective \u200ddifference \u200bbetween people, like sex, or\u200c is\u2062 it \u200ba social construct?\u201d <\/p>\n<p>These are uncomfortable questions. They are questions that push woke ideologues onto their heels. They require\u200d the citizen-believers to shift from fiery, antagonistic \u2063rhetoric to an\u200c attempt at cogent speech. And, as we often discover, \u200dthe\u200b ideologues professing queer theory and institutional racism\u00a0find themselves incapable of articulating \u2062anything\u00a0beyond empty platitudes about diversity \u2063and\u2062 inclusion, the patriarchy and white supremacy, \u200cor\u2064 racism and bigotry. Simply ask the question and let your interlocutor stumble incoherently \u200cthrough\u200d a non-answer. <\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Become a Modern-Day \u2062Socrates<\/h2>\n<p>Making your rhetorical sparring partner look stupid isn\u2019t the\u200d point. The objective, as Plato stated in his\u200d description of Socrates\u2019 brilliance, is to cut men to their hearts and to gently \u200chelp them see the irrationality of their opinions. And by asking questions, rather than hammering talking points, we\u2062 can obscure our own opinions in settings where we may fear professional or personal repercussions. Starting with\u200d \u201cI\u2019m trying to understand you, can you explain \u200cX?\u201d is a lot less abrasive than \u201cThat\u2019s bullsh-t!\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Socrates \u2063was not the only one\u2062 to model this strategy. Several\u2062 centuries later \u200da Jewish itinerant preacher would\u2064 demonstrate his own mastery\u2062 of this approach,\u200d asking a \u2063generation \u201cFor what will it profit a man, if \u2064he gains the \u2062whole world and\u2062 forfeits his life? Or \u200cwhat shall a man give\u2064 in return\u2064 for \u200bhis life?\u201d (Matthew 16:26). Those questions still convert men and\u200c women today.  <\/p>\n<p>Both Socrates and Jesus paid the ultimate price for their intellectual\u200b honesty and \u2064courageous willingness to \u2063question\u2063 the moral norms \u200bof their\u200c day. Though\u200b their questions often hurt and provoked, they asked \u200bthem with unparalleled clarity of mind and generosity of \u2063heart. The continued \u200brelevance \u2064of their lives and the legacy of their thought and \u200cteaching suggests that if we\u2062 want to save our own generation, we might want to start asking some questions. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-a8395525a5cf2542fdead5ee55deba84 fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-a8395525a5cf2542fdead5ee55deba84\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In June, a British teacher scolded two 13-year-olds, calling them &#8220;despicable&#8221; for asking a basic question. After a class on &#8220;identity,&#8221; one student questioned a classmate&#8217;s identification as a cat. The students disagreed with the lesson, stating, &#8220;If you&#8217;re a girl, you can&#8217;t identify as a cat.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":658,"featured_media":1997527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1997526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/658"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1997526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1997527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1997526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1997526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1997526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}