You Can't Silence Us

Joe brings up a great issue. The left refuses to admit that not everyone has the same opinion as they do. You didn’t vote for Kamala because you are a racist misogynist, not because leftist policies suck. I tried to explain to some people why I voted against Florida’s amendment that would have legalized marijuana. I told them that I voted against it because it only permitted people with licenses to sell, distribute, and grow marijuana, and because it would have meant smelling that nasty shit everywhere. Had they made it legal for anyone to grow it, and mandated that only edibles could be used in public places, I would have voted yes.

Instead of listening to me, they called me names, with ‘boomer’ being the least offensive. They don’t understand that the way to convince someone to give you their vote doesn’t include threats and name calling.

There is a truth in many things, and there are opinions. One needs to be able to tell the difference. Sometimes, “Agree to disagree” is not a viable option.

I refuse to “agree to disagree.” That is stupid. Suppose I came out and said that men should be able to freely rape women, or we should be able to own slaves. Would liberals still want to “agree to disagree?” When someone says that to me, it comes across as some smarmy, superior attitude that basically says “I am smarter than you, and I am your better, but since you, with your obviously inferior intellect cannot see reason and agree with me, I will simply smile at you, and tell you that you have a right to your opinion, you simpleton.”

I won’t “agree to disagree,” because “agree to disagree” is an incredibly lazy tactic. It ranks up there with “everyone is entitled to their own opinion” among dishonest and self-defeating statements made in lieu of actual argument.

The argument could be useful, I suppose, if it meant no more than what it says – mutual recognition of a disagreement on a matter of opinion. Some arguments are intractable – issues of personal taste or the subjective importance of certain values cannot be resolved empirically. In an argument like that, once both sides have expressed themselves as clearly as possible, if there is still no agreement then there is nothing left to do but acknowledge there is a disagreement, and leave it at that.

That is not, however, the sense in which I most often hear the phrase “agree to disagree” used. What is usually meant is “we’re both equally right, both equally wrong.” It is an arch-liberal dodge, invoking the most ludicrous type of relativistic equivocation. If I am holding a flamethrower and you are holding a lit match, it is true that we can both start fires, but pretending that we can just “agree to disagree” about which is better suited to the task of lighting a candle is nonsense.

Two positions, one demonstrably true and the other based on nothing more than feelings, do not share the same level of validity. If we can agree on some basic definitions like “true” and “evidence”, and if we can agree that it is important to have true beliefs rather than false ones, then we can and should examine different ideas. While it might be nice to pretend that this kind of dispute is simply a difference of opinion, it most certainly is not. I refuse to pretend that a poorly-argued position, based on straw men refutations of legitimate questions, holds sufficient validity to be granted any more respect than belief in aliens or the Loch Ness monster. Examples include:

• Women don’t have, and never have had, penises.
• If a man truly has a belief that he is a woman, or a woman believes that she is really a man, that person is delusional.
• Adults shouldn’t be discussing sexual matters with children. Even adolescents are iffy in most cases.
• Taking one person’s money to give to another isn’t charity- it’s theft.
• One person’s rights end where another person’s rights begin.

When a person claims that they wish to “agree to disagree” is really saying is, “I want you to agree that my position has just as much merit as yours”, and I am certainly not interested in engaging in masquerading a clear true/false dichotomy as a simple difference of perspective. Truth is not established easily, and that’s a good thing. In a universe where an infinite number of explanations for a given phenomenon are conceivable, we must scrutinize and test to see which ideas are worth keeping and which can be discarded safely. “Agreeing to disagree” is simply asking to lump the good ideas in with the fanciful or debunked ones in some misguided sense of fairness.

Some things are simply so repugnant, and so against freedom and decency that I cannot agree to disagree. The point here is that we live in society that claims to value freedom. There are always those who would abuse those freedoms and hurt others. I won’t play that game, nor will I vote for someone who does.

To the left- that is why I voted the way that I did.

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That is also why I don’t have a strong opinion on abortion. The matter of opinion in that debate, where I am concerned, is “when exactly does life begin?” There are good arguments to be made on both sides, and there is no real empirical way to settle that debate (at least not at this point). There is a point, however, when no one can argue that the fetus isn’t a living child. The child has a heartbeat, a functioning nervous and digestive system, and is a fully formed person capable of survival on its own. At that point, abortion is murder unless it is to prevent death or serious injury to the mother (in other words, it becomes a form of self defense).

I also think that this isn’t a Federal issue, not being one of the enumerated powers of the Federal government, so it is up to each state and its voters to determine.