How To Neutralize The Trolls

WEST-COAST Drudge captain Andrew Breitbart says there’s a problem. Lefty radicals are trying to hijack conservative web sites and sow dissension and demoralization in conservative ranks.

It’s the online equivalent of that ten-year-old talk radio phenomenon, the “seminar caller.” They are the folks who used to say that they had always been Republicans, but... And then they would launch into the day’s Democratic talking point.

Some conservative websites, according to Breitbart, have closed down their comments sections—Hugh Hewitt for one.

But I think that’s a pity. We want our liberal and lefty friends to have all the trolling they could possibly want. It’s fun, after all, to guess the seminar callers. Very often they sound like lawyers or liberal activists, with an eloquence and fluency that amateur talk-show callers just don’t have.

The important thing to do about these liberal trolls is to contain their poison and have plenty of antidote on hand.

The big thing to understand is the basic rules from the Robbers Cave experiment. When there are two groups of males in conflict they will always differentiate themselves. One group will be the cussers, and the other group will say: We don’t do that sort of thing.

That makes it easy, doesn’t it? We conservatives are never going to lose our tempers with the liberal trolls. Oh yea. How nice. What charming language. I’m sure you must have some evidence to back up your remarkable assertions. Would you care to give us a few links to check out?

Eventually, you learn to filter the trolls out. But you can only do it if you preserve the conservative code. As Breitbart says:

The right, for the most part, embraces basic Judeo-Christian ideals and would not promote nor defend the propaganda techniques that were perfected in godless communist and socialist regimes.

Just like Dorothy’s Aunt Em: “For twenty years I’ve been wanting to tell you what I think of you, but because I’m a Christian woman, I can’t.”

The thing to remember is that in the fullness of time and the political cycle, the Obamanoids are going to find themselves playing on a sticky wicket. They will find it difficult to play effectively if the conservative batsmen have already seen their bowling. (Little bit of cricket lingo here.)

The whole point of the conservative movement is to move back to limited government. That means you have to observe the rules of limited government and civil society except under extreme provocation.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

Comments:

Posted by: craig on 04/02/09 4:07pm

You are spot on, my good sir. My brother is one of these trolls, unfortunately. He calls me weekly with his diatribes, insisting he really is a republican (one day on vacation together he pointed to an icon on his laptop for a conservative website and exclaimed "See, I am a Republican!" Personally, I'm not, but an independent having never found a single reason in 28 years of voting to ever have chosen a democrat. Further, in recent years I've actually found innumerable reasons to ensure voting for anyone who is NOT a liberal, much less a Democrat. But I remain civilized. I love him as dearly as anyone would love family members who have a "simple" intelligence. Besides, his calls are less frequent since I happened by chance to be listening to the same liberal talk show he had been just prior to his call. The moment he began- "while I normally would...", I recognized the script. I responded almost verbatim to what he was about to repeat from the show, finishing his sentences.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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