That’s how people used to live their lives, before they were taught in progressive Leftist schools that sooner or later the socialist government will make you whole, and you didn’t need to take responsibility for yourself.

One is never in a good starting position when pigeonholed as “the libertarian” or “the conservative” or [now, even] “the liberal” in the room.

Forget PR. The only way to win an argument is to one up the other guy in front of witnesses. Nobody gets points for logic, because the audience can’t even follow logic and gets bored by it anyway. What they admire is the demonstration of superior mental alacrity. Be clever and punchy, and watch them just assume you made sense.

Ever have something say something to you, and you don’t know how to respond, and then afterward you think of the perfect comeback? Take heart. You’ll get another chance eventually. Remember those comebacks. Have them ready for the ext time.

Don’t get me wrong, some systems are definitely better than others, obviously. But eventually somebody is going to have to be trustworthy, somebody is going to have to be brave, somebody is going to have to be humble enough to see that something isn’t working even if it’s their own idea and it would be embarrassing to admit that. Acting like widespread virtuous behavior that makes society function “just happens” is ignoring a key variable. The fact that most retailers can trust more than one employee with the keys to the till is actually a tremendous social accomplishment that not all countries share. It’s a much bigger key to a better society than whether or not we should privatize the post office.

Solve all the problems. As though they were a defined, finite, soluble and agreed set.

I would never be able to do PR work, since my answers would all be:

Whose children are they?

How did they get shot and by whom?

Were they part of the fight?

Were they knocking over a pharmacy?

Did they also have a gun? Knife? Club?

Were they really children in the colloquial sense or 15-18 year old rookie bangers?

Then when we get down to the actual kids actually innocent and shot by their stupid friends with stupid parent’s easily accessible gun, I’m open to serious prosecution of the parent involved.

If in the role of NRA puppet, I’d probably just ask the comedian when he stopped beating his wife, the ur-classic of this genre.

“What if a poor person gets sick, doesn’t have insurance, and can’t get friends, family, or charity to pay for treatment?”

Nonsense. By law in the USA if you are sick and go to a hospital and seek aid, that hospital by law is required to TREAT you and do so in a manner as it would for any other patient. Your bill latter most of the time written off as a tax write-off.

Try this: “When you have figured out how to solve all the problems in the world without creating new ones, then I’ll talk what-ifs with you.”

Better yet: don’t adopt an ideological label in the first place. Letting yourself be pigeonholed in a sucker’s game.

Yes, that can lead to a straw man problem. No solution is perfect, which is kind of the point.

Then there’s: “Would you really rather Y than X?” Now we’ve framed it into a matter of trade-offs of values, which is frighteningly close to an intelligent and enlightening exchange.