It's Not "Against Trump" to Demand Debate of Actual Facts
Excerpt: Winning the argument used to mean something different for conservatives. "The Art of the Deal" is not about winning arguments, it's about convincing people to ignore facts in order to get them to pay you more, to do less, than they really wanted. It's based on the idea that winners write epitaphs and history is the product of many winners over time. Conservative thought, based on classical liberalism and debate, deals with facts, policies, evidence, and truth. Trump's contribution to the death of debate, carrying conservatives directly into the sights of liberalism's big guns, is really his worst legacy. If you have a few minutes, read T.A. Frank's piece in the Washington Post about the "Golden Age of Conservative Magazines." Reading it, I was nostalgically transported to August 2015, when many conservatives believed that the laws of politics would carry Trump's blowhard campaign where gravity inevitably lands. But it didn't because their entire argument was premised on actual debate and rhetoric (the classical kind) remaining meaningful.
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