Found here. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.
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Thanksgiving is a special day when you get to spend time with family you rarely see, including those you might hang out with more often if you actually liked them. Despite the old adage about not discussing politics or religion at the dinner table, you’ll probably hear lots of unsolicited opinions on both, so it’s good to come prepared. (One never attends a gathering where leftists spout off, apparently.)
Perhaps your right-wing cousin likes the way Donald Trump “shoots from the hip,” or your dad says he read on Facebook that Planned Parenthood used billions of tax dollars to open an abortionplex. You can’t correct every falsehood, but you can offer some facts to counter whatever Fox News has been feeding them. (It is de rigueur that Fox News is mentioned any time the Left is impugning the Right. Leftists cannot conceive of a world where people have principled, thoughtful perspectives on issues that are different than theirs without invoking supposed brainwashing by something like Fox News. Of course, appealing to Fox News is not a rebuttal, it doesn't even rise to the level of school-yard taunting. It's an anti-intellectual bumper-sticker slogan, a conversation ender, a substitute for nuanced thought and considered analysis.)
To help in this valiant endeavor, we’ve created a handy dandy list of a few topics that might come up, from Syrian refugees to Sharia law, along with a few helpful talking points you can use. While we can’t provide the wine—you’ll have to buy that yourself—remember to remain calm and keep your glass full.
Actually, just keep the bottle next to you.
1. A $15 minimum wage will bankrupt businesses and is only for lazy people.
(Note the phrasing of the issue. Whenever you see words like "only," you will immediately know that your interlocutor is building a straw man. And no one has said that business will be bankrupted.
You will discover that most of the "talking points" contain misdirection, and are not actually what conservatives say about these issues.)
Your nana is a nice lady but she’s wrong about this one. FDR established the minimum wage based on the moral idea ("Moral?" Presumptive. We will be the ones who will decide for ourselves what is moral and what isn't, apart from the author's desire to impose his morality on us.
And might we note that FDR's ideas are ancient relics of a bygone era? The author, a supposed "progressive," appeals to old, failed ideas.)
that business should not profit by denying its workers livable wages, (Notice the pejorative language. However, no one is denying anyone anything, since it is not the purpose of business to provide "livable" wages. Employment is a voluntary arrangement where each party agrees to exchange value. The employee brings a certain amount of value in the form of skills and labor, which can be significant or very little, and the employer pays a wage commensurate with that value. "Livable" has nothing to do with this equation.)
and he intended the minimum wage to be “more than a bare subsistence level.” Yet it has lagged behind inflation since the late 1960s; had it kept up, the minimum wage would be over $10 nationwide. (True, but not relevant.)
Raising the minimum wage won’t result in massive (Weasel word.)
layoffs; in fact, history shows (A link to a leftist website.)
it increases consumer spending and actually bolsters the economy, ultimately creating more jobs. (Correlation is not causation. The level of consumer spending is influenced by many factors, and we cannot know to what degree, because we do not have a control group. Therefore, we cannot know what consumer spending or hiring might have been without the significant influence of government meddling.
We can say, however, that increasing the cost of doing business in any fashion will cause businesses to react, whether by increasing prices, dampening hiring, or scaling back on equipment purchases or capital improvements. It is self-evident that a part of a pool of money that belongs to the business is being diverted for purposes other than what the business would choose to do with it.)
In a survey conducted earlier this year, three out of five small-business owners say they support a minimum wage increase, which is saying something. (The link takes us to the Department of Labor, presided over by Secretary Thomas Perez. He's a doctrinaire leftist appointed by President Obama. As such, we are hardly able to trust this biased source.
Indeed, the DOL links to a website with a distinct leftist tilt. Its board of directors are largely leftists. Its CEO, John Arensmeyer, is of questionable integrity, and a big Obama supporter. Suffice to say, the neither DOL, this fellow, nor his organization are dispassionate trustworthy sources.)
Most of the people who earn minimum wage are heads of households, (If by "heads of households" the author means young single guys without skills and/or experience, then he is correct.
Further, he purposefully uses the phrase "heads of households" to imply that these people are something other than people in starter jobs. They're not for the most part.)
and they desperately need that money to support their families. (Which we do not know. We actually don't know if they have families to support, we don't know if they're the only wage earners in the household, and we don't know if they have access to social services and subsidies. The author just assumes they're poor and desperate.
And if they're truly desperate, which is a rare status, there is all sorts of government help and charitable activities available to them. But more importantly, their future is in their hands to make a life for themselves at whatever level their ambitions, skills, and income level provides for them.)
If you think that’s not your problem, consider that a number of employees in fast food and big box stores are paid so little they have to depend on some form of public assistance. (Ah, so here we have it. They do have other sources of income and benefits.)
McDonald’s has even advised its employees to get food stamps instead of raising wages, which seems wrong for a multibillion-dollar corporation. (Anecdotal. We don't know if this is what McDonald's was doing as policy, or even if it happened more than this one time.
But beyond that, what we have here is a person who got some good advice from McDonald's. McDonald's was only doing what the government does every day, that is, getting more people signed up for government benefits. Does the author object to government doing this?
In addition, the Left has made every effort to destigmatize living on the government dole. So we need to ask the author, is it bad or good to receive government benefits?)
Honestly, $15 doesn’t go as far as it did in your nana’s day and is barely a liveable (sic) wage in a lot of cities. But at least it gets workers a little closer. (In other words, for all the hoopla, the "living wage" isn't a living wage. It doesn't achieve its stated goal. More will be needed, and will also be the precipitator of hysteria and hand-wringing.
And because every day is a new day, starting fresh, and nothing has ever been done about the problems identified by leftists that morning, thus begins a new round of howling about unsolved, unaddressed injustices. And you and I just don't care as much as they do.)
2. Refugees could potentially be members of ISIS.
No doubt this will be the most popular racist panic thrown about at the table. (Racist? What race is Islam?)
Fear-mongering that members of ISIS are planning to pose as refugees is all over right-wing media, as is the goofy notion that only Christian refugees should be allowed into the U.S. Here's the first way you respond: Why would ISIS be smart enough to pose as refugees, yet not smart enough to pose as Christian refugees? This makes no sense. (This is true. But the author builds the case against himself. There indeed could be terrorist posing as Christians.)
Less than 1% of refugees worldwide end up being recommended for settlement. (Irrelevant. No one asked how many refugees worldwide are getting recommended for settlement.)
They are vetted by the UN, the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, USCIS fraud detection, and national security directors, and Syrians get an extra layer of screening called the "Syrian enhanced review.” The process takes between 18 to 24 months on average. (Again, irrelevant. And by the way, how does a person with no I.D. or any documentation at all get "vetted?")
The elaborate federal process aside, there's the moral argument: (I'm not altogether certain that the author is committed to morality apart from its usefulness as a rhetorical technique. And, he purports to represent the "moral" position as if he is the one possessing the only valid morality, and that morality is the one we are being shamed into embracing.)
the refugees are fleeing ISIS, our common enemy (This is the matter under discussion. The author's assumption is offered as evidence for his conclusion.)
—doesn’t it seem an offense to the basic tenets of [insert your relative's religion here] and common decency to bar them from the U.S.? (This is the Leftist Talking Point de jour. The author presumes to inform people about how they should believe regarding their religion, and pronounces them in violation of said religion.
But there is no religious tenet that requires a government to admit anyone, let alone refugees, into the country. Governments control their borders. This is one feature that makes a country a country. It does no violence to the idea of compassion for a government to choose to close their borders or select their immigrants. Governments get to decide, according to their own interests, who they let into the country.)
Certainly America is strong enough to stick to its pro-immigrant pedigree in the face of a few terrorists, right? (Wrong. The author seems to suggest that it is ok to have only a few terriist in the country. However, we will assert that potential mass murder is not tolerable.)
3. Black Lives Matter is leading to higher crime rates (the Ferguson effect).
So you’ve heard this one a thousand times, even from your old high school classmate on Facebook who you'd never suspected of being a racist. The theory is that somehow “anti-police sentiment” and the Black Lives Matter movement have created a chilling effect preventing police officers from doing their jobs and this has led to higher crime rates. Even Obama’s FBI director, James Comey, who floated this theory, admitted it has no scientific basis, and it’s also been debunked by the American Psychological Association. The woman who popularized it in the Wall Street Journal, Heather Mac Donald, is not a trained criminologist or sociologist; she’s a lawyer at a right-wing think tank who also thinks racial profiling is good for African Americans and campus rape is a "myth." The reality is murder rates are up in some major cities but they had been trending up before Black Lives Matter and are still rock-bottom compared to where they were 30 years ago. Americans are still, by and large, safer than they’ve ever been, and holding bad cops to account should never prevent law enforcement from doing its job. (Not a single thing is this run-on paragraph has anything to do with the thesis offered. The issue is, is there a discernible effect on crime because of the activities of a group of people who advocate violence? That is the question, not whether or not we are safer now compared to 30 years ago.
And, the author's link to the Huffington Post article is replete with qualifiers like "probably," "not necessarily," and "appear to be." This hardly reaches the status of "debunked.
Lastly, we note the Left's propensity for blaming harsh rhetoric as the motivator for violence. Apparently the author would have us believe that this is only a rightwing phenomena, yet the BLM movement is replete with violent statements which apparently are not objectionable.)
4. First Muslim majority city council means Sharia law is here.
Your brother just joined a frat and brought home one of his brothers who’s all Islamification-this and Sharia law-that. He’s harping on Hamtramck, Michigan, the first majority Muslim U.S. city that just happens to have recently elected the first Muslim majority city council in America. Tell him that, like the Yemeni, Bosnians and Bangladeshis who’ve settled in Hamtramck over the last decade, America is a nation of immigrants (and people unwillingly brought here!), so unless he speaks Navajo, he too, is relatively new to this land. The tensions that exist between the old Polish community and the multi-ethnic Muslim community mirror those of every arriving group throughout America’s history, from the Germans to the Irish. Hamtramck has been Muslim-majority since 2013, and so far, so good. Also, freedom of religion—which I assume he believes in, as an American—means freedom for everyone to practice their faith, not just Christians. And you may add, there’s no effort to impose Sharia law on anyone, so cool your jets, Biff. (Again, a long paragraph that offers us nothing in terms of a rebuttal. The author seems to have a propensity for dredging up ancillary issues, irrelevancies, or things no one has asked.
His argument appears to be, "hey, it's democracy," coupled with, "nothing bad has happened yet," along with an inevitable moral equivalency. This time it's "you're an immigrant too."
Apparently we a supposed to simply trust these people without evidence that they are not intent on following the tenets of their religion.
If you're left with the feeling that this is pretty trite stuff, you're not alone.)
If anything, the willingness of these new Americans to be civically engaged points to a desire to be part of the community. (The author makes a conclusion based on the imposition of his values on these people. But he doesn't know their motivations. He simply assumes that because they engaged the democratic process that they did so because of his own values.
"Part of the community?" No, they are a community in and of themselves. They haven't integrated into the local community, they maintained their separation. They aren't "civically engaged," they took over based on their concentrations of population.)
Plus, there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world and they are as diverse as any other group on the planet. (Irrelevant. We are not talking about generic Muslims.)
You might point out that what’s true for every immigrant group, and for humans in general, is that people are people, and mostly (Weasel word.)
they just want to make the best lives for themselves. (How does he know this? There is no reason to think this, because there is no evidence for it.)
Biff might say something about that one organizer who said after the election in Hamtramck, “Today we show the Polish and everybody else that we’re united,” which did happen. But a bunch of other people spoke and said great things, and unless you want everything Donald Trump says to represent the Republican party, then calm the eff down (but maybe be a little more polite about it). (This is truly dismal reasoning. It's amazing the author actually offers this. "Gee, only one person said something that is concerning, but because other people said cool things, well, I'm not worried.
Gee, only one potential terrorist? I'm sure we can live with that because so many others said noble things, and they certainly must be telling the truth.)
5. Benghazi (a timeless Thanksgiving classic).
This one is simple. You’ll probably get it from your libertarian Uncle Ted who feigns a commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law. Great, ask him to name one crime Hillary Clinton committed, as relates to Benghazi. Not the subsequent investigation, not her email server (which hasn’t been shown to be at all illegal), but the actual events of Sept. 11, 2012. Just one. You’ll be waiting a while, because there aren't any. The reason we know this is because eight House Committees in the GOP still can’t find any evidence of wrongdoing. (That's not what Trey Gowdy has said. And "wrongdoing" is different than "crime," which is also different than "ineptness," "neglect," "indifference," or "dereliction." People died, and that is serious. Deliberate actions were taken to prevent help from being sent, and it was on her watch. Yet she still blames the video.
This all speaks to her character, her leadership or lack thereof, and certainly, her fitness as a potential President.)
6. Bernie Sanders is a communist.
(Um, "Socialist." The author substitutes terms and thus sidesteps the legitimate concerns about this extreme candidate.)
You might want to start by disabusing your Aunt Theresa, who’s on her third—or is it fourth?—highball of any Soviet imagery she’s got in her head. (Because of the inevitable and justifiable link to the atrocities perpetrated by his ideological comrades, and we just can't allow that.)
And while you should definitely point out that Bernie is a democratic socialist, not a communist, now is not the time to attempt a nuanced discussion about the differences in economic systems, as that will get you nowhere. (Indeed, because there isn't a whole lot of difference, apart from the bloody purges. "Democratic socialists believe that the issues inherent to capitalism can only be solved by transitioning from capitalism to socialism, by superseding private property with some form of social ownership." The only difference between a Socialist and a Democratic Socialist is the means of revolution.)
Instead, go with something we can all agree on, like the fact that the rich keep getting richer and everyone else keeps getting screwed (choose a nicer word); (Um, yeah. We don't agree.)
the middle class is rapidly disappearing; and hardworking Americans, when you adjust for inflation, are making less than they were decades ago. (A hearty thank you to the Democrats and other left wingers for decimating our country.)
Bernie Sanders isn’t advocating for some dreary totalitarian government, (Of course not. His advocacy is couched in terms of free stuff for everyone, and making the rich pay. Unfortunately, "the inevitable result is indeed "dreary totalitarian government," where the government decides what you are entitled to and what you're allowed to keep.)
nor does he want to give the lazy and entitled (I know, but remember who you’re talking to) the newest iPhone and Chanel purses for free. (Read his website. Free this, free that. What else is he doing besides creating envy and discontent among the proletariat in order to foment an uprising against the bourgeois?)
He just thinks having emergency surgery shouldn’t mean you have to forfeit your house or that the cost of your kid’s college shouldn’t send you to the poorhouse. Sanders thinks every American—and here I’m pretty much quoting the man himself—deserves a decent home, a decent job at decent pay, adequate food, clothing and time off from work, a decent retirement after a life of working, a market that isn’t dominated by a few monopolies, and a Wall Street that doesn’t get to ride roughshod over the rest of us. (Yes, it's all about the free stuff, paid for by the temporarily rich.)
(Stay away from talking about Scandinavia or Europe in general, because again, know thine audience.) Maybe add that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the 40-hour work week, and the fact that 7-year-olds don’t have factory shifts (in this country, anyway) are all pretty socialist when you get down to it. (Except we're not. Not yet, anyway.)
7. Obama shouldn't have pulled out of Iraq in 2011; he created the ISIS problem.
Your punk cousin who talked about joining the Marines but instead opted for Emory and the Young Republicans will float this one to seem like he’s providing historical context. It goes something like this: By cutting and running from Iraq, Obama created a power vacuum that allowed ISIS to emerge. There’s only one problem: it’s almost entirely bullshit.
While it’s true the CIA and America’s Gulf allies helped fuel radicalism in Syria by arming and funding some sketchy anti-Assad forces over the years, the 2011 pullout of Iraq has nothing to do with the rise of ISIS. (Didn't ISIS go on a roll in Iraq after we pulled out? Weren't they invigorated by the removal of US forces? Didn't they go on a tear, conquering cities and beheading Christians?
It isn't relevant that we funded sketchy groups. The question is, didn't Obama contribute to the violence and chaos by pulling out? And indeed we did.
And now we discover that Obama is possibly supporting ISIS. Amazing how leftist talking points fade away...)
The rise of ISIS in Iraq is the product of a number of factors which can all be traced back to the initial invasion in 2003. Obama was simply carrying out Bush’s exit plan, which the Republic of Iraq and the United States—two sovereign nations—signed in good faith in 2008, before Obama was elected. (Again, what led to our pullout isn't relevant. What happened as a result is the issue under discussion. And by the way, when did the Left admit that all of the supposed Obama successes were due to him continuing Bush's plan?)
Indeed, Obama’s Secretary of Defense at the time of the pullout, Leon Panetta, attempted to leave behind American troops, but the Iraqi congress refused to grant them immunity, in part due to popular outrage over Chelsea Manning’s Wikileaks disclosures that revealed abuses by American contractors. Immunity for American military and private contractors is a dealbreaker; Obama wasn’t going to subject American men and women to foreign laws, so he didn’t have much of a choice. Bush, and Iraqi popular will, tied his hands long before he set foot in the White House. (Poor Obama. He just couldn't do what he really wanted to do, because... what? He's a weak leader? He couldn't put America's interests in proper perspective? That eeevil Bush tied his hands? This is absolutely preposterous.)
Bottom line: If Obama wanted to maintain troops beyond the 2011 deadline, the U.S. would have had to effectively re-invade Iraq and violate whatever remained of international law after the Bush shitshow. This would have snuffed out any legitimacy the Iraqi government had left and no doubt fueled terrorism far worse than what we eventually saw. (Hindsight is 20/20, I guess. The author knows exactly what would have happened, and by golly it would have been worse for us to stay in there. So Obama's failure to discern the situation and react accordingly is Bush's fault. Obama was so helpless, so stuck. Darn that Bush!)
8. Ahmed Mohamed (the clock kid) is a fraud.
So, your libertarian Uncle Ted, who reads Richard Dawkins’ Twitter, is spouting off the cockamamie theories he read there: that Ahmed Mohamed, sent by Islamist agents, intentionally caused panic in order to be arrested and thus make the police look stupid; that Ahmed is a “fraud" because he took an existing clock and put it in a new shell, but pretended like he invented clocks (or something); that this was all some elaborate plan so he could ultimately file the $15 million discrimination suit his family has now launched; that maybe he’s a child ISIS fighter.
Calmly explain that Ahmed is a 14-year-old science brain who showed the kind of ingenuity we always claim we want from students in a country falling behind the world in STEM skills; that he wasn’t allowed to contact his family while he was detained, which was a violation of his civil rights; that according to Texas state law Ahmed should’ve been allowed to have an adult present; that a number of teachers at the school say Ahmed often brought in “elaborate gizmos,” so this wasn’t some weirdo move; that police interrogated the poor kid for hours because he kept insisting it was a clock, which, durr, it was. Whether he built the clock from scratch or not, the reaction was over the top, he should not have been arrested, and as an U.S. citizen, he has rights, which, as Americans, we should all support. Oh, and that thing about how Ahmed's dad’s online posts show he’s a 9/11 truther? Posting a controversial video online doesn’t make you a terrorist, it just makes you someone who is protected by the First Amendment, regardless of your religion.
(Sigh. This is puerile. The "clock boy" is suing the school for $15 million. It was a shakedown from the beginning, a provocative act intended to create a reaction. And it isn't the first time the kid did something like this. Now the he's in Qatar, enjoying the accolades of America-haters.
But more to the point, why is "clock boy" so loved by the Left? Because he's an agitator. The Left loves agitators. They are happy that this incident and its fallout is precipitating controversy and heightened emotions. The Left loves chaos, so "clock boy" is a hero.)
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