So there I was, woken up by my asshole neighbours and their footsteps sounding through my ceiling yet again, checking out what happened during the week, when lo and behold, I find this on the Daily Caller:

This is a perfect example of what Anonymous Conservative calls an “amygdala hijack“. Watch how Ben Shapiro goes on the offensive right away. Watch how he argues- or tries to, anyway- with reason and evidence in the face of massive bluster. And watch how Piers Morgan completely loses the plot in the second half of the interview, to the point where he destroys his own credibility.

There are flaws in Shapiro’s approach. He is, for instance, very squishy on the issue of whether an AR-15 is an assault weapon. (It is not.) He is not particularly good at truly hammering home the horrors inflicted by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia upon their disarmed citizens. He does not go into the rising crime rates in Britain due to the blanket ban on guns. He is far less brazen in his defence of the Second Amendment than Brother Karl, who has stated quite clearly that background checks themselves are not particularly useful (and he’s right).

On the whole, though, this is how you do it. You confront the passive-aggressive tactics calmly. You shrug off the name-calling. You deal with the issues at hand and refuse to get side-tracked. You don’t let him speak over you. (This is quite difficult for me personally, I speak slowly and am naturally soft-spoken; because I have no patience for stupidity, hate repeating myself, and find most people both annoying and tiresome, I dislike talking over others even when they talk over me.) You go after your opponent’s inconsistencies, like Shapiro did with Morgan’s stance on handguns. You make it very clear that you are nobody’s fool and will not be cowed into silence. It’s not easy, especially if you don’t talk quickly or have a tendency to choose your words carefully, as I do. Even so, it can be done.

There are several likely outcomes. One, your opponent will simply stop trying to talk to you- ever. Fine, no great loss there. Two, your opponent will try to yell over you. This is where the ability to combine Laconic wit with intelligence and extreme verbal cruelty comes in very handy; Vox Day is an absolute master of this art. Three, your opponent will make a last-ditch attempt to shut down debate by stating that he will no longer listen to either side, and then lecture you using emotional arguments and “moral” imperatives. At this point, you know you’ve won. Respond with a similar amygdala jack and watch as the responses become increasingly frantic, incoherent, and angry.

Be warned, however: doing things this way will cost you. You may lose friends- who, to be honest, probably would not have stayed your friends anyway. You will get into heated arguments with people you care about. You will probably not enjoy the results. I’ve had a similar experience with my own family recently. My relatives are far more liberal than I am (which is easy; most people are more liberal than I am, being the chauvinistic paleolibertarian that I am). They have all taken the “reasonable” position in the aftermath of Sandy Hook that “Something Must Be Done!” to stop these eeeeeevil Americans from holding on to guns and shooting everything in sight. Every time they raise this silly argument, or some variant thereof, I have gone after them with facts, logic, and evidence. Every time, they have either backed down or refused to listen or come back at me with emotion-based arguments which I have shot down with ease.

To me, the moral imperatives of showing people that their ideas are terrible and dangerous outweigh the costs. Hell, my family still loves me, bumps warts and all, and hopefully they’ve been shown a different perspective on things in the process. So it shall be with you.