Links for Friday, July 21
Turning the tables and other available tactics
Today’s links piece is about tactics, methods you use to defeat your enemy in the field. The liberal establishment, on the whole, seems bad at them (unless the opponent is a progressive; see below). Modern Republicans, on the other hand, understand how to wield power at the tactical level (see also below).
Turning the Tables
We start with a tactic that lefties only use lightly. Call it “Turning the tables.” Imagine, if you will, during the open-carry Tea Party days…
…that some group had showed up at a Republican rally openly armed and spouting the Second Amendment gospel word for word. The same gospel the crowd espouses.
Now imagine those armed were black and called themselves the “New P. Stone Rangers.” Imagine as well among them was a videographer, and for safety, a cause-friendly undercover cop, just in case the pro–Second Amendment crowd turned violently against it.
If that happened more than once — or much more than more than once — the practice of coming armed to Democratic health care rallies would have ended fast. And by choice: The videos alone, broadcast everywhere, would have shamed them out of it.
Links
Below are nine links for your Friday pleasure, and a musical treat.
• The “religious liberty” angle for overturning the overturning of Dobbs (Cory Doctorow)
Are you a state lawmaker hoping to put a giant Ten Commandments on the statehouse lawn? Go ahead, have some religious liberty — just don’t be surprised when the Satanic Temple shows up to put a giant statue of Baphomet next to it.
This is a promising avenue of attack. Doctorow’s argument is simple and elegant —“if there’s a secular rule that permits abortion in the instance of incest or rape, then faith-based exceptions [to abortion bans] must be permitted, too.” These challenges are happening now.
File under “Sauce for the goose.”