This past weekend, Derek Hunter published in Townhall a well turned, nicely argued piece attacking the kind of "liberals" who take their small children to drag shows.  This a classic case of the lefty tactic of using their own kids as cannon fodder to promote their ideology. No sane individual would disagree with Hunter's stance here.

But then, right in the middle, we get this:

What does this do to the mind of a kid? In the future, it'll likely mean they'll have some serious problems with their parents, up to not talking to them anymore. 

That's right — in the midst of a piece attacking LGBTQ agitprop, Hunter effectively gives up the fort by using trans pronouns.

I don't want to come across as attacking Hunter, who seems to be the level-headed sort that the movement needs a lot more of.  This kind of thing is universal — I'm sure you could provide your own examples, and plenty of them.  But there's no getting around the fact that it's a weakness, an unnecessary one, and one that needs correcting.

Adapting left-wing terminology and usage is something that goes back a long way among conservatives.  Consider only one example: Red/Blue political identification.  When this first entered media discourse in the late '90s, nobody, but nobody, mentioned that it was sourced from military jargon, where it was used in exercises to describe the status of forces involved — "Blue" was friendly, "Red" (with a distinct nod toward the Soviets) was enemy.  And yet, conservative writers trampled each other to adapt a usage that termed themselves and all their works as "enemies" — and enemies associated with communism at that.

No wonder they think we're stupid.

Let's be clear: allowing the opposition to set the terms of argument is a losing strategy under all circumstances, and as regards the left, it is a form of polemical suicide.

With trans pronouns in particular, it's a sure recipe for defeat.  By accepting neo-pronouns, you are effectively saying you accept the synthetic, unnatural identities of the people using them — that they are, in fact, what they say they are; that it's possible for somebody to switch his sex at the drop of a hat for any reason or none.  This is the entire argument.  Once you give in to the pronouns, you give in to everything.  You have no argument anymore, and all that's left is walking out waving the white flag.

This is to ignore the fact the neo-pronouns are simply nuts, and that to accept them is to join Lesbian Snow White (who I confess baffles me) in the eighth dimension.  (It comes across as satire, but in 2022 America...?  I dunno.)

I'm quite sure that's not a place where Derek Hunter wants to be, so I would encourage him, the staff at Townhall (where this seems to have become editorial policy), and the rest of the conservosphere to be true to their rightselves and not give an inch.

Image: StuckInLagToad.