Of Chickenhawks and Chickens

Rightwing Nuthouse discusses the "Chickenhawk" debate and how the Left, when they lose an argument, simply redefine the major terms so it will appear they "won."

Lefties have been labeling anyone who hasn't served, but who supports our wars against tyranny, as "Chickenhawks." This week Jeff Jacoby wrote an article about the term, concluding it was just a Leftist smear designed to stop debate and shut up its opponents. (Another even more effective manifestation of the same tactic is to call your opponent a "racist." Or as Rush Limbaugh says, a "racist" is anyone who wins an argument with a liberal.)

The slur "chickenhawk" is along these same lines, a dishonest rhetorical device by folks who don't have a lot of ethics in the first place. Or, as Rightwing Nuthouse puts it, "by using the term, liberals have every intent of shutting off discussion while at the same time, gleefully savaging their political opponents by creating a narrative that places them in an ascendant moral position."

Well now the Left, in the person of Glenn Greenwald, has written an article that expands the "meaning" of the slur so that it is more defensible. This is bad enough, but liberal sock puppets have rewritten the term at Wikipedia, which shows 50 recent revisions, to bring the term into agreement with Greenwald's newly made-up definition.

This is how the Left has always fought, by seeking to manipulate the media and controll the debate in ways that are intellectually dishonest, but favorable to them.

Jeff Goldstein sums it all up very well:

And controlling the narrative—first by bending it to fit your will, then by
repeating it until it becomes provisional “truth”—is at the heart of a
progressive “activism” that, let’s face it, has failed to win people over
using an unrigged marketplace of ideas.

I drew a cartoon two years ago which lampooned Garry Trudeau for using the "Chickenhawk" argument. Here it is. Click on the image to enlarge.