Normally, when I talk to friends over a cocktail I try to remember that sage adage about never talking about politics and/or religion. I think that’s been good advice up to a point, but the reality is, when you are surrounded by liberal women who want to make a point that Donald Trump is a “psychopath”, it’s probably time to lay aside any quaint notions about going along to get along and lay down a few broadsides for the, well, broad sides you’re talking to. So it was at a luncheon I attended today.

The women all opined that Trump was a disaster, though, to their credit, they did not compare him unfavorably with Adolf Hitler, as the (((mainstream media))) is wont to do these days, at least ever since good journalism has taken a back seat to mere opinion. Uncharacteristically, I didn’t bother to fight with them at first, since I have been told that I can be rather acerbic at times, to the point that I no longer have any friends (even by the modern definition of Facebook friends, which includes people you have never met).

So I kept my mouth shut, and things were moving along splendidly, even after a little Sangria and the psychopath remark, when the teacher, a Puerto Rican named Margerita, asked incredulously of the gathering, “Who would vote for Trump?’, in such a way that she made it clear that any such dangerous fool should be handed over to the authorities to be institutionalized and castrated, though not necessarily in that order.

I couldn’t resist anymore. “I am voting for Trump, and I think Hillary Clinton is the real psychopath”, I responded. Gasps all around, which always draws a chuckle from me. Nothing is more amusing than liberal pearl-clutching, after all. :))

“What? You? You want a wall?” she shreiked.

“Of course, and the taller the better. A country without borders isn’t a country at all. Try sneaking in to any Third World dump on earth and hiding out for a few years and see if they make you a citizen. The USA is the only country that allows such nonsense. The illegals trying to sneak into Mexico from Guatemala are immediately arrested and deported.”

“But Trump has made remarks about Mexicans specifically, saying they’re rapists and murderers. He doesn’t even mention the European immigrants.”

“That’s because there are virtually no European immigrants today. It’s a numbers game.”

Susan, who is a retired banker, asked me about the illegals currently here: “There are 11 million undocumented migrants currently in the country. Surely you don’t think we can get rid of all of them?” she asked.

“Surely I do. There are 2 million men and women under arms in the military in the USA, and that doesn’t include another few million police. If we just brought them back from hot spots such as Europe, which hasn’t seen any action since 1945, we’d have plenty of manpower to oust the illegals.”

“But, but-how would you do that? They won’t want to go!” Said Brenda, a space industry worker.

“If they won’t cooperate voluntarily, we’ll have to persuade them with the point of a gun. That is how you handle law-breakers” I explained to her. I felt like a teacher explaining to a student that no, it isn’t OK to scrawl graffiti on the side of the school. Or perhaps Joseph Stalin explaining power to his subordinates.

“Jonathan, I have a question for you.” It was Margerita again. She then went into a 5 minute story about her son, who couldn’t afford to go to FSU, and whom she couldn’t afford to send there. “Do you think college should be free?”

“Nothing is free, Margerita. Somebody pays. Who should that be?”

“The rich”, she said.

“There aren’t enough of them”, I responded. “Nor would it be likely to help. The truth is, American universities are awash in money for students-loans, grants, scholarships-so much so that even marginal students can get at least some kind of aid, but the reality is that at most 10-20% of the population should be in college in the first place.”

“Why? Why shouldn’t everyone get a free education?” asked Joan, the host.

“Because we are not all, in fact, created equal. Far from it. There are huge differences in cognitive ability between individuals and groups. Not everyone belongs in college. You might as well ask, why doesn’t everyone deserve free booze? Not everyone can handle it.”

I’m pretty sure at this point I lost whatever goodwill I might have had among the group, but that didn’t keep me from soldiering on. Some people are just gluttons for punishment, I guess.

“Well, we should have a minimum wage, at least enough so everyone can live, like Australia.” said Brenda.

I wanted to say “That’s nice, but in Australia, they have a homogenous country. Such schemes don’t work so well where you have a vast sub-culture of dirtbags who seek to cheat the system. Besides, do you even hear yourselves talk? On the one hand, you’re for open borders, with all of the cheap labor that brings into the country, undercutting the lowest paid earners here. On the other hand, you want a minimum wage, because our lowest-paid earners can’t live on what we pay them. Don’t you guys see a basic disconnect in your thought process?” But I didn’t say it, because there’s a fine line between disagreement and insult, and I didn’t want to step over that. Until someone brought up religion.

“Well, one thing that I hate is when people target their charitable contributions toward a particular group. They’ll say things like, I gave to my church. It’s as if they don’t want to give if it isn’t tied to their religion. They won’t help unless they make people listen to their message.” Brenda said this as if delivering a message of salvation was a horrific way to treat those poor folks. This woman hated Christianity so much that she couldn’t see all the good that the missionaries were doing all over the world.

“So, would you rather that those people starve to death than have to listen to a sermon? That’s some strong hate you’ve got going on. How INTOLERANT is that? Besides, what kind of bigot believes that the only reason Christians would help people is due to some cynical belief that it earns style points with God?”

At that point, I had worn out my welcome, so I said goodbye. I drove home, as I usually do after speaking to liberals, full of despair for my country.

But there is a point to my story, which is not, as you might have guessed, to avoid having me over as a dinner guest. No, the point is, when someone later asked me about the incident: “Don’t you feel you wasted your time? You know those people won’t change their minds!” I had to disagree, because sometimes, though rarely, you DO change someone’s mind. Maybe not that day, or even that month, but after a year, or a decade, they see what is going on in the world, and they go back to that long ago conversation in Merritt Island, Florida, where the Truth was revealed to them, and suddenly, it’s a miracle! And they have their epiphany.

But for the rest, the next time they seek to degrade Christianity, which they are used to doing with impunity, they will remember that the last Christian they spoke to was rather hard, and he (gasp!) fired back, and they didn’t like it at all, because at heart a liberal is simply a bully who’s had the bullhorn too long, and everyone who’s been to high school knows that the only way to handle that type is to counterattack with overwhelming force.

One of the things that Christians need to get used to doing is to remember that turning the other cheek wasn’t the only strategy Jesus employed. There was real anger when He violently chased the money changers out of the temple, for example. In a similar way, we should militantly prosecute those who tear our faith down and lie about us, but we don’t do that near enough. We’ve been playing nice so long everyone expects that they can walk all over us, and I can’t blame them, because we’ve given them a pass. That should end, right now.

So the next time you hear someone spout the same old tired platitudes that they are regurgitating from an (((MSM))) mouthpiece, speak up for what you believe. You may lose a few friends, but the ones that are left will be real. And to paraphrase Patton, “When your grandkids ask you, what did you do in the great culture wars of the 2000’s, Grandpa? You won’t have to say-well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana, because I was too afraid to speak up.”

Don’t be that guy. Man up. It’s time.