The phrase also drew the attention of US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. "Raise your hand if you've ever posted anything online to quote-unquote 'own the libs,'" Haley asked the teenage students attending the same conference as Sessions."I know that it's fun and that it can feel good, but step back and think about what you’re accomplishing when you do this — are you persuading anyone? Who are you persuading?" Haley said. "We've all been guilty of it at some point or another, but this kind of speech isn't leadership — it's the exact opposite.""Real leadership is about persuasion, it's about movement, it's bringing people around to your point of view," she added. "Not by shouting them down, but by showing them how it is in their best interest to see things the way you do."
- Nikki Haley, Business Insider quote
Or this opinion by Ben Shapiro , an American conservative political commentator.
"If you want to truly own the libs, the only way to do that is to actually win an argument," he said. "Not alienate them by saying jerky things that make them upset."
Facebook is possibly the largest and most read swamp containing a huge and motley collection of political views, the majority of which are expressed in childish meme’s and quotes.
I dare say very few of the “owning the libs” treehouse have actually searched the phrase to understand what it means or how it came into being. The usual suspects trot out meme after meme, quote after quote and image after image that rarely came from their own imaginative creating process. Essentially such users are like little kids who throw rocks while hiding behind bigger rocks.
Try these on for size. See who thinks they are owning libs:
Bad people are constantly trying to destroy America because we are free.
Anyone different than me is bad.
Children are smart if they can pass multiple choice tests.
God hates the people we hate.
To negotiate is to be weak.
Never admit to any doubts.
What is our oil doing under their sand?
The truth has nothing to do with evidence.
Sex for pleasure is bad except for me.
Constantly talk about Jesus.
Follow the teachings of Jesus.
Obsess about embryos, but ignore the needs of real children.
Suck up to banks, telecoms and other big campaign contributors.
Blame gays and immigrants whenever possible.
Disparage all inconvenient science.
Act as though it's important to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
Kill or torture all people who might be possibly bad.
Then try these on. See where you fall, Consider whether or not you are seen as a bug on the wall being viewed by a political entomologist
A political entomologist is a scientist who studies political behavior. Entomologists have many important jobs, such as the study of the classification, life cycle, distribution, physiology, behavior, ecology and population dynamics of insects and political gullibility.
One can point one’s copy-and-paste fingers at libtards, socialists, democrats and any others who see through the snake oil of the president the majority of us fired in 2020. But your kindergarten conservatism has done snuck back to haunt you.
Remember the H1N1 outbreak? I don’t know about foul cries over a mishandling of that particular outbreak, but granting the validity of that rhetorical question, I ask one of my own:
If Trump was so smart why didn’t he learn from Obama’s mistake especially when we all knew – including the President that we later fired – that this Covid virus was far more rapid, virulent, contagious and dangerous?
The man who constantly bragged about how smart he was certainly dropped the ball with his chance to outshine Obama. His press conference whining and tweeting as he points backward at Obama only made him look shallow and childish; his supporters more shallow, more childish and even more ill-informed.
Trump kept trying to drive his car while only looking at the rear-view mirror while crying, “It’s not my fault!”
Trump was not a real conservative.
A real conservative would have been the genuine article patterned by Barry Goldwater whom I admire. The closest we have nowadays are not in a position to have great effect. I speak of honorable politicians like Romney, Huntsman and Jeff Flake.
In the 1980’s I used to drive around Portland listening to Rush Limbaugh, thinking, “At’s right! Go Rush!” But after a while his pattern of angry rhetoric grew tiresome. It demonstrated little depth, no breadth, and lacked seriously considered substance. He had a shopping list of angry notions around which he built angry phrases aimed mostly at gullible white men.
That is important to me and it was at that time that I think I resolved to not let someone else’s opinions become a limited encyclopedia by which I would evaluate life.
It’s left me somewhat isolated in who I would have a beer with. But it also left me free to do more than copy and paste someone else’s thinking and values.
I was and still am genuinely angry and disgusted with Trump whose frail and thin-skinned capacity for leadership and statesmanship offended me deeply and continues to embarrass all of us.
I was not raised, educated nor enculturated to admire someone like that.
I don’t understand how In the Mormon Corridor a respect for Ezra Taft Benson, a genuine conservative who served in the Eisenhower cabinet, could morph into hero-worship of of the likes of Donald Trump, Mike Lee, Mitch McConnel, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Tuck Carlson, and need I go on and on?
Oh yes, and in my state I have to live under the likes of extremely partisan politicos whose emails to me are mostly “what’s-wrong-with-Democrats” and “why the Republican Party’s talking points are gospel you can trust.” I speak of Idaho Senators Risch and Crapo, Representatives Mike Simpson, Russ Fulcher and of course the two practical jokers running for office and prancing in front of their mind-swoggled choir: Ammon Bundy and Lt. Gov McGeachin.
Who are these Kindergarten Konservatives?
We are not citizens of a nation founded by Konservative Intellectuals whose generational grandchildren prance and posture on our national stage nowadays.
To wit …
The wrong side of the American Revolution.
Approximately one third of the colonial population supported the English King George the Third. These Konservatives wanted no disruption. Afraid or trying to hang on to what they felt England had granted them, they did not want national independence. These Kindergarten Konservatives were not our original patriots.
Original American Konservatives supported protection of slavery in our Constitutional Convention. They wanted to count slaves in determining which states would be "slave states" but did not desire that they be citizens with voting rights. These Kindergarten Konservatives in no way acted as Founding Fathers, rather as enforcers of their own power and influence at the expense of all others.
Our original Konservatives opposed tariffs to protect American manufacturing. In their Kindergarten-ness they were not able to understand any need to develop our own industrial base. They wanted no changes to a system based on cheap slave labor. They were not industrialists, but cash croppers - planters whose profits required no economic equality.
Our historical Kindergarten Konservatives supported “nullification”, which said that states didn’t have to enforce federal laws they didn’t like.
Our original Kindergarten Konservatives supported repeal of the Missouri Compromise so as to allow slavery in other states where votes and political clout was more vital than common good.
The ancestors of today's Kindergarten Konservatives opposed the transcontinental railroad, primarily because railroads carried people who might want to work on their own land and who wouldn't want or need slaves in the western territories because it might encourage small farmers who owned no slaves in future non-slave states.
Which is why the Grandpas and Grandmas of today's Kindergarten Konservatives were against the Homestead Act. They didn't want more land-owners turning the American West into a collection of non-slave states.
Those old Kindergarten Konservatives opposed freedom of speech for Southern opponents of slavery. Perish the thought that southern adults and children might hear something other than the Konservative gospel.
And so Kindergarten Konservatives full of pretend patriotism and self-promoting civic piety disagreed with our sacred declaration that “all men are created equal.” Their Kindergarten civic ideology was that “the black man has no rights the white man is bound to respect.” (Dred Scott v. Sandford), quite possibly the most foolish Kindergarten Konservative legal decision in our national history.
… which led to a Kindergarten Konservative support of destruction of the union rather than allow any restriction of slavery.
Konservatives were opposed the earliest civil rights legislation to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments. They obstructed, intimidated and harassed newly freed slaves who attempted to exercise their Federal civil rights, including the right to vote … and considered themselves god-fearing, civic-minded moral patriots.
Konservatives were against preserving the union. Back then they wanted secession and they got it.
Konservatives were also aggressively and brutally opposed to industrial workers forming unions. Sound familiar?
The ancestors of today's Kindergarten Konservatives supported the acquisition of foreign colonies
… armed suppression of Filipino independence.
… opposed anti-trust legislation.
… opposed child labor laws.
… opposed universal free public education.
… opposed literacy for African-American citizens, in particular.
… supported the legal theory of “separate but equal”, a sham that led to the establishment of “Jim Crow” in the south.
… opposed state laws guaranteeing minimum wages and restricting working hours for industrial workers.
… opposed the right to vote for women. — Joe Lyles, Conceptual Guerilla
These are the real Moochers among us
These are the Kindergarten worshipers of that false American Exceptionalism that has cause more global and national grief than any noble achievement in the past 60 years.
These are the believers that uncompromising anger is civic wisdom, that blind and unblinking opposition is always better than compromise.
Look where it got them.
Look where it didn't get us.
Who are these Junior High School Civics flunkouts?
Go back to the top and start reading again.