Convincing them to defect might be possible.. if you were an angel or a divine saint like Jean De Arc.

But convincing them now, would be at least as hard as convincing Ymar to switch sides.

Good luck with that one.

Problem is, there is a difference between “the left” and their hard core adherents vs the majority of people who don’t completely follow one side or another.

The latter cannot all be treated as if they belong on the left, and don’t care about the hypocrisy.

This is the problem with translating ideas and behaviors from the worst of a group and acting like it applies to all the individuals.

It is as much a mistake as applying the median city price to a specific house.

In a democracy, this matters.

Alan Dershowitz believes that even partisans must apply the same rules to each side: …”

What Dershowitz is referring to is, ultimately, the principle of reciprocity, and was used by Lon Fuller to describe the most basic element of a natural law theory of law.

The concept however only makes sense if each side is taken to be a fundamentally like-kind in reality; all being members of an objectively defined category, wherein definitionally shared common attributes and ultimate ends, exist across the board.

But, as we all know, postmodernism is at war with “essentialist” categories and ontologies. They explicitly deny the existences of objective natural kinds; and especially as capable of generating prescriptive ethics.

Therefore, if one takes the progressive’s metaphysics seriously, there can be no objective category to refer to, unless one simply wishes to pretend and announce that there is as some kind of act of will.

There is no “we” there.

I do too, in the right circumstances…

BUT, that theoretical model was in context of a specific question / problem, a series of interactions with the same choices with the same two actors.
.

This model starts to break down rather quickly when circumstances about the dynamics veer from the original, such as when the “other” is a large group (with “members” not necessarily identifying with the group they may be attributed), with multiple choices, with non specific interactions that are not directly identifiable with an individual, etc., etc..

Instead, each being seemingly (to themselves) “randomly” picked out, for something they feel no “ownership” of, believes themselves a victim.

This dynamic plays out all over the place, and is perhaps why there seems to be a race towards who can claim the most victimhood to justify or divert attention from whatever action on “their side”.

Let’s face it, there are many reasons for each of us to feel the victim for something or other. There are many who made (and still are making) a career out of stoking those victimhood fires. Not sure we are helping ourselves to let them succeed.
.

Ultimately, since we are discussing the consequence of partisan politics in a democracy, rather than looking to convince a population (a large body of whom do NOT identify solidly with EITHER side) to vote or support one side, resorting to tit for tat, blue vs red team arguments (that Dershowitz is pointing to as hypocritical when it fails the “shoe on the other foot” test), seems more likely to lose one credibility and trust – one of the pillars to being persuasive.

Democrat party theorists point to opinion poll after opinion poll that shows their party’s solutions favored over those from the Republican Party.

The problem with that theory is the opinion polls are done on a National level and thus have to be weighted by population numbers exaggerated on the east and west coasts. And while most Americans do live in those areas, alas for the d’s, most political jurisdictions are NOT in those areas.

Big Data and Analytics have their place. But they are guides only and, obviously, do not contain, in and of themselves, the answers.

Thus, as the democrats move further Left because their analysts tell them to do so, more and more moderate centrist voters will either not bother voting are mark their ballots for some other party.

As a Republican I can only hope the d’s continue their self-destruction as their policies are toxic to my country.

He said he could never leave the Democratic Party perhaps he should consult with David Mamet.

Have you read Mamet’s ‘Secret Knowledge’? Awesome book.

When Side A sees that Side B doesn’t play that way, then Side A will imitate Side B. Side B will use Side A’s behavior to justify their own prior and any subsequent actions. Then Side A will do the same ad infinitum.

Hey, this is the world Alinsky made, we just live in it.

Geoffrey Britain Says:
August 14th, 2017 at 3:45 pm

This article by Daniel Greenfield provides context, while pulling no punches;
“ONE EASY WAY DEMOCRATS CAN STOP NEO-NAZIS”
“Charlottesville is what happens when the Left empowers extremists.”

Greenfield says this, which sounds a lot like Dershowitz’s contention about consistent principles.

“But racism is a two-way street. So is violence. Extremists feed into each other.

You can’t legitimize one form of racism without legitimizing all of them. The media may advance this hypocritical position. Obama used the shameful “reverse racism” euphemism that distinguishes between black and white racism. But propaganda and spin don’t change the physics of human nature.

Either all racism is bad. Or all racism is acceptable.

Charlottesville is what happens when you normalize racism and street violence. Every normalization of extremism equally normalizes the extremism of the opposite side.
…
They’re a set of evil twins and when you unleash one, you unleash the other. Their real enemies aren’t each other, but everyone in the middle. The bourgeois normies who don’t want to replace society with their totalitarian nightmare.

Street violence raises the bar so that only the violent will participate in protests. If you “no platform” campus speakers, then the only speakers you get will be those willing to face bomb threats, arson, and physical assaults. If you fire people for their views, political activism becomes the province of anonymous trolls and unemployed street thugs. Extremism limits political discourse to extremists.
…
When you spend enough time accusing everyone who doesn’t share your politics or even your race of racism, you make the term meaningless.

That’s what the left did over eight years of Obama. By the time the election rolled around, Hillary was defining all Trump voters as racists and sexists.

When you spend enough time crying wolf, eventually a real wolf appears. A real wolf showed up in Charlottesville.

The left spent eight years dismantling any meaningful definition of racism for political reasons. The practical effect of their actions was to eliminate social sanctions for actual racists.

And the real racists were happy to take advantage of the new climate.
…
The Bill of Rights is an uncomfortable compromise. It says that we have to put up with people we don’t like. The Democrats, under the influence of the left, are rejecting that idea. But that goes both ways too.

You can have a liberal society or an illiberal one. But you can’t have a society that is selectively liberal when it comes to your bigotry, but illiberal of the bigotry of others, that believes you have the right to say anything you please without consequences, but that no one else does, that you can punch, but not be punched. That’s a totalitarian state. And the only way to realize it is through violence.”

Or as Mark Steyn is wont to say,
“If the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain issues, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable ones.”

blert Says:
August 14th, 2017 at 10:18 pm
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-14/report-%E2%80%98unite-right%E2%80%99-organizer-jason-kessler-was-occupy-movement-obama-supporter-8-m

Report: ‘Unite the Right’ Organizer Jason Kessler Was Obama Supporter Involved With Occupy Movement

Until 2016 Kessler was a LEFTIST activist.

It would appear that Kessler is an Agent Provocateur.
* * *

Even if not true, and I would take all such reports with a salt-shaker, this is an example of how conspiracy theories get created.

However, there is some curious corroboration of the conspiracy angle here:
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/14/charlottesville-white-identity-politics/

John Sexton quotes from another blog called Splinter; it’s important to read the linked piece, because it is 100% sympathetic to the Left, which makes this quoted excerpt very intriguing:
“The group then kicked out press and people of color from the park–even those who identified with the alt-right (“We have nothing against them, but this is a white identity rally,” one leader said). They closed the entrance with a barricade. A coordinated group of armed militiamen with semi-automatic weapons formed a line in front of the park’s entrance, helping block anyone who tried to get through.”

Were there any POC in the Unite-right ranks?
Does it matter?
Who are these militiamen? They are mentioned in one of the reports of the police standing down as trying to protect people, although not in this HA piece.

As the HA author points out, though, a lot of the rhetoric given atSplinter (can it be verified?) sounds very much like the Leftist groups we’ve gotten familiar with.
(I don’t know anything about the rhetoric of the known White Supremacists, so can’t make a real comparison).

A Zerohedge commenter says:
milo_hoffman Aug 14, 2017 9:29 PM
More evidence of Soros conspiracy this is in addition to the fact that EVERY SINGLE nazi/racist flag was clearly brand new right out of the box with all the creases still in them, and so many of the protesters were carrying the exact same tiki-torches which have been supplied to antifa protestors.

The whole thing was staged.
* * *
Is any of this true? It’s not impossible that many of the Unite-Righters were “new” and thus so would be their flags.

But this kind of churning is how conspiracy theories get legs.

I don’t believe everything is a race to the bottom and that it is therefore sheer naivete to aspire to higher things.

Thank god current Trump supporters weren’t around to advise the early Christians to stop being chumps and to start crucifying Romans.