How many times have you been listening to a policy discussion or debate and you hear a stat, fact, figure, or talking point that just seems completely unbelievable? You go home afterward and find out after some research that it’s actually false or misrepresented.
As libertarians, you and I don’t need to be doing things like that. We don’t need to embellish or exaggerate the facts. Today, government gives us so many real, yet unbelievable, examples to prove our point, that exaggeration and embellishment are completely unnecessary. We see things that happen daily that we never thought were possible, but they actually happen. Government is the cause.
If we do things to exaggerate, embellish, or use hyperbole to make our point, we erode trust with those we talk to. This can ruin our chances at future persuasion, not only in conversations you’ll be having with them, but also when other libertarians do as well. That lessens your credibility, as well as anyone else they encounter that identifies as a libertarian.
The bottom line is, if the REAL every day horrors brought about by government don’t persuade, hyperbole, histrionics, and exaggeration aren’t going to change someone’s mind, you may as well move on to a different approach to try to bring them to embrace a libertarian perspective.
At the end of the day, let’s remember that hyperbole is NOT your friend.
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