Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the former Republican governor of South Carolina, asked an audience of conservative high-school students to confess this week to a specific guilty pleasure:
‘[Owning] the libs.’The term refers to an effort, typically by a right-leaning person, to get the rhetorical better of an adversary who’s perceived as liberal — or, as often, merely to “trigger” that person or group. This can be accomplished through means ranging from the passing along of a harmless social-media meme to trafficking in demonstrably fake news to advancing a real-world policy proposal. The key is the calibration toward offense as an end in itself.
And, to Haley, as an approach to politics, and governance, it’s deficient.
As Haley told her audience at the Turning Points USA–hosted event at George Washington University, “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? [Whom] are you persuading? 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.”
Meanwhile, liberals and other critics of the Donald Trump–era right have seized on the phrase to sarcastically explain that each slip-up or flip-flop by the White House has been undertaken to own the libs.
imposing taxes on American consumers and businesses, then using taxpayer dollars to lessen the harmful impact of imposing those taxes to own the libs
— Haley Byrd (@byrdinator) July 24, 2018
