I stink at chess. I lack the power to think more than two moves in advance. No matter how hard I try. Whatever mental circuits I’d need to do that appear to be simply missing. I’ve finally had to accept this disability. It hasn’t been easy.

Growing up, I thought that skill at chess was simply the marker of being smart —which not being tall, athletic, charismatic or personable, was very important to me. I read books on the history of chess. Then I studied old games. I read the biographies of chess greats like Immanuel Lasker and Bobby Fischer.

Imagining myself a natural at the game, I didn’t just set up matches against my classmates. No. I challenged a bunch of kids to a simultaneous exhibition. That’s where one master player sets up five or ten boards and moves from one to another, making moves against a raft of challengers. The nice ladies at the children’s library let me organize this. Other boys from my sixth-grade class obliged me by showing up to play. And I lost most of the games. Catastrophically.

I was flabbergasted, stunned. This trainwreck seared into my psyche a kind of humiliation that losing schoolyard fights or serving as unwilling target in dodgeball games never could.

I haven’t played chess since.

How Liberals “Win” Every Argument

Transferred to morals and politics, this is the lesson I wish most liberals would take from the fact that their arguments routinely fail. In fact, I’ve found few progressives who can think more than one or two logical steps ahead on their core issues. Here’s how such exchanges usually go:

1. They blunder out with a few rehearsed “bright” arguments that they think will settle an issue.
2. You answer them, and counter-attack.
3. They deal with your point by ignoring it. They change the subject and raise some completely unrelated issue.
4. You sigh, impatiently, and answer that.
5. They pretend that you didn’t, and slap yet another red herring to flap around on the chessboard. A logical fallacy, hysterical outburst, or threat of punishment scatters all the chess pieces on the floor.
6. They walk away, serenely confident that they have won. And their friends all nod and agree.

I’m glad I didn’t try to get away with that back in sixth grade. Imagine if I had — and if it had worked. If teachers had helped me to bluff my classmates into thinking that I’d beaten them every game. What would that have done to my character and personality?

On the other hand, I would have fit in much better when I got to Yale. Because that kind of sore-loser gambit is what the vast majority of even these SAT-champion liberals resorted to in arguments.

Randian Atheists Taught Me How to Think

I can remember the one dispute I lost badly to a progressive in college. It was future feminist, dieting guru and Al Gore fashion consultant Naomi Wolf. The topic? Homosexuality. I’d never before encountered someone who didn’t at least admit the practice was unnatural. So I wasn’t prepared to defend my 17-year-old’s understanding of natural law. She answered my reference to it by announcing, with a flourish: “Well the parts all fit, so I guess it is natural, after all!” She gave a little gestural demonstration of sodomy. I was too stunned and nauseated to answer. So yes, she won.

I learned from that experience to discipline my arguments, stay on topic, and think each issue through with relentless, sausage-grinder logic in a series of tiny, interconnected steps whose connections cannot be challenged.

The memory still stings. And it stands almost alone. I learned from that experience to discipline my arguments, stay on topic, and think each issue through with relentless, sausage-grinder logic in a series of tiny, interconnected steps whose connections cannot be challenged. I spent long hours arguing religion with Randian atheists, who questioned my every assertion, and demanded that I defend it. It wasn’t fun, but it proved fruitful. By the end of four years, I realized that my chess deficit did not apply to critical thinking. Those long hours of argumentative tussling gave me the power of insight.

Suddenly, I could see not just two but ten moves ahead.

We’re Right, Not That It Matters

You could give me a nice shiny argument for a popular position. (On gay rights, immigration, the death penalty, Marxism, you name it.) It’s the garden variety stance that 90 percent or more of my classmates (and future colleagues) took, mostly without any question. Instead of the overused “political correctness,” let’s call such positions the “NPR Party Line.” It’s what all the “best” people agree on. It’s right smack dab at the center of the “mainstream.” Get too far away from it (at least to the right) and the oxygen starts to evaporate. Jobs, friends, and potential dates start to dry up and disappear.

Thanks to my dogged, Randian atheist argument partners, whenever I encounter such a winsome little political stance, I see through its shiny blue Tiffany’s wrapping paper. Its every ugly, insane, or dangerous application sticks out like a slimy tentacle. I know what will happen as its false premises or perverse logic relentlessly plays itself out in the world. In religious discussions, I call this acquired cognitive gift my handy “heresy computer.”

And that’s why back in 1986 or so, I saw and said that the gay activist movement was more dangerous to Christianity than Communism. Few people listened. No one really wants to think ten moves ahead. What’s more, when the train finally crashes — and Christian schools are threatened with closure by the government, or the Army is paying to chop off soldiers’ penises —  don’t try saying “I told you so.”

Nobody wants to hear it. They’re too busy patting the “winners” on the back for sweeping the church’s pieces off the board.

Maybe it’s time for me to go back to chess.