If you’ve spent any time in politics, you know progressives contradict themselves so often that exposing their double-talk could keep conservative commentators busy for several lifetimes.

At first, young conservatives may find it thrilling to point out those blunders and imagine that the liberal across from them will be persuaded. But here’s the hard lesson: Only people with integrity change their minds when they find contradictions in their own thinking.

The goal isn’t to win the argument but lose your integrity. It’s to speak truth with courage and charity.

Progressives don’t stumble into incoherence by accident. They wield it like a smokescreen. The confusion keeps conscientious conservatives chasing their own tails. Conservatives, by temperament, want coherence, so they expect others to want it, too. But the record shows otherwise.

Take Hillary Clinton. Last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” she urged Americans to stop finger-pointing — before immediately blaming Republicans for the country’s problems. A Yale degree didn’t inoculate her against incoherence. As Charlie Kirk once observed at Cambridge, high IQ is no guarantee of wisdom. Clinton didn’t notice the contradiction, and even if she did, it wouldn’t matter. She is paid handsomely to talk, and truth never slows her down.

Moments later in the same appearance, she called for a return to “truth-based reality,” insisting that facts and evidence must matter again. This from the same woman who affirms that a man can become a woman. Truth wasn’t invited to that party. Now, she tells us it must rule the day.

The effect is dizzying, and that is the point.

What should concern us isn’t simply the logic game. It’s the condition of her soul. What happens to a soul shaped for decades by falsehood and injustice?

Clinton also revealed her deepest fear. She does not fear God. She fears the people of God — especially white, male Christians. She said so on national television just weeks after Kirk was assassinated by a trans-supporting terrorist who bought into rhetoric spewed by politicians like her. And yet, here she is again, pouring fuel on the fire.

The irony didn’t stop there. She wondered aloud how today’s politics could be “so contrary to the founding principles and values this country was built on.” This from the same politician who treats the Constitution as a “living document” to be reshaped whenever it confounds her political prejudices. She wasn’t concerned with founding principles when Donald Trump was banned from Twitter or prosecuted by the Biden Justice Department.

But pointing out contradictions only goes so far. The deeper warning is this: Hillary Clinton is what happens when you spend a lifetime saying whatever advances your career. She is willing to contradict herself publicly — and attack Christians — for money and applause. My own university, Arizona State, paid her $500,000 to host the Clinton Global Initiative.

Socrates put it best: The true philosopher, the lover of the good, doesn’t chase political power, money, or fame. He wants only this — that when he leaves this life, his soul is not defiled by injustice.

RELATED: Charlie Kirk thrived on truth and virtue over grievance-mongering

Photo by Jon Putman/Anadolu via Getty Images

That’s the lesson for young conservatives. Exposing contradictions is fine. It can even be fun. But don’t forget what matters more: Never let your soul become like Hillary Clinton’s.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that the modern mind cuts down the signposts and then complains no one knows the way home. That is the progressive project in our time: Deny first principles, denounce those who keep them, and demand the comforts those principles once secured.

So take this counsel seriously:

• Guard your soul more than your timeline. Social media glory is cheap; a clean conscience is priceless.
• Pursue coherence because it is true, not because it is clever. Wit is garnish; truth is the meal.
• Fear God more than fashion. Today’s trends are tomorrow’s embarrassments; the fear of the Lord endures.

The goal isn’t to win the argument but lose your integrity. It’s to speak truth with courage and charity, to resist compromise with evil for the sake of applause, and to leave this world with a soul unstained by injustice.

That victory is higher than anything Hillary Clinton will ever claim — and it is the only victory that lasts.