I’ve mentioned the book RESPONDING TO THE RIGHT by Nathan J. Robinson a couple times before, and today I want to summarize the gist of the book.
Earlier mentions:
http://www.markrkelly.com/Blog/2023/02/23/arguing-to-win/
Especially the introductory chapter called “Common Tendencies in Conservative Arguments.” I’ll condense the points made on pages 47 and 48, themselves a summary of a chapter running 39 pages; and then the points made in the following chapter on “Tips for Arguing.” And then we’ll look at the other side.
The tendencies:
- Speculative fiction: Telling a story about the horrible things that will happen when some policy is implemented, without any evidence.
- Saying it rather than proving it: Simply making assertions.
- Universal laws from narrow examples: Using a single example to project a broad trend. (Arguing from anecdotes.)
- Poetic abstractions: Invoking vague homilies to deduce specific policies.
- The rhetoric of “facts and logic”: Accusing liberals of letting feelings get in the way of the facts.
- Assumptions about human nature: That’s the way things have always worked; it’s inevitable.
- Ludicrous hyperbole: “Joe Biden is a Marxist.”
- Scare words: Bureaucracy. Terrorists. Mobs.
- Dismissal of Expertise: The experts are after their grants, or want to control your life.
- Throwing out some statistics: At random, without context.
- Posing questions they think you won’t have an answer for: E.g. you want to ban semiautomatic rifles? Then why not knives?
- Gish Galloping: Speak quickly enough and no one will be able to point out all your fallacies. (E.g. Ben Shapiro.)
- Bad analogies: E.g. raising taxes is like the Holocaust.
- Omitting the half of the story they don’t like: Complaining about government spending without mentioning how much that spending might save in the long run.
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The next chapter of this book is “Tips for Arguing” (i.e. in good faith) and I’ll just list them.
- Do not assume they are stupid.
- Familiarize yourself with the other side’s case.
- Attack the strongest version of the position, not the weakest.
- Stories matter just as much as empirical correctness.
- Answer the rhetorical questions.
- Be clear, concise, and nonacademic.
- Be aggressive with bullies, be patient with the open-minded.
- Ask questions. (With a long example of a discussion between Joe Rogan and Candace Owens)
- Do not accept faulty premises.
- Keep your eye on the point.
- Have a sense of humility and humor.
- Know when to quit.
As I mentioned before, the bulk of this book consists of replies to 25 conservative arguments, which presumably (I haven’t read the entire book) are dismantled by the author on one or more of the grounds listed above. Instead of listing the 25 arguments myself, I’ll just point to the Amazon preview page for the book (give it a moment), where you can scroll down to view the book’s table of contents.
Suffice to say the topics include currently relevant claims like “There’s No Such Thing as White Privilege,” “The Left Are Woke Totalitarians Trying to Destroy Free Speech in the Name of ‘Social Justice’,” “Academia Is a Radical Indoctrination Factory,” “Abortion Is Murder,” and “There Is a War on Christianity.” These are not true in the way conservatives think they are.
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Now to be fair, I did a bit more Googling to see if I could find any counterpart from the right about how to argue with the left. Indeed, Ben Shapiro (who comes up frequently in the Robinson book) seems to be the most active about this, with a book and numerous links for “How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them.” A glance at his list suggests he’s out to win at any cost, never mind the details of any particular debate topic.
The key article I found is on the right-wing site The Blaze, from 2014: 11 rules for debating a Leftist from Ben Shapiro, subtitled “Tricks for debating family, friends and foes.”
OK, let’s see. Note use of the word “tricks.” What are his tricks? I’ll list them.
- Walk Toward the Fire
- Hit First
- Frame Your Opponent
- Frame the Debate
- Spot Inconsistencies in the Left’s Argument
- Force Leftists to Answer Questions
- Do Not Get Distracted
- You Don’t Have to Defend People on Your Side
- If You Don’t Know Something, Admit It
- Left the Other Side Have Meaningless Victories
- Body Language Matters
Note how many of these are aggressive tactics for winning not a particular argument, but against a preconceived enemy.
Looking back to Robinson’s book, it mentions Shapiro several times as examples of the bad tendencies of conservative arguments. I’ll quote this one passage about Shapiro and a transgender YouTuber named Natalie Wynn. Pp 239-240:
Ben Shapiro is good at winning debates in part because debates are often rapid-fire affairs in which the most compelling speaker wins. (Compelling thinkers are not always compelling speakers.) Hence, it’s easy to get away with a talking point that is revealed to be nonsense only after you think about it for a few seconds.
Wynn, to illustrate her point that Shapiro misunderstands how language works, asks us to think about parents. Who are your parents? They might be the people who contributed your genetic material. But you might have adoptive parents. The fact that they did not contribute your genetic material does not mean they are any less your parents, if that’s what you consider them. The word “parents” can refer to biological parents or adoptive parents.
A Ben Shapiro type might say, “No. Adoptive parents are not parents. To be a parent is a function of biology. If you’re not the biological parent, you’re not a parent.”
But why? Who says? Who says the word “parent” needs to refer to biology? Language is socially created; nature does not prescribe which words we have to use for what. If it makes sense to use the word “parent” to describe both biological parents and adoptive parents, we can do so.
And so on about transgender issues. This example goes, again, to my thesis that conservatives think in simple-minded, black and white terms, and would like to insist that everyone else do so too. No nuance.
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I’ve also mentioned an analogous book called Myth America (e.g. here) and sometime soon I will sit down and summarize its key points here, as best I can in an hour or so. (Without reading it all the way through, i.e. an “inspectional reading,” per this post.)
