Ben Burgis - Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left

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Give Them an Argument

Logic for the Left

First published by Zero Books, 2019
Zero Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., No. 3 East St., Alresford, Hampshire SO24 9EE, UK
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Text copyright: Ben Burgis 2018

ISBN: 978 1 78904 210 8
978 1 78904 211 5 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964433

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

The rights of Ben Burgis as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design: Stuart Davies

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US: Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, 7300 West Joy Road, Dexter, MI 48130

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At the end of the spring semester, I went to a Philosophy Department party at Rutgers. A graduate student told me that shed been assigned to teach a class called Logic, Reasoning, and Persuasion in the fall. She expressed amazement and confusion about the fact that it was below Rutgers introductory symbolic logic class. What, she asked, could be below that? What did one even cover in such a class? Having taught LRP before, I said it was basically what other universities call a Critical Reasoning class. Whether it was because she was a little drunk or because the course is called something else in her native Canada, she still seemed to be drawing a blank. I suggested fallacies, and this graduate studenta Jacobin -reading leftist who I agree with about most subjectslooked at me like Id just suggested that she kill her cat. God no, she said. Thats how people learn to become annoying libertarian boys .

Two years earlier, at a party for protestors and Bernie Sanders delegates at the Democratic National Convention hosted by the Philadelphia branch of the Democratic Socialists of America, I briefly met Will Menaker, Felix Biederman and Matt Christman. They told me I should check out their podcast. One of them gave me a business card. Within a few months, it became so popular that the hosts didnt have to do anything else for a living. In the summer of 2016, though, I had to check that business card to remember the name of the podcastChapo Trap House.

I gave it a listen. It traffics in exactly the kind of obnoxiously guy-ish humor the Canadian grad student would presumably dislike. I see why, but I have enough of a soft spot for that kind of thing that I get excited when a new Bill Burr or Doug Stanhope album comes out. I found the way they combined that sensibility with an aggressive and often insightful critique of centrist media figures and right-wing blowhards refreshing. I listened to the most recent episode and then I went back and listened from the beginning.

On Episode One, after some opening mockery of the earnest liberalism of Citizen Radio, the hosts kicked things off with introductions. Each of them included a swipe or two at the assorted clowns and reactionaries theyd tangled with on Twitter.

Will: To tell you a little about myself, I love coffee, dogs, big time movie guy, and Im really into neo-feudalism and amateur phrenologyblood, soil, and tradition.

Felix: Faves are pejorative, lists are to keep track of my favorites, retweets are not an endorsement, and my son is dead.

Matt: Im sort of the Midwest correspondent to talk to the rootless cosmopolitan New Yorkers on the team. The only thing I love more than a hot sizzling plate of bacon is proving people wrong by their own...

Later, producer Brendan James came on board and the podcast started sounding smooth and professional. The guys produced this first episode by recording a Google Hangout session, and things were spotty at best. Matts voice had cut out. It didnt matter. Even then, the joke was familiar enough that Will could pick it up where Matt had left off. Their own logic? Have we lost Matt?

After some dead air and heavy breathing, Matt came back. Pretty soon, everyone was riffing on the same theme, merrily naming imaginary logical fallacies.