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The left should be able to change people's minds. Don't change my mind.

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Even if you do think politics is to a great extent an irreconcilable conflict, that you can't convince the 1%, that you need to organize politically to defeat them - it still remains the case that quite a few people in the 99% aren't yet convinced of a lot of things you and I believe. If, as we all too often see, our only responses to the right are mockery or moral condemnation and we never get around to showing what's wrong with their argument - then we're going to lose a lot of people we could win over.

Writer Ben Burgis explores the use and misuse of facts, feelings, reason and argument in the modern discourse - as conservative media grifters occupy the realm of debate with cheap gimmicks and lazy reactionary appeals, the left must be able to talk logically and confidently about leftism, with people on our side, and the people who need a little convincing.

Ben is author of Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left from Zero Books.

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Ben Burgis

Ben Burgis is a writer and philosophy lecturer at Rutgers University.

 

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