“Give Them An Argument: Logic For The Left”—A Review

“Give Them An Argument, at times, reads like an instruction pamphlet on how to use logic to defeat our political opponents, a social democratic version of Sun Tzu’s Art Of War, and, in that sense, Burgis might have more in common with his overzealous conservative opponents that he might realize.”

An annoying yet recurrent theme of today’s culture war is that flimsy half-baked arguments can seem exceptionally logical, or even obvious, if aimed at the right people with the correct amount of indignation and sneer. Due to the perverse incentives of the political landscape, more is to be gained in making our opponents look like blithering idiots than in formulating coherent arguments that stand on their own legs. Not only is this paradigm incredibly frustrating on an interpersonal level, it is unsustainable for warring factions of partisan enmity to argue from completely different premises in a society that most of us agree is in serious need of change.

Entering this fray strides philosophy professor and fellow Quillette contributor Ben Burgis with his latest book Give Them An Argument: Logic For The Left. At 111 pages, Burgis presents an exhibition on the fundamentals of logic from an explicitly democratic socialist perspective without stretching the reader’s attention span. In direct response to the excesses of the online Right and the Ben Shapiro’s of the world, the book challenges the hard boiled claim that the Left has chosen to embrace feelings over facts and has become nothing more than a hotbed of emotional reactivity. Without shying away from partisan alliances, Burgis makes a strong case that no political ideology has a monopoly on logic, while also forcing us to reconsider some of the higher resolution arguments of the hard Left that have yet to be buried under social justice-themed identity politics.

Burgis’ book arose from frustration with his fellow progressives’ reluctance to engage with conservative appeals to logic and reason, which have become quite prevalent online. Although Burgis believes this reaction is understandable, given that many of the Internet’s logic bros are prone to engage in bad faith faith arguments and prefer to level their snowflake interlocutors than to charitably interpret their arguments, Burgis understands the best and only way to change minds is to engage opponents on their own terms.