20 Comments

“they had literally no idea who Karl Rove was, and were frantically typing into Google “Reasons Karl Rove sucks,” as we spoke. “

This is not debate. This is young children, deprived of rational education, arguing on a playground whose fictional superhero would win in a fictional contest.

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May 30, 2023Liked by Bentham's Bulldog

Congratulations on the podcast slot. Well deserved

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I’m excited to here what you have to say with Bari. Good luck.

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Once upon a time I was a speech and debate coach who made students write arguments for both sides. I guess I couldn’t do that anymore. It is a brave new world indeed.

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Why is the debate space so far to the left to begin with?

Ted Cruz used to be a debate champion in college, and he is definitely not on the left. Did something happen?

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Who cares? There are oodles and kabilijions of people dying of malaria and starvation and acute interaction with Henry Kissinger. Why write about some microscopic speck of the culture war that will never be won.

An acquaintance of mine actually wrote a recent article on the subject: https://benthams.substack.com/p/there-is-lots-of-stuff-much-more

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Great job kid.

I think you and James should pitch this to Matt Walsh for the subject of the next DW documentary.

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Just became a subscriber to FP. Great but disturbing, article. The debate class I took in college (mid 80's) was nothing like this article describes. It was more like a sport with offense and defense. There was a prompt or topic that you had to advocate or defend. Many times, you didn't know what side you were advocating for.

You had to know both sides of the argument. It didn't matter what you "felt" was right. Your team presented a case with facts (offense)that the opponents had to counter (defense to stop your offense). If they failed to provide a defense, ie address our arguments than we scored regardless of how weak, inane or incoherent our argument was.

As a result, your team had to have an understanding of what the counter arguments could/ would be. You could lay bare your opponent's referencing only one article from "Fanatics for genocide" for their entire argument, and then go on presenting your offense/case. You couldn't just give your case with out countering their points with facts and reason.

What Bentham described is akin to football team not fielding a defense just an offensive team that throws the ball around without bothering score a touchdown. Th

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This one good, I declare.

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Leftists project. They always, only, ever project. The tweet image in the article is a fine example, and the rest of the article alludes to a host of other examples.

When Leftists whine "Venezuela iPhone", do any of them actually have a counter to either of those arguments?

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