Clearly laid out and well written look at the most common conservative arguments and issues, and how to address them without getting sucked under the surface and drowning.

I think this was an interesting read, but missed the mark on its stated purpose. It's less of a guide on how to respond to right-wing arguments and more of a look into how these arguments are shaped. The tone is a bit pretentious and while the arguments are sound, the approach can be a deal breaker. Overall, I thought this was informative, but could have been a lot better.

Robinson does an admirable job taking conservative talking points seriously enough to give them thorough, well-thought rebuttals. The best thing about this book is his insistence that liberals need to stop rolling their eyes and just being derisive because many conservative folks take these things deathly seriously. Unless they understand that their concerns and beliefs have been heard and taken seriously, any counter-arguments have absolutely no chance of finding purchase in their minds and starting to change their narratives.

However, it is hard to imagine being able to make much impact given the ubiquity of right-wing (more often far-right) personalities in all aspects of the average conservative person's media consumption. However, if you identify as liberal and believe in "be the change you want to see," this is a very helpful book to give you strategies for navigating tricky conversations with conservatives.

Written in a really understandable way, which i deeply appreciated. I liked the variety of topics the author covered, and that it's assessable (in my opinion) to folks on all sides of the political spectrum.

An excellent start on how to respond to people on the right who may drag you into political conversations. From fact based conversations to "belief conversations". Gives excellent perspectives to try and channel their lunacy into comprehendible conversations. Doesn't mean you'll change their minds. The insane are.... well, insane.

Robinson shared some good tips and approaches to responding to many of the usual right-wing arguments, most of them fact-based. I was sold on that until I read Mehdi Hasan's "Win Every Argument," which made the convincing case for a different way of approaching things. So while I do think Robinson presents compelling evidence to refute many of the conservative talking points, I'm not convinced that is the best way to "win" the argument. Still, an interesting read. (Note: for audiobook listeners, be prepared to be irritated by the way Robinson speaks - his odd cadence and strange pronunciation of some words lends an air of "trying to hard to sound academic.")

Interesting topics that are discussed with a very interesting point of view Something that is very timely and our political environment. Today this is a must read for all those that care about the future of our country.

https://compactmag.com/article/the-left-s-debate-bro

The Left’s Debate Bro
Sohale Mortazavi
Image for article: The Left’s Debate Bro
March 7, 2023
PHOTO: AUSTIN DSA
Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments
By Nathan J. Robinson
St. Martin’s Griffin, 384 pages, $19.99

Nathan J. Robinson’s new book, Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments, presents itself as a practical guidebook in the vein of Saul Alinsky’s 1971 Rules for Radicals, updated for the social-media age. Whereas Alinsky was writing for professional activists engaged in direct action, organization building, and real-life campaigns, Robinson’s target audience are “liberals and leftists who want the ‘ammunition’ necessary to do battle with conservative ideas, whether in public discussion or at the family dinner table.” Robinson provides a quick primer on rhetoric and logical fallacies, best practices for debate, and—the meat of the book—readymade rebuttals to common conservative and libertarian talking points and arguments.

The Alinsky method has been criticized for, among other things, an unambitious “pragmatism” that puts any quick “winnable demands” over ambitious ideological goals. Though demonized (sometimes quite literally) by certain figures on the right, and occasionally embraced by others who employed it to their own ends, the Alinsky method actually defangs social movements by eschewing “rigid” ideologies and redirecting energy into bureaucratic organizations staffed by professional organizers. No wonder, then, that Rules for Radicals is a favorite among liberals who prefer a more bureaucratic, less militant, less radical community organizing (Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were big fans).

“The focus Robinson places on political debate is inherently ideological.”
By comparison, the focus Robinson places on political debate is inherently ideological, but his project is ultimately even less ambitious than Alinsky’s. Robinson isn’t just making the case for a certain vision of politics—he elevates “making the case” for one’s political views to the actual pursuit of politics. Though the book closes with a reminder that “building strong political movements involves far more than words,” and that we shouldn’t let “the intellectual and theoretical aspects of politics distract too far from the practical realities of movement building,” the preceding 300-and-some pages are devoted to readying progressives to battle ideological opponents in the marketplace of ideas.

Political theory and ideas matter—but we should have serious reservations about presenting debate as the paramount political activity. Public intellectuals such as Robinson, the founder and editor of the left-wing magazine Current Affairs, might be able to argue that their own political discourse amounts to important political activity. There is an even better case to be made for everyday people engaging friends, family, acquaintances, and, especially, coworkers in constructive political dialogue. But the kind of political sparring Robinson has in mind is rarely carried out in break rooms or on shop floors, but over holiday dinners and social media.

Aside from voting and maybe attending the occasional protest or rally, the primary way most people “engage” in politics is through passive media consumption and online posting. Encouraging them to expend even more time and energy on frivolous hashtag activism will only leave participants feeling more outraged, frustrated, and atomized.

In Responding to the Right, Robinson both refutes right-wing arguments and makes the case for progressive alternatives. He positions conservatism and libertarianism not only in opposition to left-wing politics, but also to rationality as such, asserting at one point that “the right’s core beliefs cannot be maintained by a rational human being.” They are simply “ignorant and fallacious.”

The author isn’t interested in determining why someone might hold such “mistaken beliefs,” only in proving them wrong. He cites Corey Robin’s book The Reactionary Mind as an example of left-wing thinking with a misguided focus on trying to “psychoanalyze” conservatives to determine their motivations, which Robinson suggests is fraught, given that we can’t read others’ minds. But you don’t need to psychoanalyze individuals to determine why they might prefer to conserve and promote existing power structures and social relations.

You might expect such a material analysis to come easy to a self-professed socialist, but Robinson has a troubled relationship with the cold logic of the Marxist tradition, to which he pays lip service when pressed but which he ultimately rejects as authoritarian, devoid of moral urgency, and mistaken in many of its core tenets. Robinson favors a fuzzier libertarian socialism and anarchist analysis, which are better suited to his brand of utopian progressivism.

If Robinson’s new book is an update on Alinsky’s, we could similarly view his previous, Why You Should Be a Socialist, as his own reboot of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” which saw socialism as a path to—paradoxically—radical individualism. Wilde imagined a world without capitalism where all people—free from work, poverty, and duty—can spend their days pursuing creative passions and personal interests. It was the original case for “fully automated luxury communism,” and Wilde the prototypical “radlib,” a bourgeois rich kid turned bohemian layabout directing socialists away from solidarity and class politics and toward an aesthetically radical individualism, conveniently to the interest and benefit of creatives such as himself. (Wilde even slipped in a quick abolish-the-family: “Socialism annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property, marriage in its present form must disappear.”) Robinson, who on the Current Affairs podcast once lamented how Marxism “killed utopian socialism,” picks up the torch. (His trademark dandyism and put-on English accent are so on the nose here that you might think he is goading us.)

“Robinson’s libertarian socialism is a fundamentally moral politics.”
Robinson is correct that many of the foundational tenets of Marxism are simply wrong. The labor theory of value, for example, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and leftists still waiting for capitalism to collapse under its own internal “contradictions” any day now—a century and a half on—bring to mind the unshakeable conviction of a doomsday cult. But the Marxist tradition, at its best, helps us understand the trajectories of history and society as the logical outcome of material conditions. By comparison, Robinson’s libertarian socialism is a fundamentally moral politics. The vulgar Marxist tries to understand how the world works. Robinson is most concerned with how the world should work, which isn’t something that can be settled through reason alone. Conservatives and others have their own competing visions for society rooted in a different moral logic that Robinson doesn’t take nearly as seriously as he pretends.

While Robinson acknowledges the moral framework underpinning his politics, he nonetheless maintains that his political positions (and his alone) are simply the natural product of careful reasoning. But the claim, along with the pretense of taking right-wing arguments seriously, is undermined by the inconsistency with which he applies his rational analysis. Responding to the Right is full of the kind of bias the book critiques. Robinson calls out conservatives for selective omission of contradicting information, leaving out the other side of the story, or attacking the weakest or strawman versions of arguments—but he himself does all of this routinely. Likewise, he fails to hold progressives to the same standards of logic and fair debate he imposes on conservatives.

For example, he acknowledges no contradiction between his contention that bakers aren’t actually forced to bake wedding cakes for LGBT clients, since they could simply opt out of the market entirely, and his articulation of the leftist principle that workers are actually forced to sell their labor under capitalism lest they starve. He decries right-wing figures who employ ludicrous hyperbole and false or misleading analogies, such as the likening of “cancel culture” to literal violence. But, in this condemnation, he fails to acknowledge that social-justice mantras like “silence is violence” or the progressives characterizing “microagressions” as violence do exactly the same thing. Though he blasts conservative commentator Ben Shapiro for “lying with statistics” when falsely claiming that 40 percent of transgender people commit suicide, Robinson fails to mention that trans rights activists first popularized and routinely cite the same erroneous figure for their own purposes.

This kind of subtle hypocrisy and bias render the project a predictable exercise in partisanship, less rationalism than rationalization. The uneven hand suggests that Robinson sometimes starts with his position and works backwards to fashion the particulars of the argument. He has written a polemic masquerading as unbiased rational analysis.

This doesn’t mean his positions are always wrong or bad. Robinson may have a penchant for the utopian, and his partisanship forces him to defend even the most ridiculous excesses of leftist culture-warring, but many progressive policies would benefit American workers and families by rebuilding social safety nets hollowed out by fifty years of bipartisan neoliberalism. However, Robinson simply didn’t arrive at any of his positions through reason alone. They arise from his own values and interests, which are often in conflict with those of conservatives and libertarians. Downplaying these fundamental differences precludes serious analysis of right-wing moral reasoning, but such analysis isn’t the purpose of the book. Robinson would rather dismiss his opponents as irrational sophists who, having somehow arrived at “objectively incorrect” positions, can be properly excluded from political discourse.

“Politics is a battle of competing interests and values, not just competing ideas.”
Politics is a battle of competing interests and values, not just competing ideas. Robinson argues passionately and—to me—convincingly about the infeasibility of a true “equality of opportunity,” but he isn’t going to win over libertarians (or even many liberals) who are fundamentally opposed to the kind of radical egalitarianism he proposes, nor will he have much luck convincing capital to relinquish power or adopt redistributive policies. There is no squaring egalitarianism with a belief in the “natural and just” existence of hierarchies, multiculturalism with the desire for societal homogeneity or cultural preservation, abortion rights with certain religious beliefs, open borders with protectionism, or a host of other competing or even irreconcilable values and interests.

A more honest, effective, and helpful critique of right-wing politics would take the cultural values and economic interests that underlie the right’s arguments seriously without dismissing them as fundamentally irrational. Doing so leads Robinson into a highly partisan “rationalization-ism” that functions a lot like the “facts don’t care about your feelings” or “DESTROYED by FACTS and LOGIC” rhetoric he criticizes right-wing media figures for.

“Both sides” would do well to admit that it isn’t just “feelings” or poor reasoning that divide people, but intractable disagreements and conflicts of interest that won’t be definitively solved through rational debate, but only through ongoing political contestation that transcends mere words.

This book is a well-written, solidly designed book that addresses arguments made by right-wingers in the constant American political battle which has elevated over the last half-decade. This book is perfect for people who consider themselves laymen and may not have deep political knowledge. The design of dividing it up by different topics was a great choice to make this book easily digestible either as an entire meal or just in the items you wish to learn about.

A person who is more advanced on these topics may find this book below their knowledge level as they likely won't learn much that they were not already aware. But, it may provide clear, concise talking points if you engage in debates.

I also think this would be a great book for a right-winger who is starting to question their stances and the lines they have been fed their whole life. As someone who does not identify with either side, I think this book is fair and not too biased although it is written from one side toward another. It appears to be well-sourced and reasonable in the facts and conclusions. Overall, a solid political book in a world filled with so much garbage in the genre.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

This book is well-thought-out, reasoned, and immensely readable. The suggestions for pushing back on the rights talking points are immaculate and make me feel stronger in my ability to do so. This is a must-own book for anyone who is tired of right-wing smear attacks and wants to bolster their arguments for the next face-off with someone who repeats said attacks.

(Prob really 1.5 stars!) Whew......that was a slog to get thru! I was looking forward to something of an easier, maybe more practical/usable read.... This was pretty flat/monotone in presentation.....& it seemed rather a 'barbed', often 'caustic' offering.....most of the time? At the end though, he did write a bit nicer on 'the limits of argument', which I found a positive way to end. The main text/body of the book takes up the 1st 60% of the book, the last 40% is 'Notes'.....extensive notes! So it's a really documented book.
I received a e-ARC from publisher St.Martin's Press via NetGalley, offering to read it & post my own fair/honest review.

In RESPONDING TO THE RIGHT Nathan J. Robinson offers "Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments." First, though, he devotes several chapters to a section titled "How Conservative Arguments Work and Why They Seem More Powerful than They Really Are." Robinson, editor of the bimonthly progressive magazine called Current Affairs, acknowledges the power and persuasiveness of Conservative arguments as he says, "we have to consider the other side' position and be able to articulate our reasons for rejecting it." Despite his own strong views, this section works relatively well in that he speaks in more general terms about the need to open communication. Robinson's subsequent twenty-five chapters cover a range of economic (minimum wage, taxation, capitalism); racial (white privilege, immigration, inequality); political (founding fathers, democracy); social (free speech, cops and crime); and religious (war on Christianity, abortion) contentious issues. Each of those chapters begins with quotes from Conservative media, politicians, and other spokespersons and then summarizes the Right's argument in a paragraph or so. Next, Robinson crafts a response (often including footnotes) and provides some suggestions for further reading. Getting into the specifics presents more difficulties at times. For example, when he discusses academia in chapter 15, Robinson chastises the Right, saying, "it's very easy to paint a distorted picture of what an average university looks like by cherry-picking examples," BUT he then supports his own position by referencing "when I was at Brandeis University" or "during my time at Harvard..." Nevertheless, Robinson is attempting to raise important questions and to educate his readers about tactics like "paltering" which he says is "lying with facts" since the speaker is selectively presenting true information without providing a balance or context, resulting in a "wholly misleading picture of reality." Overall, Robinson takes a reasonable position and advocates for showing respect and empathy while debunking arguments.

This book is an excellent book for anyone who wants to be able to answer some of the fallacious arguments found on "Fox News" and other right wing media outlets. The author has 25 chapters on various subjects, including abortion, taxation, socialized medicine, welfare and immigration, to name some of the 25 subjects.
The author emphasizes that it is important to read the conservative arguments in order to understand them and then refute them He is very effective in doing this. He explains that conservative and right wing media spokesman are very good at cherry picking statistics and then making it seem as a few examples makes the whole seem true. For example: An undocumented immigrant commits a crime and therefore all undocumented immigrants are criminals.
I do have one quarrel with the author: In the chapter titled "The United States is a Force for Good in the World", he says, referring to dropping nuclear bombs on Japan: "The justifications for the bombings do not hold up under scrutiny."
He then cites Dwight Eisenhower and Douglass MacArthur, quoting them as saying dropping the bomb was not necessary. Both men had presidential aspirations and motive to criticize Truman. The Japanese cabinet voted to continue the war "until death" after the second bomb was dropped. However, the Emperor intervened and overrode the cabinet. There would have been 1 Million casualties (Japanese and US) in the invasion of Kyushu alone. It is true that Japan had put out a peace feeler to the Soviet Union, proposing a negotiated peace envisioning keeping the Emperor and no US/Allied troops on the Japanese home islands. The USSR never passed the peace offer on to the US, not to mention it was completely unrealistic, i.e., envisioning no Allied troops on home islands.
There is actually a book in which the author uses previously classified material to put to rest this fallacious revisionist theory: H*ll to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945 by D.M. Giangreco
The author only has a small portion of the book focusing on this revisionist theory, but I am concerned that right wing media commentators will use this to discredit the entire book. That would be a shame, since it is a very worthwhile book.
A personal note: I only vote for the party that protects my 2 Cystic Fibrosis grandchildren.. The Democratic party passed and signed into law The Affordable Care Act, with 3 provisions relevant to my CF grandchildren: 1. Preexisting condition clause. Cystic Fibrosis is a terminal, incurable genetic disease. Prior to this law insurance companies could refuse to insure anyone with a preexisting condition or charge them 2 or 3 times the usual rate. This is now forbidden.
2. Prohibition of expenditure caps, yearly or lifetime. Some insurance companies wrote policies with yearly caps of $100, 000 or $1 million lifetime. Also now forbidden. One of the many drugs that my grandchildren take is Trikafta, costs about $300,000 per year. That is on top of hospital stays, surgical procedures and many doctor visits.
3. Children can stay on a parent's policy until 26 years old.
The Republican party has attacked this law since inception and even shut down the government for 4 weeks trying to kill it. They have sold their soul to the forces of evil.
Some of the author's views are more liberal than mine, but I still recommend this book.
I rate this book 3.5 stars rounded up. Thanks to St Martin's Press for sending me this eARC through NetGalley

I was excited when I was approved for this book through NetGalley. As a left-leaning citizen, I was hoping to add to my skill set when debating with the conservative thinkers in my life. This book will not offer one-liners or quick responses to extreme opinions. Instead, it focuses on explaining the reasoning and fear-mongering behind conservative arguments and stresses the importance of responding with facts and statistics.
The author definitely put a lot of work into this research and the one quibble I have is it wasn't concise enough for me. The brief replies tended to run for several pages and at times, I felt my eyes start to glaze over.
Overall, I appreciate the author's dedication and research on this topic...and I did take notes!
Special thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an honest review.

Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine, has penned the book you didn’t know you couldn’t live without. So many books lay out the rhetoric and machinations of the Right, but do not provide any resolution of what to do about it. Robinson meticulously examines the rhetoric of the Right’s academics and media darlings and then explains where the arguments go wrong.

That would be enough to earn five stars. However, the book also provides a jumping-off point for many, many other books that will further your knowledge on a variety of hot topics, ranging from culture-war nonsense to the minimum wage to union busting to climate change to even — I’m not kidding here — the resurgence of advocating for child labor and restricting voting to the propertied class. I only wish I could award Robinson more than five stars for one of the best books — not just political books, but all books — I’ve read in a long time.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and St. Martin’s Griffin in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for gifting me an early copy of this book. Below is my honest review.

I requested an advanced copy of this book because I wanted some quick and easy references to respond to my family members when they start political arguments at every in person visit. And it delivered. It'll be the perfect resource in those moments where I know what I believe but need to put it in a way that they will understand and be willing to listen to.

Also, I learned a lot. :)

Nathan J. Robinson follows=up his previous book, Why You Should be a Socialist, with Responding to the Right, a book that details arguments leftists can make to bolster their position in regard to the political right. Robinson is in part a little bit overly credulous of the right and perhaps disregards the work of other leftists in bridging the gap. It seems more likely that Robinson's arguments work for liberals rather than leftists. An interesting installation in the left-of-center school of thought for the casual reader.

Insightful. Well thought out. As much as I hate having to talk politics with people, today it seems unavoidable. So, rather than be run over by people who rely on bluster and bravado to tout their right-wing ideals, I try to reason with them. This book gives me a lot of good information to counter their arguments. Not sure if it will work, but at least I will have tried to be a voice of reason in the sea of mud.

This book is exactly as advertised, and really what I was hoping for! It takes some time to actually get to the 25 talking points of interest, but looking back it really was helpful because the author went through common approaches used in general by conservatives and so it's helpful to identify these and learn to recognize when they're in use. Then the 'brief responses' were a bit more brief than I was expecting. I am a liberal but find myself very flustered when having to confront a conservative and not knowing how to combat their arguments (because, to overgeneralize, they don't use facts so spewing back facts doesn't counteract what they are saying). The author does overgeneralize about conservatives, and similarly about liberals and this may be frustrating for some readers. But I found the whole point of the book quite useful, to gain insight not only on various topics, learning a bit more and thus myself feeling even stronger in my own beliefs, but also understanding better the tactics that are often used and what kind of approaches I should take instead. It is an echo chamber for sure, but an informative one.