Responding to the Right by Nathan J. Robinson

I heard about this book via Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic. It was shortly after I added Pluralistic to my RSS reader, and I’m glad I did. This book gave me the courage and motivation to write my recent letter to the editor. It helped me understand a deeper way of thinking critically about politics and arguments in general, and specific issues as well (the 25 of the subtitle).

As long as I’ve been politically conscious, I’ve been on the left. I started as a basic Democrat in middle school during the 2000 Presidential election. Living in a conservative suburb, I felt like the only one who thought Bush was an idiot. In high school, I became more liberal. Referring to my politics, a favorite social studies teacher quoted Churchill (or rather, many people), “Any man under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart, and any man over thirty who is not a conservative has no brains.” I’ve found this to be bullshit. The older I get the further to the left I am. This book helps me understand more about just why that is the case.

The first part of the book describes the basic structure of conservative arguments. Robinson says that conservatives are often very good at appealing to emotion and sounding right on the surface. But once you delve even a little deeper into their positions you will find they fall apart. This section details the techniques used so it’s easier to spot them in the wild.

The second part are the twenty-five conservative arguments and Leftist responses. Each chapter opens with direct quotes from prominent conservatives and libertarians, then succinctly and fairly describes their position. The rest of the chapter is Robinson’s Leftist take on the issue, which is very well written. I’ve maybe read an article or two in Current Affairs before, but this is the first time I’ve really read anything by Robinson. I like his style. He’s witty and punchy. He has clearly studied and thought a lot about these topics. At first I was taken aback by him referencing himself here and there, but in the end I thought it humanized him and made it a more personal work.

This could have ended up a dry book, but Robinson’s writing style and humanity make it a much more engaging read. He is honest when there are issues that just can’t be “won” by one side or the other because there are fundamental philosophical opinions—abortion being the biggest.

At the close of each chapter is a list of books to learn more about a subject. I found myself highlighting a lot of those books. Often when reading nonfiction an author will reference another work and if I see that name or book often enough I will end up picking up the book. This is how I got Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari—I kept seeing it referenced over and over. I think Responding to the Right might win the award for the book that will make me read the most other books.

I learned a lot from this book, not only about how to think about issues more clearly and argue better, but also about specifics of certain issues. I never really thought of the issue of “Christian bakers should bake cakes for gay couples” beyond “yes, they should” (but also why would you want a bigot making your wedding cake?). Robinson points out that sexuality is a protected class and you cannot discriminate in the public sphere. You wouldn’t see businesses refusing to serve Black people nowadays. Gay people are no different under the law. As Robinson says, this is an issue where we have fundamentally different moral worldviews, so you cannot really convince an evangelical Christian that gay people should exist if their God or Bible or pastor says they shouldn’t. But there’s a difference between a random home baker refusing to bake a cake for their gay neighbor, and a business refusing to do it. When you start a business, you enter the market, which is allowed and regulated and protected by the state. The rules change if you want to make money and expect the other protections and benefits the state gives you.

Once you are “public facing,” conditions apply, and the government is entitled to create those conditions because the government makes the market function (by offering limited liability, building infrastructure, creating currency, enforcing property rights, etc.).

That’s one of the more illuminating ways of thinking that I knew but never really thought about when reading this book. The state actually does a lot for people that conservatives take for granted or diminish. They want the state to be there when it suits them, but pretend it isn’t actually there helping them. Then they shit on the state most of the rest of the time. For all its faults, we live in a representative democracy which in theory represents the will of the people. Democracy and bureaucracy are messy. That is a feature and not a bug. The decisions a government makes shouldn’t be made easily or in haste. Move fast and break things ends up breaking things. And at a national (or global) level, that can mean millions of people. These are serious and tough issues that need reasoned debate. Actual lives can be at stake with the decisions and laws governments make.

There’s a lot to take in and think about reading this book. Each chapter is also littered with endnotes with reference more and more articles and books and arguments I want to read. I found myself stopping midway through chapters to go and read an article referenced in the endnotes before continuing. This might seem like a disjointed way to read, but it was invigorating having all this new information and new ways of thinking coming at me.

It’s been two weeks since I finished the book and I still find myself thinking about it and going back to reference passages and articles and books mentioned. It’s gotten me excited about politics and life in general in a way I haven’t been in a long time. Is that overselling it? Probably. It feels like a book made for my particular proclivities, but I think other people would like it too.

Highlights

I really liked this book. These aren’t even all of the highlights I made.

But what we should notice is that the right’s arguments never change. Propose something that challenges the social or economic status quo and they will loudly scream that it will never work, that it will hurt the very people it is trying to help, that it will be the death of civilization.

We can see why conservative beliefs are extremely appealing. First, fixed political ideologies in general are incredibly useful things, because they prevent us from having to engage in the terrifying and painful exercise of thinking things through for ourselves.

They are tales about how things work in a hypothetical world that operates in accordance with various assumptions about what humans “will” do, even if the evidence shows that this is not in fact what they actually do. They tell you that something is true, and it sounds like it could be true, but the evidence for it is thin.

If you do even a small amount of research, you will frequently find that the predictions are based on gut feelings rather than an actual understanding of how the world works.

[...] saying that your position is logical and factual is not the same as it being logical and factual, and when we actually scrutinize conservative claims, we frequently find that they use the rhetoric of reason rather than actually reasoning carefully.

But the difference between a guillotine and the “online equivalent of the guillotine” is that with the latter, your head isn't removed from your neck.

[...] the real world is much more nuanced and complicated, and that we have to look at all of the facts instead of only the facts that favor one ideology.

[...] better to have subjective valuations of the public good than a situation in which the only interests that are valued are those of the most powerful economic actors.

Furthermore, it is important to be clear on the actual core reason for raising minimum wages: it is so that workers can afford to keep themselves alive. Fifteen dollars an hour is more than double the existing federal minimum wage, but it is still not enough to afford a one-bedroom apartment in many cities.

The right of landlords to make vast fortunes is not more compelling than the right of people to remain in their longtime homes.

This idea that you can claim pieces of the commons and call them “yours” is what led P. J. Proudhon to declare that “property is theft”: By fencing off a park and calling it mine, I am stealing it from other people.

I do not really give a damn whether we decide that it's “theft” for the state to seize a portion of this wealth, because whatever value we might assign to respecting property rights is outweighed a thousandfold by the needs of others.

The question is whether there is some kind of “natural” entitlement to wealthy people having their vast wealth, and there isn’t.

But I think we need to emphasize that even if “productivity” determines what material rewards people get, we will not have shown the system is justified. If the parking attendant can barely afford his rent, but Trump Tower could pay him more and pay upper management a bit less, it should.

The problem here is often less a matter of “cancel culture” than “firing culture,” which sees workers as expendable and gives them no clear right of free speech.

Conservatives do not want us to talk about the actual “manufacturing of consent” in this country, so they spin a tale about a topsy-turvy world in which college students and Black and transgender people hold all the power, and rich white men are persecuted and sent to the gulag.

[...] because the people have some democratic control over the government, unlike with private insurance companies, their health dollars are actually being spent by an institution they have a say in the running of, and which exists to serve their interests rather than the interests of profiteers.

You already live with a rationing bureaucracy. It’s called your insurance company, and the difference between it and the federal government is that your insurance company is financially incentivized to deny you care because every dollar it doesn't spend on you is a dollar it can keep in profits.

The public sector is good to the extent that it's democratic, just like the private sector is bad to the extent that it's undemocratic.

If there is one thing that sucks more than being in school, it is being at work.

[...] we should take this as a cue to make school better. If it’s the case that literal child labor would actually be better than public school as it is now, that’s not a case for child labor; it’s a case that we need to drastically overhaul the public school system, to make it engaging and fun and improve student morale.

[...] we must understand what police represent, which is the policy of solving social problems through the application of violence. The police are not mediators or social workers.

The racism may just be elsewhere in the system than in the decision over whether to shoot or not shoot a given suspect. It may be that a Black person is more likely to be confronted by an armed police officer, not that out of all the people who will be confronted, Black people are more likely than white people to actually be shot.

But this only justifies shootings if we believe that the extrajudicial administration of the death penalty is justified. You should not get shot even if you commit a crime.

It is not just that we need less policing. We also need better schools, public daycare centers, free mental health services, free public housing, and a supportive society that reduces the problems to which policing is a “brute force” solution.

The existence of unions that let down their workers does not mean we need fewer unions, but that we need more militant unions that actually go the distance for their members.

Many abortions also occur because in the United States, there is little social support for raising children. We make raising a child extremely difficult—this country has no mandatory paid parental leave—and then are surprised when economic pressures lead many women to have abortions. Free universal daycare and pre-K, generous cash allowances to parents, and generous paid leave will all make it more likely that a pregnant person sees the prospect of having a child as more joyful than terrifying.

[...] the fact that one has a religious belief that discrimination is good is not a compelling reason for exemption from the law—just like a religious belief that murder, rape, or robbery are good would not entitle one to be found innocent of these charges in a court of law.

The Constitution was, therefore, not an exercise in self-government. It is in no way democratic to make rules for other people without asking for their input or consent.

The attitude of an intelligent person is not to ask, “What did the Founders think?” and then do it [...] but to reason independently. We can find wisdom in the words of past lawmakers, but the fact that they believed something does not, in and of itself, provide reason to give it any credence, since we know they believed some awful things. We are entitled to build the society we deem just, rather than the one our ancestors would have wanted.

The leftist position is different: We think that you should be able to survive even if you'd prefer not to be married, We think you should be able to raise a child without having to leave them at home alone to go and work a full-time job and that parenting itself should be compensated.

It is our job as human beings to take care of each other, and you deserve care because you are a person, not because you produce goods and services.

We have a moral duty to let as many people in as we can, in part because it is not clear where the “right to exclude” comes from in the first place. I did not build this country and neither did you. It was created by the labors of many who came here freely (as well as many who came here against their will). One reason we should be willing to share is that the land is not “ours” to begin with, and as long as our own basic material needs are taken care of, there is no reason to disallow others from satisfying their own.

Because wealth is an entitlement to decide how resources are used, it is a form of political power, and so wealth inequality is political inequality. Were not going to have democracy until we have less private economic power concentrated in the hands of a small number of people.