Give Me An Argument - The Ben Burgis Call-In Show Callin

I talk to Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson about the incredibly depressing mess the 2024 election is already shaping up to be and take a few calls. Nathan has written about the distinct possibility of Trump being re-elected:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/05/donald-trump-could-well-be-the-president-again

...and co-written an article with Lily Sanchez about why RFK, Jr. is so far from being the alternative to Biden we desperately need:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/05/rfk-jr-is-a-lying-crank-posing-as-a-progressive-alternative

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Callers ask me about toxicity on the Left, the Twitter Files, Ana Kasparian, how to pick your battles in arguments, Judith Jarvis Thomson's abortion essay, Norman Finkelstein's take on Philip Roth's novel American Pastoral, Philippa Foot, Kant's Categorical Imperative, and more. This was a very good time.

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Right-wing pundit Curtis Yarvin wrote about Matt McManus on his Substack a little while back. Today, Matt joined me to read through the screed and respond point-by-point to a much as we could in an hour and change. There will be a Pt. 2!

Yarvin's Substack on Matt:

https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-historical-guilt-of-the-old-regime?utm_source=post-email-title

Matt's original article on Yarvin:

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/curtis-yarvin-thiel-carlyle-monarchism-reactionary

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One my very favorite recurring guests joins me to chat about his forthcoming Sublation article and the state of the American left.

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Ethan from the Confronting Capital channel is going to give me his best pitch for why I should be more worried abut AI safety, and we'll take your calls.

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I didn't try to put a chapter listing on this sine (a) it's my birthday and publishing this was the last work task I had to do today, and (b) it's all kind of a piece, but this actually was a pretty interesting one!

I argue with anarchist Brent Lengel about an essay and he doesn't by Marx's collaborator Friedrich Engels--"On Authority":

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

For the other side of the argument, see Marx and Engels's factional rival (the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin)'s essay "What Is Authority?":

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/authrty.htm

Link to Brent's indiegogo (more about that at the end of the episode):

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/durruti-shadow-of-the-people-1-2#/

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