My dad was good at arguing. He devoted his life to arguing. He got a PhD in argument (Rhetoric). He developed a following from his ability to argue.
None of this endeared my dad to me or to my brother or to normies. I suspect there had to be something unbalanced, something off, by those who were dazzled by my dad’s ability to argue.
If you are a normal person, you get all the meaning you need in life from your family. If that is not enough, then you get meaning from your friends, community, career, interests. You don’t need to secure meaning from polemicists.
When my dad would meet up with his evangelist peers, they’d compete by sharing the number of people they had baptized.
Evangelists tend to view people as fodder for Christ. They’re not a fun bunch.
Everybody wants status. What type of status you seek reveals you. For example, I want status for my clarity in the pursuit of truth.
People in high-intensity religions (such as Seventh-Day Adventism, Mormonism, Orthodox Judaism and the clergy in less intense denominations) disproportionately seek status within their in-group for their religious commitment while people with less intense religious commitments primarily seek status outside of religion.
Psychologist David Pinsof says: “If we’re just honest about our actual, unflattering motivations—because I think the biggest source of human bullshit is the unwillingness to honestly disclose unflattering truths about ourselves and our desires. Since we’re unwilling to disclose those truths, we cover them up with bullshit and give reasons instead that sound nicer and prettier.”
I find the clear arguments by this UCLA psychologist more useful than all of my dad’s arguments put together:
David Pinsof writes:
The goal is to subtly punish people for questioning our dogmas or dissing our allies. When we argue about politics, we’re playing The Opinion Game—the secret war over social norms. And the norm we want to establish is: respect our tribe.
Think of the Soviet Union. Everyone secretly hates Stalin, but Stalin and his apparatchiks work very hard to prevent people from becoming aware of that fact. Because if everyone did become aware of their mutual hatred for Stalin, they would rise up to overthrow him. Bad news for Stalin.
So Stalin and his apparatchiks force people to parrot Soviet propaganda as loudly as possible, as publicly as possible, so that no one knows who the anti-Stalinists are, or how many anti-Stalinists there are in their midst. This prevents the anti-Stalinists from coordinating and rallying together. If anyone refuses to parrot the Soviet propaganda, or refuses to parrot it loudly enough—off to the gulags they go. Some version of this strategy is, to my knowledge, used by every authoritarian regime that has ever existed. It’s a very effective strategy for maintaining power…
If people don’t parrot the coalition’s propaganda, or don’t parrot it loudly enough, they get “cancelled.” Getting cancelled isn’t as bad as getting sent to the gulags, but the outcome is the same. The opposition is silenced. The coalition maintains power…
Here are some other dark purposes of arguing:
We want to rally our tribe.
We want to rationalize.
We want to verbally spar.
We want to defend our status.
We want to defend our tribes.
We want to attack others’ status.
We want to cover up the fact that we’re doing all these dark, ugly things…
How can you tell if you’re in a pseudo-argument? Here are some warning signs:
The person is not genuinely listening to what you’re saying and considering its implications.
The person does not ask you any questions and makes no attempt to get clarification on what you mean.
The person is arguing against positions you do not hold—positions that are far dumber and crazier than what you believe.
The person is interpreting what you say in the worst possible light.
The person is unwilling to acknowledge any valid points you make or mention any cases where they agree with you.
The person is angry, offended, or upset.
The argument revolves around issues that are central to the person’s tribal identity or social status.
The person is overconfident, talking about complex issues as if they were simple and alternative views as if they were crazy.
The person engages in whataboutism or deflection, focusing more on the relative status of people or tribes than the truth of propositions.
There is no sense of curiosity or mystery.
There is no sense of collaboration in getting to the truth.
It is unclear what is even being argued about.
The person interrupts you and would rather talk than listen.
The person dodges your questions.
Whenever the person’s views are on the brink of looking dubious, they change the subject.
Here’s my advice. If you find yourself in a pseudo-argument, RUN! Get out of that situation. Nothing good will come from it.
I never had any interest in Charlie Kirk while he was alive because he seemed like a Ben Shapiro level debater. Even if he were a galaxy level debater, he would not have interested me. Growing up as the child of a skilled rhetorician who made me read 30-40 pages of Christian apologetics every day but the Sabbath and type a one-page summary (from age 8-11), I grew to hate apologetics. I don’t care for Jewish apologetics, Israel apologetics, conservative apologetics. If there’s some performative argument going on, I want to be far away.
After Charlie Kirk was shot, I thought about him more than the entire time he was alive. He was transfigured in my mind from a polemicist to a martyr.
The New York Times reports Sep. 27, 2025:
Charlie Kirk may be best remembered for arguing in public.
A cornerstone of Mr. Kirk’s devoted conservative following was his twice-yearly tours of universities around the country. For hours, he would cheerfully perch on a folding chair and challenge students and the public to, as he called it, “Prove Me Wrong.”
By tackling hot-button issues like abortion and trans rights, Mr. Kirk created content that became perfect fodder for brand-building on social media. Curated clips highlighting his wins, promoted with captions describing him as “destroying” liberals, have racked up tens of millions of views on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram…
One of Mr. Kirk’s favorite topics — and the title of one of his books — was “The College Scam,” which reflected his opinion that college was a waste of time and money. (Mr. Kirk himself dropped out of community college.)
Although he elsewhere had stated that the point of college is “to become a well-rounded citizen of what is good, true and beautiful,” in the clip below, he suggested the primary goal of higher education was to compete with China and that majors like women’s studies were “irrelevant.”
This line of argument was most likely to provoke emotional reactions from opponents — who after all were college students invested in their own education. And rhetoric experts agree that getting upset or defensive is a surefire way to end up on the losing side of a debate…
Part of Mr. Kirk’s advantage came from repetition. He debated hundreds of people and learned how to shape conversation — and where to drop in canned audience pleasers. This wisecrack about “North African lesbian poetry,” delivered at the University of Wyoming in April, was hardly spontaneous…
The Times found at least four other examples of him using the exact same line in the past two years.
Even on the most progressive campuses, Mr. Kirk’s debates drew large and boisterous contingents of supporters, cheering him on in MAGA hats. But while he traded barbs with his adversaries, he often discouraged heckling. By making space for opposing viewpoints, he enhanced his image as a defender of free speech while centering his own argument.
Additionally, by restraining his audience from shouting down his opponents, Mr. Kirk insulated himself from seeming like a bully to many viewers of clips shared on social media.
During this debate at the University of Tennessee in March, a student asked Mr. Kirk whether he thought abortions should be allowed when a mother’s life is in danger.
Mr. Kirk, who opposed abortion, responded by proposing a cesarean section as a better alternative, and then asked the student if she knew what the procedure was. It was a tactic Mr. Kirk frequently used: asking opponents to define a term, so he could score easy points by making them appear uninformed if they could not.
In this case, the student knew what a C-section was, so Mr. Kirk quickly pivoted to another common strategy by addressing allies in the crowd — “this is for you guys” — with advice on how they should respond to the question if it ever came up in their own lives.
Mr. Kirk’s claim that C-sections are safer than abortions is widely disputed by medical professionals….
Later in this debate with the same student at the University of Tennessee, Mr. Kirk shifted to more extreme rhetoric, calling abortion “worse” than the Holocaust.
Ben Voth, a professor of rhetoric and director of debate and speech at Southern Methodist University, cited “discussing forbidden topics and upholding forbidden arguments” as a muscular and emotionally resonant strategy to which Mr. Kirk regularly returned.
(Mr. Kirk also mentioned “45 million babies,” presumably a reference to a number of abortions, without specifying where or over what period of time they took place.)
After more back-and-forth, Mr. Kirk laid a rhetorical trap. When the student replied “human” to his question about what species an embryo is, he claimed victory, saying that implied embryos deserve human rights.
Aaron Kall, who coached the University of Michigan to its first national championship as director of debate last year, called that kind of move a “turn” — using the other person’s own words to prove your point. “It has more impact when you turn your opponent’s argument to your advantage,” Mr. Kall said.
In this debate about critical race theory, Mr. Kirk borrowed from the Socratic method, using questions to steer his opponent into a disadvantage. Flustered, the young person conceded ground, and he leapt to occupy it. “This is great,” he said before asking another question designed to frame the opposing position.
It generated the response Mr. Kirk seems to have hoped for, and he pounced, accusing his opponent of insulting “the working poor” by suggesting there’s a correlation between poverty and violent crime. Bill Southworth, a professor of speech and debate at the University of Redlands, described this approach as trying to “trivialize” his opponent as an out-of-touch member of the elite, while “increasing his own ethos” as the defender of regular, working-class people.
Mr. Kirk later tried another of his frequently used tactics, introducing a compelling statistic in order to demolish a claim about poverty and crime — in this case, that 80 percent of Black people in America “do not have a stable father around.” The problem is that the stat, which he often cited in debates, is not accurate.
“I’ll prove it to you,” Mr. Kirk frequently offered in debates. What followed did not always deliver on that promise. Here, he made some categorically unprovable assertions about the differences between women and men, including what women discuss when they have lunch.
By playing up stereotypes, Mr. Kirk was once again pushing emotional buttons. He also may have been trying to overwhelm his opponent with what Carl Trigilio, who has coached championship debaters at the high school and college levels, calls “sensory overload.” The tactic can be successful because it is challenging to rebut every point and forces opponents to passively concede points.
In the most viral videos of Mr. Kirk’s debates on social media, he looks strikingly composed, armed with enough rhetorical weapons and poise that he seems to never “lose.”
Over the next seven years, Mr. Kirk refined his debating skills considerably, picking up vast stores of confidence and keeping his composure.
That skill and polish stood out in particular when taking on idealistic undergraduates with little to no debating experience, a core feature of most of his appearances. In this clip from 2025, Mr. Kirk answers the question, “Why do you like Trump so much?” by calmly and methodically overwhelming his opponent with a litany of memorized talking points delivered at high speed, a technique that Dr. Voth said tends to be “connotative of intelligence” to audiences.
Late last year, Mr. Kirk sat down for what would be one of his most viral debates, against what he described as “20 woke college kids,” in a staged event organized by the media company Jubilee. In this clip, Mr. Kirk can be seen at the top of his game, leading off by asking his opponent to define a woman while debating the topic “trans women are not women.” The full debate video has racked up more than 37 million views on Jubilee’s YouTube channel and spun off countless highlight reels that laud Mr. Kirk as “owning” and “destroying” his liberal opponents.
