‘You’re Arguing in Bad Faith,’ Says Person Losing Argument

I’m not the first person to notice this, but many of our friends on the left exist in an intellectual bubble in which everyone agrees with them — every talking head on TV, every newspaper columnist they read, everyone they associate with, everyone in their family except that unfortunate Hannity-watching uncle we hear about each Thanksgiving. As a result, they lose the ability to argue. Conservatives don’t have this luxury, or burden: We all have liberal friends and/or family members, and every time we pick up one of the major newspapers or turn on CNN, we find something we disagree with almost instantly, which leads us naturally to develop the skill of arguing why something is wrong.

Because these liberals have no practice arguing, they very often get flustered by opposition and employ a variety of dumb tactics to rule the argument itself out of bounds. Most common are the straw-man argument (“Oh, so, you think all the poor people should just die?”) and the ad hominem argument (“I won’t listen to a lecture from a racist troglodyte like you.”). My favorite example of hand-waving was when President Obama said, during the discussion of health-care reform, “Those are just talking points.” Talking points are otherwise known as “arguments.” So this supposed great intellectual was saying, “Your arguments are just arguments.”

Lately, I’ve noticed, liberals are leaning into the “you’re arguing in bad faith” argument. In other words, “I don’t have to argue with you because you don’t mean what you say.” This has become such a reflex that it sometimes takes the speaker to amusing places. To wit: GQ writer Julia Ioffe made an absurd remark, Rich Lowry replied with dry sarcasm, Ioffe said he was arguing in bad faith.

Ioffe replied to one of the replies:

This . . . makes no sense. Rich obviously doesn’t think the U.S. is a “sh**hole country.” Rich obviously believes what he is saying. There is zero chance he is arguing in “bad faith.” Rich has a pretty well-established record of arguing that the U.S. is one of the world’s better countries. He didn’t just make up this position on the spot to razz Julia Ioffe. Ioffe knows this.

After the ridiculous “sh**hole country” claim, Ioffe did the motte-and-bailey thing where she retreated to a more defensible general claim that President Trump is not handling the crisis well. Maybe so. But that’s a long, long way from arguing that the U.S. has therefore turned into a “sh**hole country.” Italy has far more coronavirus victims per capita than the U.S.; so does Spain. So does Switzerland. So does France. Would she argue that any of these is a “sh**hole country”?

You see where I’m going with this. Ioffe’s original remark was itself made in bad faith. She was born in Russia and knows very well that the U.S. is not a “sh**hole country.” If Democrats take over leadership of the country seven months from now, she’ll lose interest in calling us a “sh**hole country,” even though it will be largely the same country. Ioffe was simply making an extreme, and extremely false, remark in an attempt to score partisan points against a political party she doesn’t like. That’s a textbook example of bad faith.