zlacker

>>david9+(OP)
The sad irony is that he's at a college campus debating/arguing with people. At their best that's what college campuses are for. I know they haven't been living up to it lately but seeing him gunned down feels like a metaphor.

I know he liked to publicize the exchanges where he got the best of someone, and bury the others, and that he was a far, far cry from a public intellectual. Still, he talked to folks about ideas, and that's something that we should have more of.

That should be something that we strive for, but I fear we'll see it less and less. Who'se going to want to go around and argue with people now?

>>loughn+Bg1
I read an account of the "debate" immediately preceding his murder, it was quips and dodges. If that's at all representative of his conduct, he actively hurt the national dialogue by convincing people that that's what a debate looks like.

>>cosmic+np1
how would you steelman his position?

>>dnissl+rs1
I wouldn't. It's a position selected specifically to troll immature leftist college students and score youtube views.

>>beefle+uv1
Steelmanning that position, though, would go like this. The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind. Good debate makes good viewing, which is why debates have audiences. And young people in particular tend to be impressionable because they don't have a lifetime of commitment to one position.

So if you want to engage people politically via debate, then university campuses are a good place to do that and thus - to someone extraordinarily uncharitable - any such debate could be described as "trolling immature leftist college students to score YouTube views". The same activity done by an academic would be described as "presenting the youth with mind-expanding dialogue", and they'd be doing it to score tuition fees, but nobody would quibble with that phrasing.