The Current Affairs Rules For Life: On Social Justice & Its Critics

by Nathan J. Robinson

In this sharp collection of essays from Current Affairs magazine, Nathan J. Robinson systematically demolishes the flimsy intellectual chicanery of contemporary critics of the left. Robinson shows the bankruptcy of conservative ideas and the value of a humane egalitarian alternative.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Essays

370 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2018

Reviews

[Kyle Minton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The way I see it you could find yourself in either one of these two categories:

You think all the criticism of social justice warriors is valid and people just need to learn to contend with ideas they don't like
You don't think the criticism of social justice warriors is valid but you have neither the time nor patience to analyze the work of popular critics like Jordan Peterson or Steven Pinker and adequately refute their arguments

I've been in both these categories. There was a time I gave in to popular sentiment and assumed leftists, especially college leftists, were being too sensitive. I thought things like safe spaces, microaggressions, and trigger warnings were taking the idea of egalitarianism to hypersensitive levels and made it too easy to parody. I was even one of those insufferable free speech purists who felt that credible arguments exist on all sides of a given argument and, if we could only hear them all out, the most rational outcome would prevail (which isn't necessarily wrong, I just failed to grasp that the arguments presented to us in mainstream discourse were just two sides of the same coin).

As I began moving further to the left after college (this is what working in a cubicle 40 hours a week will do to you) I could start to see major power imbalances being challenged by the same leftists I criticized. And they weren't just challenging them with trigger warnings or microaggressions (though they were certainly present) but rather with visions of a just and more fair outcome for all. These were the people being referred to as SJWs or Social Justice Warriors and written off as "snowflakes".

A lot of people in my life still subscribe to the theory that social justice is a concept gone too far and they're still heavily influenced by the harshest critics. Joe Rogan hosts the most popular podcast in the world and he uses it to platform many like-minded critics of the left. People like Sam Harris, David Brooks, and Steven Pinker are seen as rational classical liberals and attract justice-minded people with a perceived evenhandedness. Pseudo-academics like Jordan Peterson and Charles Murray will use the real language of science or statistics to legitimize ideas with no real scientific or statistical backing. And of course, there are those on the right like Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and Milo Yiannopoulos who reasoned people will often say they disagree with while simultaneously insisting on the existence of good faith in their arguments.

Rather than take on these people and critiques on our own I think it is time to elevate those voices who can best critically defend social justice. I would like to nominate Nathan Robinson, who edits the magazine Current Affairs and whose collection of essays The Current Affairs Rule for Life offers key insights into the real arguments behind both social justice and its critics.

If I were describing a Ben Shapiro YouTube video I would describe Part One of the books as "Nathan Robinson Eats Anti-SJW With The Teeth of Logic and Shits Th-". You get it. Each essay tracks a popular social justice critic, fairly defines their major beef with the movements and ideation of the left, and then either provides a lawyerly, well-evidenced counterpoint or exposes them as only speciously engaging with leftist arguments at all. The gang is all here; Peterson, Harris, Carlson, Brooks and more. The level of engagement is useful in its substance as well as its timeliness.

Part Two goes on to defend the idea of social justice as a whole. Rather than describe each argument in detail, here is a taste of the central theme from the essay In Defense of Social Justice:

"Why is the left-wing political agenda so hopelessly muddled and varied? Redistributing wealth, eliminating gender roles, protecting the environment, stopping the war, prosecuting Wall Street, opening the borders, saving the Louisiana pancake batfish—why do we just throw all of this different stuff together into the political equivalent of a KFC Famous Bowl® and call it social justice? What is this, other than a series of different ways to signal one’s virtue? But the premise of the question is wrong, because it looks only at the goals that follow from a certain set of basic values and misses the values themselves. It’s understandable that people get confused, because on the left we end up spending far more time talking about what we want than the reasons we want it. It’s still true, however, that there is a coherent (and to me, compelling) philosophy underlying “left-wing social justice politics.” It starts from a belief that other people matter, that we should empathize with the rest of humanity and care about what happens to them as much as we care about what happens to ourselves. It also holds a vision of the good life, a life where people have freedom and equality. But it realizes that those need to be more than empty feel-good words: Freedom means the actual capacity to do things, not the mere absence of physical restraint"

All of the essays are available online, but I highly suggest subscribing to Current Affairs or at least purchasing the book. This is part of that "elevating voices" thing I was talking about. Whether you're sending these essays to people or just reading them to equip yourself with better arguments, I can't stress how important projects like Current Affairs are (Robinson makes a lot of references to other writers I'll be reading too). With the growing popularity of the anti-left, the left needs better messaging and better arguments, which will require complex engagement with the anti-left talking points.

Robinson's trick to this engagement is giving serious consideration to what your target is saying, really knowing/being able to speak to the values backing them up, as well as...just reading them. During the Kavanaugh hearings, I kept his essay on the Supreme Court nominee's testimony permanently up on my phone. What made it such a useful piece? Well, Robinson actually read the testimony and painstakingly combed for inconsistencies in it. Every day, ordinary social justice critics in our lives have professional critics on the center-left and right popularizing and normalizing their ideas. Let's make people like Nathan Robinson ours, let's let him read their screeds for us so we can develop our own way of combating those advocating brutal individualism. He's like that nerd in high school that will do your homework for you except this time you don't even need to threaten him with a wedgie, you just need to subscribe to his magazine.

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

You'd think this book would be pissy and mean and sarcastic, and you know, it occasionally is. But what makes it truly special, and what makes me want to subscribe to "Current Affairs," the magazine Nathan J. Robinson edits, is how convincing and moving and heartfelt its view of social justice is. So here's part of the conclusion of Robinson's brilliant attack on Jordan Peterson:

"...the Peterson way is not just futile because it's pointless, it's futile because ultimately, you can't escape politics. Our lives are conditioned by economic and political systems, like it or not, and by telling lost people to abandon projects for social change, one permanently guarantees they will be the helpless victims of forces beyond their control or understanding. The genuinely 'heroic' path in life is to band with others to pursue the social good, to find meaning in the collective human striving to better our condition. No, not by abandoning the idea of the 'individual' and seeing the world purely in terms of group identity. But by pooling our individual talents and efforts to produce a better, fairer, and more beautiful world."

Like, I was enjoying the book up till that point, because Jordan Peterson seems like a scummy, wordy, incomprehensible charlatan. But man... Robinson knows how to tug at your heart strings.

But lest someone accuse him of being a snowflake (because GOD FORBID you should concern yourself with the thoughts and feelings of people who aren't you, you jackass), Robinson is also a pretty rigorous thinker, and a gifted writer. He has multiple opportunities here to skewer his right-wing nemeses on, well, the sort of ground that I usually engage MY right-wing nemeses-- the level of the personal attack-- and yet, for the most part, Robinson refrains from the ad hominem shit, preferring to roast his opponents on the spit of their own shitty speeches and writings. He is, in a word, FAIR to his opponents... Which of course makes his sallies all the more devastating. If the "CA Rules for Life" has a theme, then, it's persuasion. He truly believes that the best way for progressives / socialists / kind people / et al to make their respective cases is to talk to people, to listen to people, to engage with them as humans, and his biggest crack on the "nu right"/"dark internet"/"Charles Murray and Sons" is that for all of their bluster about speech being restricted, they don't seem to give a single shit about actually processing voices other than the shitty white supremacist demons lurking in their heads.

Thank you @kyleminton for this wonderful book.

[Muhamed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nathan J. Robinson has become one of my favorite essayists. His calm and well-thought style of writing is just amazing. He changed my mind on a few issues with his convincing arguments. He also seems like an amazing person.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nathan J Robinson is one of the brightest minds on the left, and certainly the one I find the most pleasure in reading. I read almost every article he puts out as well as subscribe to Current Affairs and contribute to the CA podcast. I can't recommend the outfit enough.

Robinson examines right wing arguments with a fine tooth comb but also writes with language not requiring a doctorate to parse. And considering the wide array of topics he writes about, he is able to keep up his breezy writing style with surprising consistency. One of my favorite things about Robinson, though, is his intellectual honesty. His essays always respond to the best version of his opponents arguments and usually take them to be acting in good faith. This makes his pieces devastating in a way that polemics rarely are. Highly recommended for you and your friend who uses the term "SJW".

[Eric Dowdle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Leave no cake uneaten" - is there better advice? I think not.

[Nakedfartbarfer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book did a great job of exploring the arguments (such as they are) of leading right-wing intellectuals and exposing the demands to “hear both sides” as hollow— Ben Shapiro’s book “How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them” doesn’t strike me as a paradigm of intellectual curiosity and willingness to hear out ethical rejoinders. I’ve tried, either out of morbid curiosity or expansive political inclusivity, to try and read people like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro to understand their appeal and arguments, but I can’t read much more than one poorly-structured thesis at a time. I say read, rather than listen to, because Shapiro’s chiptuned-minion vocal speed & octave is excruciating and I always felt sorry for Jordan Peterson as he seemed to have a milder version of RFK’s spasmodic dysphonia.

As someone who believes in the necessity of working-class solidarity and the need to forge political alliances across ideological boundaries, it was nice to read a book that takes the time to explain why certain views are harmful, rather than just stupid. As pointed out in the book, shame and censorship (although censorship is often an overblown charge made by people with giant platforms) may be a way to get people to stop vocally espousing a political view, but not to get them to stop holding said view.

[Paul Froehlich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though he doesn’t like the label “social justice warrior,” Nathan Robinson is an unabashed advocate of social justice. He is also the editor of Current Affairs magazine. In Rules for Life, Robinson refutes several critics of the left, and then defends his principles about justice.

Controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson is Robinson’s top target. It’s not easy to rebut Peterson, however, because he espouses truisms and uses abstract language making it difficult to understand his point. Robinson calls his words “half nonsense, half banality…a combination of drivel and cliché.” Peterson is “an intellectual fraud who uses a lot of words to say nothing.” Robinson admits, however, that Peterson is skilled at appearing to express profound insights.

Sam Harris gets excoriated for his harsh criticism of Muslims, which includes suggesting a first-strike nuclear attack on cities in hostile Muslim countries. Also an advocate of profiling Muslims and people who look Muslim at airports, Harris contends that fear of Muslims is rational. “We are at war with Islam,” Harris insists. He defends torture under certain circumstances. One of the new atheists, Harris singles out religion as the underlying cause of wars.

The vast majority of Muslims oppose terrorism against civilians. By contrast, writes Robinson, the vast majority of Americans supported the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where civilians were the lion’s share of the casualties.

Robinson accuses Harris of “scientism,” which invokes science to declare his opinion as objectively superior to those who disagree. Robinson labels it “pseudo rational arrogance.”

Tucker Carlson also comes under fire for asserting that ethnic diversity is not a strength because it undermines national unity. Robinson responds by listing various clear benefits of multiculturalism. He never gets around to directly refuting Carlson’s thesis that ethnic and cultural diversity makes people less trusting and less engaged in community.

Robinson takes on several conservative critics of the liberal excesses on campus. Critics often exaggerate and don’t listen to campus activists. I once attended a debate, however, in which leftists shouted down the speakers and shut down the event, and that’s no exaggeration.

When it comes to his principles, Robinson favors greater equality, while those on the right are far more comfortable with the ever-widening economic inequality. The real alternatives are neither perfect equality of income nor concentration of wealth in a few hands. Instead, the goal of those on the left is declining inequality and more widespread sharing of economic growth, which is what happened in the three decades after WWII when there was a booming middle class.

Money is power. In a society where wealth is concentrated in relatively few hands, that tiny group will exercise grossly disproportionate political power. “It’s impossible to have political equality while there is economic inequality.”

Conservatives try to justify wealth inequality by giving lip-service to the myth of equal opportunity. “Equal opportunity, not equal outcomes,” is their slogan. The fact is that opportunity is passed down between generations. A high estate tax would reduce unequal opportunity, but conservatives not only oppose a high “death tax,” they want to abolish it entirely.

Robinson’s favorite factoid about racial inequality is that the median black family has only one-tenth the wealth of the median white family. Glenn Loury, whom Robinson mentions, argues that “citing the median as an indicator of the racial wealth gap is misleading.” Most of the gap, he explains, is accounted for by the disparities between the wealthiest white and black Americans. In addition, the median white American is 44 and married, while the median black American is 34 and single. Consequently, citing the median suggests that the wealth gap is more pervasive than it is. (My biggest complaint about this book is the poor quality of the paperback binding, which causes pages to fall out.)

In sum, Robinson does a persuasive job of debunking Peterson, Harris, and Ben Shapiro, two of whom I had previously had a good opinion of. Robinson frequently accuses those on the right of lacking empathy and refusing to listen to those whom they prefer to caricature. It’s a fair point that also applies to many on the left. -30-

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essays in this collection were chosen as responses to the "Intellectual-Dark-Web"-type individuals (Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, etc...) who have various critiques of the left. Robinson has interesting replies that should be read by any of the individuals who indulge in the IDW "destroys" or "dismantles" videos. If you are not convinced by the arguments, you will at least come away with an approximation for what "the other side" truly believes.

The reason for the 4-star was that some sections seemed quite weak and more like rants. For instance, the article on diversity seems less like a convincing argument and more like an impassioned plea. I agree with the conclusion but felt the reasons weren't as good as the reasons in other essays

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Doubt is the beginning of knowledge, which is why people who are too arrogant often turn out not to be as smart as they think they are. If you’re excessively confident In yourself, you’re not going to listen to other people, which means you’re not going to learn very much. This is why Socrates is wiser than nearly everyone he meets: It is not that he knows more than they do, but that he knows how little he knows. The progress of the sciences depends on questioning and self-criticism. And a truly rational person is not just capable of noticing irrationality in others, but is humble and introspcetove enough to detect it in himself.”
—p 61

“Pessimism is a kind of surrender to existing circumstance.”
—p 286

[Sigurgeir · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be my favourite book of the year.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best criticism of the new right I've ever read.

[Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5