{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"No. 13 Bookworm Podcast:","description":"Help me develop a polite, persuasive argument to challenge a  young friend of mine who has bought into the media narrative about right-wing extremism.     I have a young friend \u2014 my children\u2019s age \u2014 who is an extremely bright, thoughtful, and (so he believes) informed young man who wants to pursue a graduate degree in politics and terrorism. His biggest concern is \u201cright-wing extremism in America.\u201d When I first heard this, my initial impulse was to say, \u201cThat\u2019s just wrong. It\u2019s a stupid Leftist lie. You\u2019re being brainwashed. If you want to make a difference in the world, tackle left-wing extremism.\u201d Fortunately, I\u2019ve finally figured out that insulting people is not the way to get them to agree with you. There are better persuasion techniques. Because I respect my young friend\u2019s intelligence, I want to take some time to assemble an argument that will present data in a way that challenges his beliefs without insulting his intelligence. This post represents the first draft of that email. Maybe it\u2019s my legal training, but I believe that one of the best ways to challenge an argument is to start by identifying bias, both my own and the bias of the person(s) advocating the opposite view. I\u2019ve been open with my friend about my bias. My problem is to convince him that the media from which he gets his ideas about right-wing extremism is biased too. Very biased. The other day on his podcast, Andrew Klavan played two videos, one of the media celebrating Trump\u2019s anticipated downfall and the other celebrating Obama\u2019s allegedly scandal-free presidency. In both videos, raw partisanship is on display. The video below is Andrew Klavan\u2019s show, which I\u2019ve queued up to those back-to-back videos, starting at 19:15: [To read the rest, rather than listening to the podcast, please go here.] ","author_name":"Bookworm Room's Podcast","author_url":"http:\/\/bookwormroom.libsyn.com\/website","html":"