Always focus on the best version of an argument, especially ones with which you disagree

From The Awfulness of Ezra Klein, Explained by Mark Judge. I have never particularly taken to Klein. Too shallow, too little historical knowledge, too glib, and inartful in his over-confident assertions. Too predictable. The few occasions I read a piece, I know what his opinion will be before reading, I learn no new information and gain no new insight.

Judge's piece is a fisking of a recent Klein piece and is useful from a very particular perspective. His argument is that there is little evidence that Klein has ever suffered from decent editing. Judge does an editorial redlining of the Klein piece.

What he is actually demonstrating is the fine distinction between editing (making the piece more effective in its argument) and arguing (supporting or refuting a position.)

An active reader of mainstream media content today is, by second nature, always reading pieces with an eye for the hidden argument, the omitted contrary evidence, the over-claiming of effect, the spin of tangential evidence, etc. Those are good and useful skills but it is a different approach from another which is actually pretty useful as well.

The second approach is to treat the article as if you were the editor. What changes would I make in order for the piece to be more effective in its communication and more persuasive in its argument. One of the best ways to fully understand a person's argument is to deal with the best version of that argument. It is easy to disagree with a sloppy or careless argument. But if you want to get at the truth, you need to engage with the best version of it.

That, fortuitously, is the editor's job.

And that is what Judge is illustrating with his fisking. Very interesting and revealing.