The Pleasure and Peril of a Good Takedown
The pseudonymous philosopher behind Bentham's Bulldog has built a readership in part on sharp, combative prose. In "The Polemicist's Vice," he turns that critical eye inward, cataloging the writers whose rhetorical ferocity he admires most and asking whether his own love of intellectual bloodsport is, in the end, a character flaw.
The essay is structured as a guided tour of polemical writing at its most entertaining. Bentham's Bulldog opens with the theologian David Bentley Hart, whose demolitions of lesser interlocutors he finds irresistible even when the underlying arguments are thin. Hart's attack on Adam Gopnik sets the tone early:
If my dog were to utter such words, I should be deeply disappointed in my dog's powers of reasoning. If my salad at lunch were suddenly to deliver itself of such an opinion, my only thought would be "What a very stupid salad."
The parade continues through Edward Feser, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Tracey, each showcased for the particular texture of their invective. Feser's description of the New Atheist writer John Loftus is a standout specimen:
New Atheist pamphleteer John Loftus is like a train wreck orchestrated by Zeno of Elea: As Loftus rams headlong into the devastating objections of his critics, the chassis, wheels, gears, and passenger body parts that are the contents of his mind proceed through ever more thorough stages of pulverization.
What makes the essay more than a highlight reel is the turn toward self-criticism. Bentham's Bulldog concedes that his own past writing has suffered from rhetorical excess, citing his piece on Eliezer Yudkowsky as a case where the substance was sound but the style undermined the message:
While I think the substance of the piece holds up, I am now somewhat embarrassed by the style.
The Audience Problem
The central tension the essay identifies is that polemics serve different audiences in opposite ways. Fiery prose energizes allies and provides catharsis for those already persuaded. But for undecided readers, it tends to repel rather than convince. Bentham's Bulldog states the tradeoff plainly:
Polemics are generally better for convincing those who already agree with you than fence-sitters. You convince the undecided by being measured and reasonable.
This is a well-worn observation in rhetoric, but it lands with particular force here because the author is confessing to the very weakness he diagnoses. The essay does not resolve the tension so much as sit with it honestly.
There is also a generational dimension. Bentham's Bulldog notes that writers tend to mellow with age, citing Scott Alexander's evolution from the more combative early Slate Star Codex posts to his current, more careful style. The comparison is apt. He frames the pattern with wry self-awareness:
Polemics, like crime, are generally carried out by young men. Likely I am similarly doomed to become more measured with age.
The Huemer Counterexample
The essay's most persuasive passage arrives near the end, when Bentham's Bulldog holds up the philosopher Michael Huemer as a model of devastation through understatement. Huemer's calm, methodical reply to Walter Block dismantles his critic without ever raising his voice, and the effect is more damaging than any insult. The quoted passage, in which Huemer simply lists his libertarian credentials and then dryly observes that Block may be the only person alive who doubts them, is genuinely funny precisely because it refuses to be angry.
I think Walter Block may be the only person in the universe who thinks I'm not a libertarian. Where did he get that idea?
This example somewhat undermines the essay's own structure. If understated prose can be more devastating, and the author clearly recognizes this, the lengthy tour of bombastic quotations that precedes it starts to feel like indulgence rather than analysis. The essay is, in a sense, doing the very thing it warns against: enjoying the fireworks too much to give the quiet alternative its full due.
Where the Argument Thins
The essay's weakest moment is its conclusion, which tries to split the difference by declaring that virtue lies "somewhere between Chomsky and Parfit." This is more bumper sticker than argument. It gestures at the Aristotelian mean without doing the work of specifying what that mean looks like in practice. When, precisely, does polemic cross from justified to gratuitous? The essay's own examples suggest Bentham's Bulldog knows the answer intuitively but prefers not to formalize it, perhaps because doing so would constrain future indulgence.
There is also an unexamined assumption that polemical skill and argumentative rigor are independent variables. The essay treats Hart and Feser as entertaining but often wrong, and Parfit as correct but dull. But some of the best philosophical writing manages both precision and force. The binary framing flatters writers who substitute style for substance.
The Effective Altruism Digression
One of the more pointed observations comes in an aside about EA writing culture, which Bentham's Bulldog characterizes with evident frustration:
EA writing is often unduly hedged and dreary. Rather than saying "P," they'll say "I broadly find P or something in the vicinity broadly plausible."
This is a fair hit. The hedging conventions common in rationalist and EA circles can drain prose of all energy and conviction. But the remedy is not necessarily more polemics. Clear, direct assertion without rhetorical excess is available as a third path, and Huemer's work, which the essay itself highlights, demonstrates exactly this.
Bottom Line
Bentham's Bulldog has written an engaging and unusually honest piece of self-examination. The essay works best as a curated anthology of rhetorical violence, and readers who share the author's taste for intellectual combat will find the quotations alone worth the read. As an argument about the ethics of tone, it is more suggestive than rigorous, identifying a real tension without fully resolving it. The most valuable insight is buried in the Huemer example: that restraint can cut deeper than fury. Whether Bentham's Bulldog will internalize that lesson in future writing remains an open question.