But the Leave side might not have got away with this ugliness, nor Remain with prattling about imminent apocalypse, had not the BBC, as well as enabling an often asinine level of argument, allowed its obsession with balance to dictate that any carefully argued observation on Brexit, deserving of analysis, be promptly followed by its formal opponent's unsubstantiated bluster.
But if "Slander" means to redress that wrong, its author has a strange way of raising the level of argument.
The public distrusts the traditional media because of the way it responds to these pressures: not by trying to sort out the issues involved and attempting to get to a level of truth through analysis and argument, but rather by constructing tidy metanarratives, built upon the ephemera of process and window-dressing, and shooting it full of false "balance".
First of all, it helps you avoid fallacies like the notion that because savings must equal investment, government spending cannot lead to a rise in total spending – which right away puts us above the level of argument that famous Chicago professors somehow find convincing.
At their deepest level of argument, they are intent on condemning "extremity".
What is perhaps most surprising, however, is the level of argument of the programmes and their originality.
To sneer at liberals by misrepresenting them is surely below his normal level of argument and discussion, which hitherto I have generally liked and enjoyed.
Then, there is the third level of argument that says you singled me out because you don't like my faith," an assertion that he said did not seem supported by the facts.
Yet such examples do not rise to the level of argument that she wants to make, which is that the native culture of Italy will collapse if Muslims keep immigrating.
Yet since the two kinds of claims are so interdependent, it is easy to inadvertently conflate or confuse one level of argument with the other.
