On productive political discussion

The signal-to-noise ratio of political blogs and Usenet political newsgroups would soar if their participants would remember this simple point:

The world is full to the gills with stupid people who say awful things on the Internet. Pointing this out doesn’t constitute a political argument.

One of the downsides of the multitude of social cliques that David Brooks enthuses about is that (as Brooks himself notes) we need know nothing about the people in the cliques we don't belong to.

We make this problem even worse if, when we do choose to engage the people and ideas of another clique, we engage the worst people and the nonsensical arguments of that clique rather than its best people and its compelling arguments.

I speak from sad experience when I say: Self-respect gained so cheaply is worth little.