The Case Against Doing Nothing

I agree with Glenn Greenwald. Ignoring the right-wing extremists aids and abets them. At the risk of repeating myself, we need to stand up for doing the right thing and against others when they lie and smear.

Ignoring extremists is the worst possible thing one could do, and it is the biggest favor that could be done for them. The dishonest claims and manipulative tactics in which the likes of Instapundit and Michelle Malkin traffic are heard by enormous numbers of individuals and all sorts of influential people. To ignore them and to fail to respond to what they say -- to fail to expose their dishonesty and radicalism -- is to allow them to speak without challenge. The only result that will produce is to enhance their credibility and allow them to conceal their deceit. What possible rationale exists for that course of action?

It would be nice and all if we had a political culture where extremists and those who traffic in character smears in lieu of substantive political arguments could simply be ignored, so that they would disappear. But the reality is the opposite. Our political dialogue, especially over the last five years, has been shaped primarily by those who specialize in demonizing political opponents as fringe lunatics, depicting disagreement as treason, and deliberately papering over complexities in order to spew misleading political slogans designed to propagandize rather than persuade. The lesson of the Swift Boat debacle, more than anything else, was that to ignore those individuals and those tactics is the best thing one can do . . . for them. It is surprising how many people seem not to have learned that lesson.