From a mini debate I've been having on Facebook with a US friend; the subject, the paucity of reason in politics

It's not just the Right's dishonesty and extremism that makes them so difficult to debate with, they've handicapped themselves through the lack of any unified internal logic. There's nothing to argue against. I don't know what Socrates would have made of this. There's no possibility of anything even remotely dialectic; the give and take of persuasive debate towards an eventual and agreed truth lacks soil. There's nothing there.

If anything could be claimed as their vision, then it must be simple knee jerkism, outright objection without the intellectual courtesy of consideration. That, and mudslinging.

And it's not unique to the US I see it, I hear it, and I despair of it here. We are not immune.

As a liberal, and if there's a term that needs to be rescued from the lexicon of abuse, then this has to be candidate material, I equally despair that the Left is too ideologically purist. Christ, do we love the cut and feel of the hair-shirt. Too hard on ourselves, too theoretical, too down.

We're a progressive tribe that ought to be articulating the blessings of actually having a unified inner logic. One moreover that has palpable fruit sweet enough for anyone's taste. Yet we don't. Partly, through that grinding intellectual masochism that dogs our every move; partly due to, and how I wish fervently this was n't the case, an insane, rabble-rousing, flame grilled, vilely opportunistic, soundbite driven media. More in love with lucre than nuance and happier with emotionalism than with explanation.

Alarmist demagoguery is driving the debate, whilst reason lies in the stable, hobbled.

Yes,it is a difficult one. Far more questions than answers; the dream, though, let's keep it alive.