The biggest advantage the politicized being has is that no one wants to vocally disagree with someone who seems to have no compunction about trying to destroy everyone who disagrees with them. How many academics stand up to the one politicized member of the tenure committee? Who needs to make an enemy of the least ethical person on a small faculty where you'll spend the next decade? How many bureaucrats call out the politicized appointee running their agency?

The incentives just don't add up.



If you're a political journalist, and you hear Keith Olbermann or Bill O'Reilly or Lawrence O'Donnell or Mark Levin offend against basic human decency in an attempt to destroy an ideological adversaries, calling them out, especially if you're seen as "on their side." is going to make you the target of angry, profane attacks from their fans. Lackey bloggers are likely to publish blog posts that stop just short of actionable libel. You'll never be invited on the pundits' shows or possibly even their network when you've got a book to sell. And for your trouble, all you've accomplished is speaking up about behavior that people you care to reach already know to be wrongheaded. I have idiosyncratic ideas about the importance of a certain kind of public discourse, no ambition to work for an ideological movement, a social circle composed of friends who don't give a damn who I criticize, and an employer with the motto "of no party or clique."



And even I often find it an unpleasant hassle to make these criticisms.



I persist because I believe it's within the power of a silent majority to change the incentive system. Bullying often turns out to be easier to stop than expected once the bully is sufficiently confronted. There are, however, ten thousand deserving projects out there.

Do I blame liberals who spent their time during the Bush Administration calling out policies they found deeply wrongheaded and ignoring Olbermann's excesses? No, I totally understand their priorities.



Almost no one at National Review today approaches politics in the way that Michael Walsh recommends:

Don't make nice with them, don't play fair with them, don't reach across the aisle and above all, treat them and their ideas with exactly the same amount of respect with which they treat yours: none. Contempt is the only language they understand. Remember that, thanks to Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Alinsky Left, the personal is now political, so get personal; all's fair in love and war, and politics isn't love. As Pat Caddell just reminded the GOP, his team plays to win, and doesn't really much care how it does it -- 'by any means necessary' is their motto. If you're not using their own rules against them, you're not playing the game." [emphasis in original]

But you don't start working for a magazine like National Review so you can spend your time arguing with the dumbest things fellow conservatives say -- you're more interested in warning about an immigration amnesty or editorializing against pending tax legislation or even calling for the drinking age to return to 18. Politicization attracts a hardcore constituency to individuals and publications. Criticizing that faction has an unusually high cost, and so politicization persists, despite the fact that most people observe it, shake their heads in disgust, and turn on American Idol*.