Another politics is stupid post. In this one Jonah Goldberg is confused about democracy. [via Prometheus which is in heavily qualified agreement with Goldberg]

Liberal democracy ceases to exist when partisanship vanishes. Democracy is about disagreement before it is about agreement.

This doesn't justify partisanship, it speaks against it since there are so many ways to disagree about a subject. Partisanship is where gangs of thugs mob together to punch above their weight. Liberal democracy is quite different. It is what happens when those who disagree listen to one another and realize that to have a functional society it is necessary to avoid alienating large numbers through the exercise of majoritarian power.

It isn't that the thugs can be potty trained, there are always those who evade socialization and behave rudely. Indeed, when you mention their bad behavior they throw a tantrum:

When you hear people say, "We need to get past partisan differences," what they are really saying is you should shut up and agree with me.

No, they are not. They are saying that your tantrum is a childish impediment to good governance.

Similarly, when public health experts, child advocates, televangelists, environmentalists and the rest insist that this or that isn't a political issue, it's a health issue, child-safety issue, moral issue or whatever-kind-of-issue, what they are really saying is that we shouldn't have a political argument about my cause. Because my cause is beyond politics. You should just agree with me and do it my way.

This is an example of the problem Trout & Bishop noted in Strategic Reliabilism: appallingly weak reasoning. It is perfectly possible to point out that an issue is beyond politics without advocating any particular way of dealing with the issue. Daniel Henninger spoke of just such an issue in Politics Get Smaller.

Pick a subject: Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, national spending, advice and consent. The larger the challenge, the smaller our politics becomes.

Henninger goes on to cite several instance where partisanship has been simply pathetic and harmed us all.

Goldberg exemplifies the failed scholarship of the obdurately partisan today - the inability to understand the interplay of politics and governance, and the utter lack of comprehension about what democracy means.