Obsidian wings: Fighting Words

Hilzoy has written yet another of her excellent posts. This bit particularly reminded me of some of the people I've gotten into political discussions with:

If you give in to "the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible", it's easy to see how you could end up thinking things about them that it is implausible to think about any group of human beings: for instance, that when a nineteen year old who enlisted because he wanted to serve his country gets blown up by an IED, your enemies think that that's cause for celebration. Your opponents become cartoons in your mind, and the normal duty to be charitable and generous, or even realistic, in your views about other people seem not to apply to them. You stop thinking of them as fellow human beings, and start thinking of them as enemies.

The rest can be found here, and I recommend it very highly: http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/06/fighting-words.html