From another perspective, it does our side no good to get drawn into the bullshit semantic games of the antagonist. There are no political perspectives that can be derived from first principles – all of them derive from some set of moral values. To the extent that ironclad moral certainty is an advantage in politics the side that is more willing to question its moral standards and to try to rationalize how other standards might also be acceptable is at a disadvantage.
If, in the misguided attempt to try to be “fair-minded”, someone on “our side” calls into question the legitimacy of our opposition to creeping authoritarianism then one might plausibly argue that person is doing a lot worse for “our side” than Rindan’s impassioned comments. If political issues were decided by who has the most clever argument that might not be the case but I’ve yet to see a political issue decided by clever arguments.
