Glenn Greenwald has a new post (see item 8) taking issue with the many bloggers and commenters who disagreed with his description of me as an "aplogist . . . for many lawless and radical Bush policies." They are wrong and he is right, he is insisting, and he offers a new explanation of why:

  My description the other day of Law Professor Orin Kerr as a leading apologist for radical and lawless Bush policies — a description I documented in the update to the post — spawned all sorts of consternation among his friends and admirers. You see, he's so reasonable and civil and polite in how he conducts himself that it's really wrong to say anything so critical about him.
  But, as one of his own commenters pointed out so adeptly, that is precisely the point: "Whether or not the policies are radical in terms of popular or political support, [Greenwald] believes them to be a radical departure from our constitutional principles. If you believed as he does, outrage would indeed be the proper response — one of his objections to what's been going on is precisely the willingness to discuss outrageous policies (torture, unlimited executive authority) as if they were reasonable. The argument is simple: constitutional constraint depends on elites and ordinary citizens not merely *disapproving* of governmental overreach but *hating* it, being *outraged* by it — if constitutional violations become merely one area of policy disagreement to be traded off against others, republican government is doomed."
  That's exactly the point. The Bush administration was able to get away with its extremism and lawlessness over the past eight years because elites and "experts" sat around oh-so-civilly and self-importantly and reasonably debating these actions as though they were legitimate, as though support for those policies was worthy of serious and respectful consideration, as though the advocates of these policies were Serious People within our political mainstream, and — most of all — as though outrage and anger and revulsion over what the Bush administration was doing was only for the shrill, irresponsible and uncouth rabble.

  What a curious perspective on the world. If I understand Greenwald correctly, I deserve condemnation for taking arguments seriously: in his words, I "reasonably debat[ed] these actions as though they were legitimate, as though support for those policies was worthy of serious and respectful consideration." In other words, I was an apologist for lawless and radical Bush policies even when writing posts that rejected them. By rejecting positions through reason rather than invective, I legitimated the positions I rejected.

  I think Greenwald has it exactly backwards, though. If you actually want to persuade folks who haven't made up their mind already on ideological grounds — that is, the crowd that is open to persuasion --invective won't cut it. You need real arguments, and you need credibility, and you can get that only by taking arguments seriously and evaluating them on the merits free of insults and abuse. You don't need to express "outrage" to make the point; in fact, outrage only takes away from it. My approach doesn't sell a lot of books, I realize, but I think it does get to the bottom of things.

  In any event, if Greenwald's indictment is that I treated arguments with respect, argued ideas rather than people, and reached the merits without dismissing opponents out of hand, then I happily plead guilty.