Oh, I've advocated "understanding", sure, but you persist in twisting my meaning, and the meaning of everyone who says the same thing. Understanding is anti-ignorance; understanding is sufficient knowledge to be able to anticipate your adversary's moves, and to know what he values so that you know where he's vulnerable; understanding is what tells you when you've won and can administer the coup de grace. Understanding can be an awfully cold-blooded thing.
Understanding is the intellectual weapon that Conservatives are afraid to pick up. Lack of understanding is why Conservatives perpetually go into knife fights with one hand resolutely tied behind their backs.
Your moves are clumsy, Grasshopper, and you lack the subtlety and insight you would gain from knowing your opponent from the inside.
Art gave you the perfect answer to your defense of authoritarianism:
history shows that the slope from freedom to to gulag turns sharp the moment people like me and Lindy shut our mouths and simply trust those above us to always act in our best interest.
Add me to that list. The only reason that we're still free to speak our minds is because we persist in speaking our minds. Those who fail to speak out for themselves give others the power to put words in their mouths, as did the cowards in the '60s who let Nixon operate the Silent Majority like a ventriloquist's dummy.
There's a constant subtext to the cries of alarum over erosion of civil liberties: "We're watching, you won't get away with it, and the harder you push, the harder we'll push back." We put wannabe authoritarians continually on notice that it won't be a cakewalk should they try to act on their ambitions.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, Tom. You should try it some time.