Your opinion is wrong in this case.

I must agree that one's ideas, especially those one considers truly important, should be defended. But I've also seen the futility of attempting the penetrate the armor of faith with which hardened combatants often shield their agendas and the ideas which lend support to those agendas. If I'm dealing with a Christian fundamentalist, or an Islamic one, I am willing to recognize the limitations of rational discourse. The chief limitation being that if one party is not rational, there can't be such discourse.

If that's a weakness, then it's a weakness implicit in rational discourse itself. If rational discourse - the battlefield of ideas - could always be relied upon to triumph over irrational faith, then there would be no need for America to bomb the Taliban or launch a ground offensive. America could simply point out the irrationality of the Taliban's behavior, talk them around to the civilized point of view and secure a future of cooperation and mutual respect with the rulers of Kabul. Further, the Taliban could be convinced to end their barbaric and criminal practices with respect to the suffering people of Afghanistan.

Now, do you believe that would work?

Is America displaying signs of weakness by 'fleeing the battleground of ideas'?

For some people, their adherence to their political faith becomes just that, a matter of faith. Sometimes to be defended more bitterly than even their stated religion. Politics is where most of their core beliefs reside, and becomes the resevoir of their faith and sacred passion.

I think Mary Anne may have encountered just this sort of zealotry in the political arena. She perceives that it doesn't matter how good her ideas are or how rational her arguments may be, because the attachment her opponents have to the ideas supporting their agenda goes beyond a love for truth. It is a love for their agenda, regardless of truth.

That is my impression of what Mary Anne feels she has encountered. So, like any reasonable person in the midst of irrational people, she has chosen to leave the battlefield of ideas because she's the only one there. The people she's dealing with are fighting on a different battlefield entirely, so she's been wasting her efforts laying seige to the wrong castle.

Should she move to the other battlefield, the battlefield where one's agenda is a holy thing never to be surrendered at any cost? Should she meet the opponents she once thought would meet her on the battlefield of ideas on the real battlefield where they've been fighting, and join them in holy war? Launch her crusade against their jihad? Become just as hardline and bitter about her positions as they are about theirs?

As for E', he is not fleeing the battlefield of ideas either. For him this hasn't been about ideas at all. It's been about the lengths people have gone to in the name of defending agendas, the lack of respect given toward another decent human being whom he happens to care about. It's not about ideas, it's about civility.

E' is very willing to defend ideas, but he thinks it should be done in the context of civilization and that ideas should really be the point instead of agendas. He's not about to hang around a mosque in Kabul or Pakistan to try to convince Islamic fundamentalists how wrong they are to show so little respect for other human beings all in the name of their faith. And he's not about to do it here.