Open discussion and the modern left, cont.

A few weeks back I posted something about the modern left and its tolerance for open discussion and dissent. I thought of that post when I came across these two posts by Byron York yesterday. The first is about Keith Olbermann droppingDana Milbank because he took an unfair shot at Obama. (Of course, Olbermann didn’t drop MIlbank when he showed up wearing an orange hunting vest after Cheney’s hunting accident.) And the second was about the Daily Kos’s banning of a longtime commenter/diarist who had the temerity to write about the John Edwards love child scandal.

Here’s my objection to the situation: if you disagree with someone, use your public forum to debate them on the issues. Why wouldn’t Olbermann have Milbank back on the show and then roast him over the coals a little bit? Why not set up counter-diaries at Kos’s place to debunk the Edwards story? Instead of open and rational discussion, these bastions of the left simply stick their fingers in their ears and yell “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you.” It’s the same thing we saw with the reaction of the academics to Hitchens; there’s no desire for a debate in some quarters of the left. They want you to simply acknowledge that they are right and have you go about your day. This is absurd, not to mention kind of unhealthy.