“To argue with a man…”

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”

Thomas Paine quote from the aptly named ‘American Crisis’.

Picked up in comments via this post entitled: ‘The case against ‘exposing’ fascists’, which contains this excellent section:

“But the basic idea that ‘exposing’ fascists is bad for them, that ‘exposure’ is something that they want to avoid, depends on the totally erroneous idea that they are there to free associate about their ideas, to converse, to logically defend various truth claims. If they were worried about being ‘exposed’ in that way, they wouldn’t come on your television show, or go out of their way to court publicity. The ‘fact check’, and the oh-so-witty ‘annihilation’, ultimately depends on the same logic.

Which was in turn inspired by the clown.