Preaching to the converted?

Yesterday, I went to a meeting of Conservative and conservative minded bloggers and twitterers and listened to some of the developments that are taking place in online political campaigns.

One of the things that I am beginning to notice about the online political comments that I read is that if you go to Liberal Conspiracy you will see very few comments disagreeing with the concerns or standpoint expressed in the article.  The same appears at ConservativeHome, Paul Staines's Guido Fawkes and increasingly in the comments written in the Comment is Free section of the Guardian.

I have to say that having spent rather too much time reading what others write on the Internet, I am beginning to see an increasingly polarisation of debate and discussion - and any attempt at engagement is often responded to with abuse, ridicule and accusations of the worst sort.  Is that what we want from the Political Internet?

I know, I have said similar things before, but it does worry me ... because I believe that it is through real engagement and debate that we get to know what others actually think and believe and if we lose that engagement and debate all we will be left with are the prejudices and prejudgments - and at worst this is limited to those on the right being 'stupid' or 'evil'; those of the left, 'stupid' (again) or 'fascist'.

In the rather absurd discussion about the perceived abuse of particular words - the use of military or hunting language in the debate is the current bugbear of some of the more absurd commentators in the MSM following the appalling events in Tucson - are we missing something really interesting?  That if the users and readers of the more popular blogs and other Internet based political comments are only listening to those that they agree with and if the producers of those blogs and comments are only talking to those who agree with them; then the engagement and debate disappears altogether.