Patrick Ellis wrote: "I'd conclude it would be to avoid dumb factional infighting. Or is that just asking too much?"
Probably Patrick intends this as a rhetorical question, but actually he is simply stating a tautology, "We should do good," without any indication of how we should do good. It is true that the woods are full of rather desperate sectarians who, apparently to satisfy individual ego-needs, cling to some little shop-worn and distorted version of marxism. But obviously condemning sectarianism will never have an effect on them: They are terrified of being wrong, and so cling to their religious absolutism; they firmly and rigidly believe everyone else is sectarian.
*Everyone* condemns sectarianism; *everyone* condemns dogmatism. No dogmatist believes that her/he himself is a dogmatist. I am principled. You are a bit stubborn. He/she is a damned dogmatist.
And of course as soon as we (whoever the we is in a particular instance) conclude that some *other* faction is engaging in dumb factional fighting, what are we going to do about -- naturally we are going to engage in intelligent factional fighting to get rid of those dumb factional fighters.
It is the eternal utopian and religious hope of the moralist that some neat little slogan, like "get rid of factional fighting," can replace thought.
Carrol