Like everything else, useful disputatiousness can yield diminishing marginal returns and become counterproductive when carried to merely peevish extremes. Consider Carl Schurz's thoughts on seeing Marx in Cologne during the summer of 1848:
"He [Marx] enjoyed the reputation of having acquired great learning, and as I knew very little of his discoveries and theories, I was all the more eager to gather words of wisdom from the lips of the famous man. This expectation was disappointed in a peculiar way. Marx's utterances were indeed full of meaning, logical and clear, but I have never seen a man whose bearing was so provoking and intolerable. To no opinion which differed from his own did he accord the honor of even condescending consideration. Everyone who contradicted him he treated with abject contempt; every argument that he did not like he answered either with biting scorn at the unfathomable ignorance that had prompted it, or with opprobrious aspersions upon the motives of him who had advanced it ... it was very evident that not only had he not won any adherents, but he had repelled many who otherwise might have become his followers."
Of course, Marx provided the role model for generations of leftists to come -- people who did not share his brilliance but figured that could at least outdo the Old Man in being obnoxious in the name of integrity. The history of the left shows this has not been an effective strategy.
Carl
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