how much intellectual growth can you make as a person if you have no differing ideas to consider? the issue is determining what types of ideas are worth hearing. right wing wants bigotry and fascism, but we can rule those out without pretending the whole concept of diverse viewpoints is bad

Exactly! Even if we're just talking abt political philosophy (and not, like, math or smth where ideology doesn't neatly map onto theory), there's plenty of intellectual diversity within the left to consider. You can learn plenty from the debates between, say, Marxist-Leninists and anarchists

Well, you can also read. You don't have to expose yourself to harmful people to know they exist and what their arguments are. I don't think the public needs to be paying paychecks to racists.