Reasoned Discourse?

I just spent perhaps 2 hours laying forth a consistent line of reasoning in favor of something I don't really believe in.

Why do I end up doing this? It's happened before; when I took a world philosophy class, I ended up defending Confucius to my discussion section. It got to where the jackass TA wouldn't call on me, because I was taking up too much class time.

I HATE Confucius. I think his ideas—however well intentioned—have been used to perpetrate generations of injustice on people.

However, if you're going to criticize a philosophy, you must understand it first. My discussion section didn't. They had no clue at all.

I guess it's really down to wanting the criticisms to be meaningful. I mean, if someone argues for four hours against something I dislike, but they don't say a single word that actually makes sense against it, it's just a big waste of time, right?

But then, why do I really bother if it's not my time they're wasting?