A blog without comments isn't a blog

Right To Reply needs to be extended to bloggers. Otherwise, everyone’s a mini-Rush Limbaugh, and that does nobody any good. Here’s why, via an example.

Instapundit says: “SASHA VOLOKH has some questions about what’s mainstream, and what’s not?” OK, that looks interesting - let’s have a look. Pity there’s no comments, so I can’t take Instapundit to task if I disagree with him.

Sasha Volokh says: “Replacing Social Security with individual retirement accounts is obsessive militant lunacy? And quality college education as a fundamental right and eliminating the use of pesticides isn’t? (Link via Mark Kleiman.)”

Still no comments. OK, let’s have a look at the links.

The first one is Calpundit (well worth a read) who quotes from the Texas 2000 Republican Party platform. Amongst other things: “The Party supports an orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax.”

The second one is the 2000 Democratic platform in California. OK, so we’re talking about opposing extremist non-viable elements in each party’s platforms - fair enough. (I must say that I haven’t read the Democratic platform in great detail, incidentally.)

Except - wait. First of all, Sasha Volokh has deliberately chosen the least controversial element in the Texas GOP 2002 platform (and that’s damning with faint praise) to oppose against the democrats. She has ignored, for instance, “Our Party pledges to do everything within its power to restore the original intent of the First Amendment of the Unites States and the concept of the separation of Church and State and dispel the myth of the separation of Church and State.” Or the stuff about reverting to the Gold Standard, criminalising homosexual relations and abortions, mandating “creation science” in schools, abolishing social security and the welfare state, income tax and the minimum wage, oh, and reclaiming the Panama Canal by force.

Secondly, let’s look at Mark Kleiman’s blog. He says (and I paraphrase, but read the original for yourself): let’s see if President Bush agrees with what he signed up for 2 years ago. It’s pretty dire. These far-right guys in the Republican Party are scary.

So let’s look at what we’ve seen so far.

Sasha Volokh reads a blog entry which is horrified about what the Texas GOP says, and links to Calpundit. Mark Kleiman doesn’t allow comments (unfortunate), so she posts her own spin, carefully disallowing comments as well. Instapundit picks it up, and doesn’t allow comments either. Meanwhile at Calpundit, the comments are in full flow.

I’d like Mark Kleiman to add comments to his blog, but at least Calpundit allows comments, and they seem to be pretty lively. (To be fair, I don’t know whether he deletes posts by Republican trolls, but from what I’ve seen I don’t think that’s likely.) Meanwhile, on the other side of the partisan fence, neither Volokh nor Instapundit allow comments. What’s going on?

Look, guys, I don’t know what’s worse. Whether it’s that a) you think your readers are sheep, are morons, and with only a few words and a lack of background information they’ll believe whatever you’ll say; or b) you have so little confidence in the merits of your own points that you won’t let random people from the Internet contradict you on your own site.

I have a term for those people who post politicaly-biased entries on their blog, with only a small amount of research backing up their position, and do not allow posts on their blogs that contradict their point of view, thus propagating the point of view that they’re right and people who oppose them are wrong. I call these people spammers.

A proper blog is someone who stands up and says that such a thing is true, and then the Internet either agrees or disagrees with him. If you don’t accept comments, you’re just shooting your mouth off, and the only difference between you and traditional media is that you can’t even get paid for the stuff you churn out.