Bloodless Coup

Right Wing Blog Etiquette

This blog is coming up on it's second anniversary. I can't speak for binky or armand, but I got into blogging as a way of expanding the circle of people to argue and debate with. I had read blogs for maybe a year before beginning the process of making one of my own, and thought I understood the general norms of the environment.

For me, the exchange of ideas was critical to blogs: the ability to have a comments section where people could offer praise and rebuttal to your argument is a fundamental part of blogs. Open exchange of ideas is also a fundamental part of education and learning (the scientific method, the original reason for tenure) and was codified into the First Amendment because free speech allows for open debate, which is critical to preventing authoritarianism.

Thus, the choice of many right wing blogs to avoid open comments (Insty, Malkin, Hewitt, etc.) struck me as both against the norm of the blogosphere, and arguably against the norm of open political discourse. If you can't stand other people pointing out the flaws in your argument, how good is your argument?

The whole Domenech/Plagiarism thing (good roundup here) isn't my central point (if you care my opinion is that Domenech should be fired by the WaPo; great newspapers - ones with their eye on Pulitzers and real journalism - don't employ proven plagiarists, no matter how much a youthful indiscretion). It did, however, allow me to discover the following exchange at Redstate.

I will reproduce this exchange from RedState verbatim, but with formatting changes (they use a different system then we, so it won't look the same). I will provide links to the specific comments I'm posting. However, Redstate has a policy of (sometimes) denying links; in other words, if they don't like the site that links them, any attempt to move directly from this site to Redstate causes an error message along the lines of "Restate.org has refused a connection. Try again later" (or some such; I'm paraphrasing). Redstate is somewhat unusual in the RightWingBlogoSphere, in that they allow comments. However, they "police" the comments by disallowing links from sites they disagree with (described above) and banning commenters whose views they do not like.

With that being said, the following comments are from a Redstate thread on the link between home schooling and the Domenech controversy (one of the founders of Redstate, Josh Trevino - Tacitus, in an older time - argues that the left wing is using the plagiarism charges to attack home schooling; the actual issue under discussion is irrelevant to the following exchange, however). The exchange begins when a (clearly left-wing) commenter named "thoughtful" attempts to demonstrate Domenech's plagiarism with some side-by-side comparisons:

thoughtful: Some Substantiation:

Cribbed from a posting by "Oregon Guy", and a followup posting by "silence" at DailyKos:

From a Ben Domenech review of Bringing Out the Dead in "FlatHat", which appears to be a student publication at Ben's alma mater of William and Mary:

Instead of allowing for the incredible nuances that Cage always brings to his performances, the character of Frank sews it all up for him.

But there are those moments that allow Cage to do what he does best. When he's trying to revive Mary's father, the man's family fanned out around him in the living room in frozen semi-circle, he blurts out, "Do you have any music?"

From a review posted on salon.com, published about a week earlier:

Instead of allowing for the incredible nuance that Cage always brings to his performances, the character of Frank sews it all up for him. ...

But there are those moments that allow Cage to do what he does best. When he's trying to revive Mary's father, the man's family fanned out around him in the living room in frozen semi-circle, he blurts out, "Do you have any music?"

or this one:

From PJ O'Rourke in his book "Modern Manners" (p 176):

Small Parties

Small parties are very easy to plan. An old Supremes tape, a gram of cocaine, a fifth of Stolichnaya, and some copies of Penthouse from the 70s when it was really dirty make for a perfect small party without the bother and complication of guests.

Large Parties

Large parties require much more than a gram of cocaine and, usually, other people besides yourself.

From Ben's editorial contributions at William and Mary:

Small parties are very easy to plan. An old Supremes tape, a case of beer, a fifth of Stolichnaya and a pack of cigarettes make for a perfect small party without the bother and complication of guests.

Large parties require much more than a gram of cocaine and, usually, other people besides yourself.

Great minds think alike, I suppose. I notice he deleted the dated "Penthouse" reference. Does that make it his work?

Honestly folks, this tendency of the right to favoring ideology over competence doesn't help your cause any.

I'm guessing Ben's probably gone before the weekend is out.

For what it's worth, that evidence looks pretty damning on the charge of plagiarism. The idea that someone would find almost exactly the same text as a previous author is unlikely, and the idea that it could happen multiple times is "beyond a reasonable doubt." However, Domenech's problems are not the focus here. The focus is on the response to "thoughtful's" attempt to provide actual evidence that Domenech had transgressed. Notice what happens when someone responds to "thoughtful"; the next post (not chronologically, but in reply to "thoughtful") is a reply by "Nick Danger", presumably one of the Redstate founders/owners:

Nick Danger: Plonk:

I'm guessing Ben's probably gone before the weekend is out.

You beat him by three days.

In other words (to translate), "thoughtful" was banned ("thoughtful": Ben...gone before...weekend. "Nick Danger": You beat him by three days.) for his attempt to provide actual evidence that Domenech had plagiarized (on a thread about Domenech's plagiarism). Websites are owned by people; they are private property in the sense that people can be banned by the "owners" of a domain name/address from participating - I'm certainly not arguing that Redstate/"Nick Danger" didn't have the right to ban "thoughtful". I'm arguing that it is a clear violation of the norms of thoughtful political speech (which is critical to democracy) to ban (curtail the free speech)of people just for (rationally and reasonably) stating an opposing position. Just for the record, Redstate's Posting Rules are very vague (people can be banned for "disruptive behavior" among other things), but nothing "thoughtful" did seemed to violate any of the stated posting rules.

However, the story doesn't end there. A different commenter jumps in to argue, essentially, what I'm arguing here - that banning "thoughtful" for what seemed to be NOT violating the posting rules was the wrong thing to do:

bpalmer: Banning:

And, as is so often the case, I wonder if the redstate editors uphold their own stated policy regarding banning. thoughtful did as asked, the bulk of his post providing the evidence that plagiarism took place (with apparent links to the original items, so that Redstate people don't even have to deal with the DailyKos diaries & comments).

One non-substantive comment at the end, which was in an ideological sense identifiably only "non right",  which acknowledged that this was a conservative community, which avoided profanity, personal attacks, or harassment -- and apparently was banned by an editor.

The editors here sure seem trigger-happy -- it's not surprising that echo chambers build, if people who provide evidence to support their claims are immediately banned.

This reasonable (to me) request to think about the instant ban of "thoughtful" (which, by the Redstate posting rules, was supposed to be preceded by a warning to "thoughtful" about the violation of the posting rules that was done) resulted in the immediate banning of "bpalmer":

thomas: I'm so, so sorry:

1. The proprietors of this site are the sole and final judges and enforcers of this policy.
   
2. Your problem is now fixed. Hope you feel better.

Thus, in the space of two consecutive (and rational and reasonable) comments, two different editors/owners/founders (I have no idea who "thomas" or "Nick Danger" are, or what their role/position in Redstate is) banned commenters. Again, I find nothing "bannable" in what either of the two commenters did to be worthy of the response.

Why is it that the right-wing blogosphere finds it necessary to curtail free speech? Most don't allow comments (which certainly solves this problem), but I applauded Redstate for doing so. However, this aspect seems worse. Moreover, it fosters a continuing split between the left and the right - if the right won't argue with the left at the left's websites, and the left isn't allowed to argue with the right (no comments or banning) at their websites, the polarization of American political discourse continues. Which harms everybody.

As I argued above, free speech is critical to democracy. The phrase "echo chamber" is bandied about far too easily these days, yet what else does one call Redstate? If all opposing viewpoints (even the reasonable and rational ones) are banned, and if people are banned for even suggesting that people shouldn't be banned, then all that will remain is a collection of people who already agree with each other. Thus "groupthink", and associated other problems (for example, one aspect of a closed group is that they self-reinforce each others views, become avoid outsiders, and the group becomes more aggressive than any individual member might; one could argue that these qualities are seen in the management and content at Redstate). Echo chamber isn't a stretch, at this point.

I honestly don't care about Domenech; he's a triviality at best and a non-issue at worst. I'm more concerned with the failure of the bright lights of the right wing to accept political discourse as natural, or even to encourage it. Instead, most seem fearful. If you don't like someone's post - ignore it. If you find their comment uncomfortable - consider it. Perhaps you might learn something. At least consider the possibility of replying to a thoughtful critic - you might convince them of your position.

The death of discourse is a slow process, but painful.

Posted by baltar at March 24, 2006 03:15 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Blogorama | Extremism | Free Speech | Shine the Light on It