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Monday, July 25, 2005

The Bankruptcy of the Extreme Left: Part 2

My last post elicited a lot of good conversation. Once again, Expat Teacher has inspired another post with a comment. I wanted to respond to a couple of items he brings up.
"Without being too picky, can I point out that choosing some post from the Daily Kos is hardly indictative of the "Left". If Obietom was say a DNC member or a big wig within a left-leaning think tank then this might be interesting. We know nothing about him (her?)."
I disagree. In fact my very point is that DailyKos, Democratic Underground (here is a quick taste), and Michael Moore have become quite indicative of the Left and even the Democratic party. If these were not indicative of the Left, I would imagine we would see many Democratic leaders decrying the rhetoric from these quarters. So where is the denunciation of these extremists from the Left? Last I checked, many of the Democratic leadership in Congress happily watched "Fahrenheit 9/11" with Michael Moore, Senator Ted Kennedy has his own diary at DailyKos, and Congressman John Conyers has given credit to Democratic Underground on his own blog. The leadership of the DNC has made it very clear that they are courting DailyKos and MoveOn.org types.
It is easy to pick on Daily Kos (where wackos do hang out), but at least the Left has functioning online cyber communities. Daily Kos, TPMcafe, and Atrios all allow and encourage commenting.

The Right is severly bankrupt in that area. Most of the top conservative bloggers (Powerline, InstaPundit, Michelle Malkin, etc) don't allow comments or encourage a cyber-community. Only Little Green Footballs does and I'm positive I could go over there right now and find some quote much crazier than this from Daily Kos.
I find this a very interesting comment. So having complete freedom to proclaim ones extremism and lunacy is a good thing? I have plenty of my own gripes with conservatives and Republicans even more so, but one of the things I appreciate about the Right is the ability to censor and reign in their own. When Trent Lott popped off with his craziness, who called him out first? Fellow conservatives. Commenting does not equal community. It can certainly help. But the last thing I want is the David Dukes of the world spouting off, pretending to represent the Right. So while I understand your concern about lack of dialog, the censoring or complete lack of commenting can be rather helpful. Redstate.org, where I occasionally write, has had to really crack down on trolls. And for good reason. It was becoming increasingly difficult to have any true dialogue with those on the other side of the spectrum.
That is why I like your place so much. I can truly engage with conservatives.
I appreciate your sentiment here, Expat. If I had a tagline for this blog, it would be "Where the Left meets the Right". Fortunately I haven't had to do much if any censoring of the comments here and would just as soon keep it that way. Not sure what "community" we have here, but I hope that we are at minimum having some intelligent conversations, even when we don't agree.