Monday night before bed, I pulled up a post I had written almost exactly three years ago, wanting to reference in a followup piece on comments and civility. Had it not been for the Vermont legislature’s vote on gay marriage and a brainstorm I had about the readiness of some on the left to blame conservative talk radio, bloggers, & etc. for murder, I likely would have penned, er, pixeled, that post on Tuesday.
It seemed, however, that April 7 was destined to be a day where I would consider civil discourse and blogging. When I had a moment to scan the various comment threads, I noted an increased level of vitriol on both sides. And it upset me because, as per that aforementioned post, when I started blogging here
I had hoped that by posting to a blog with an open-comment thread, we might generate the kind of discussion that began that snowy night in the 1980s [when I had a great discussion with an “ideological adversary”], where, when we [the bloggers] rationally put forward ideas at odds with those of our left-wing peers, our critics would come to appreciate our arguments, even when they disagreed.
Instead, mixed among some very sensible comments, we had readers on both sides leveling ad hominem attacks on their ideological adversaries. This is not the type of discussion I had hoped to promote.
Because of our capricious spam filter (which I have been tasked with reviewing), I have seen many such comments, which I would really rather let lie there and not rescue them. But, ever since reading Ann Althouse’s post where she defended letting hateful comments stand on her blog, I have acted in the spirit of her (rhetorical) question, “Is it not better to have scurrilous ideas out in the sunlight where they can die?”
At the same time as I was concerned about the level of bile in yesterday’s threads, a reader e-mailed me asking me to “get” this “under control.” And I’ve been trying to do that, posting this just two weeks ago:
All too often alas, those who chime in to defend Bruce or me compromise some very strong comments when they resort to ad hominem, using the term “libtard” or some such. In many cases, if they took the insult out of the comment, they’d have won the argument. . . . That need to get in that additional dig, while emotional satisfying, compromises their entire argument and gives our critics ammunition to attack them.
Or, as I said more simply three years ago, “Friends, you make a better case when you leave out the ad hominem.”
But, the real disappointment of the day when I posted on the Vermont legislature’s vote on same-sex marriage
In searching for an angle on my Vermont post, I found the small size of the legislative districts significant (similar to my notion on the Connecticut civil unions vote) so I researched the Green Mountain State’s legislature. There, unlike California where I live, they truly have a citizen legislature where special interests don’t have the same sway. So, I blogged to that effect.
Instead of acknowledging my point, our first critic responded by attacking Republicans and smearing me. It went downhill from there.
No matter how many times I plea for commenters to cut it with the name-calling, I find it has only a momentary effect. When our critics do it, it helps confirm our point that all too many on the left would rather insult conservatives than consider our ideas. When our supporters do it, well, they compromise their defenses of our arguments.
The sunlight which helps disinfect their ad hominems also serves to fade their strong points.
So, friends, keep it civil and so strengthen your arguments.
But the overexcited spittle-blasters (of all sides) don’t come onto blogs and make public comment merely to convince the undecided of the intellectual worth of their positions.
Rather, they come to, first, show off how the gods have handed over to them the possession of the Holy Grail, which is so much better and cooler and more moral and wiser and less fattening than that stupid little fourth-grade-art-class clay ashtray YOU picked up somewhere, and then, and only then, . . .
. . . they come out spraying and howling just like a Berserker of olde in an attempt to get the slightly-less-frothies to follow them out into battle, ‘cuz even Berserkers hate fighting alone.
When they charge out screaming “you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong!!”, they have, in their own mind’s eye, proven irrefutably the correctness of their own beliefs, and when they finish it off with “you filthy faggot!” or “you baby-eating Rethug!!”, they’ve stopped talking to you at all, and now they’re yelling at their followers waiting back in the hallway that they’ve weakened you and so they can now safely come out and take part.
And that’s right when that boiling oil that you brought can be used to great advantage . . .
I think Ace put it best.
My defense as to why I indulge in it is simple: The leftist media angers me so much I want to engage in push-back and, to the extent I can, tear Barack Obama’s wife into shreds with the same ugly savagery the MSM shreds Sarah Palin and Bush’s daughters.
Now, the best way of handling this, which is probably how Allah prefers handling it, is to shame the MSM into stopping such personal attacks on a politician, and especially stop personal attacks on his or her family.
But I know, as I’m sure Allah does, that shaming these people will not work. They are shameless. They don’t feel guilty about these ugly assaults; they feel pride, convinced they are doing the right thing.
So the “shame them” approach is definitely the higher-minded and more moral approach. It has one deficiency: It is utterly futile.
Now, my attacks on Michelle Obama aren’t really going to change the world much, either. But at least they are cathartic.
If you’re going to go after Bristol Palin, I can’t stop you. I can, however, pour the same venom on Michelle “Predator Queen” Obama. Tit for tat.
Read Shane. I think you’ll understand.
So the “shame them†approach is definitely the higher-minded and more moral approach. It has one deficiency: It is utterly futile.
Word.
I mean, one could appeal to torrentprime to respond to the actual subject of the post when he comments, or Erik and Kevin to fact-check the misinformation they post, or Gillie to actually post something that made sense…. but people are what they are. You can’t make them change unless they want to.
Dan, I appreciate you trying getting civility back. I think the problem is that the persons engaging in the various inappropriate tactics and/or namecalling feel that they are justified in doing so. That they are returning something in favor, as if that justifies their own behavior. And also that they are “right” or their attacks are the “truth” and it’s not when the other side does it. In other words, they become the judge and jury. Anyway, good luck!
but people are what they are. You can’t make them change unless they want to.
V the K, all too true.
I’ve had a commute to think this over, and it occurs to me that the civility issue is kind of a microcosm of the bigger tension between freedom and control.
If GPW wanted to, he could just ban anyone who didn’t meet his standard of civility (the way Charles Johnson bans anyone who believes in Intelligent Design.) Discussion would be civil, but participation would be limited.
Freedom means having to put up with other people using their freedom in a way you may not agree with. Tolerating a degree of insult and ad hominem is the price of having free and open debate.
I could push out this metaphor further and say that there is a contingent of responders who want their semi-literate babblings, recitations of left-wing urban legend, and schoolyard namecallings to be given the same recognition and value as one of NDT’s meticulously linked comments or heliotrope’s well-reasoned and literate refutations. All in the name of equality. But that’s a metaphor for another debate.
Differences of opinion are inevitable in a collaborative project. When discussing these differences some editors(post folk), in trying to be forthright, can seem unnecessarily harsh. Other editors(post folk) can seem oversensitive when their views are challenged. Silent and faceless words on talk pages and in edit summaries do not transmit fully the nuances of verbal conversation, sometimes leading to misinterpretation of an editor’s(post folk) comments. An uncivil remark can escalate spirited discussion into a personal argument that no longer focuses objectively on the problem at hand.
Such exchanges waste our efforts and undermine a positive, productive working (blogging) environment.
Resolve differences of opinion through civil discussion; disagree without being disagreeable. * wiki
Incivility consists of personal attacks, rudeness, and aggressive behaviours that disrupt the project ( or the topic) and lead to unproductive stress and conflict. (We) are human, capable of mistakes, so a few, minor, isolated incidents of incivility are not in themselves a concern. A pattern of incivility is disruptive and unacceptable. *wiki
would some of these commentors who break the line of civility be allowed to talk or express themselves in a professional setting like work or a place of worship.
You could chalk it up to this site’s raison d’être – I mean, an embattled minority within an embattled minority. It’s a recipe for shrill sentiments.
But, at day’s end, it’s just intellectual laziness. It’s always easier to declare your opponent “absurd†and declare victory, isn’t it?
Best wishes,
-MFS
The breakdown in overall civility worries me greatly. It’s far worse on the left, but some on the right are guilty of bad behavior.
Camille Paglia writes today:
I couldn’t agree more.
That is what has happened to civility. When the littleletterpeople come calling with their pot shots and superiority dancing, it does not take long before you are ready to give them a “wedgie” for being so barren minded, yet aloof.
How can you have a gay website without the occasional bon mot or witty riposte?
Again, I wrestle with this on my own blog but I kind of see some level of moderation of comments as essential to the overall purpose and “environment” of the blog.
One commenter recently would start off by asking seemingly innocuous questions that ALWAYS led to him harassing the other commenters, ad hominems and fake double bind questions. He was chasing other commenters off from the comment threads. So I heavily moderated him … alone. I only allowed comments through that I wanted to respond too personally in a way that I felt complimented my post or overall messaging in contrast with his obvious bias.
He had a fit. And that “fit” remains “unpublished” to this day.
At the same time, a friend of yours won’t even let me register to comment on her blog. I have no real idea why except for one very snarky and short email she sent to me about five years ago telling me to leave her alone. I had emailed her a handful of times about news items but apparently she checked out my blog and wrote me off.
And I love her intellect and respect the heck out of her. So…this big ol’ long comment to say. I can’t figure it out really either :). I know what it is like to need to ban people and to be banned. Neither is fun … at all. I am still considering how I do this on my blog.
#10 – You can’t; it’s in our genetic makeup. 😉
Besides, the occasional tweak is what makes conservatives more palatable than liberals. Even self-admitted liberal Camille Paglia notes that liberals “like to snap and snip and chortle snidely, but they are weighed down by a complacent superiority complex, a paralyzing sanctimony. They mistake irony for wit.”
Yet we conservatives can incorporate irony with reasoned dialogue, which drives the little-letter-people insane (hello, boob).
As Dan would say, just read the whole thing:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/04/08/bow/index.html
Regards,
Peter H.
Boring! Come on, where are the threads about Vermont and Iowa? I want to talk to you guys about how court decisions were supposed to set back the cause of gay marriage by years and years.
GPW – With respect, there are things you can do to weed out the incivil people – and make it easier on yourself, in the process. And you’ve consistently not done them.
1) How about comment registration? In addition to making it harder on game-playing trolls, 90% of your spam-filter checking duties go away (or ought to). Leaving you time for… say… blogging.
2) How about a very few, short bullet-point reminders under the “Leave a Comment” title I’m looking at? Examples:
– This blog is not a place for you to make yourself feel better by dumping on fellow commentors. DON’T make personal attacks on your opponents.
– DO feel free to challenge your opponents’ ideas and positions.
3) AFTER you have done the above… how about more active intervention against the few offenders that would remain? I am thinking of Bruce’s latest intervention against a particular individual. This individual practically couldn’t write a comment that wasn’t dripping with name-calling and other invective against fellow commentors. Recently he got rebuked – that is, Bruce deleted some of his stronger comments. Since then, he has been quieter, or perhaps not around – and that is a good thing. At least to that extent, or with regard to conflict created by that individual, the GP blog has been more peaceful.
My overall point is that a blog-community is an ecology, like any other community. Saying “I wish my commentors were more civil” doesn’t do much, as you’ve noticed. Make systematic (and hopefully time-saving) changes to the ecology.
It is a little hard, when you write a good post and the first comment is an attack from the other side. Not a substantive attack either.
So sure, the response is in kind. For 8 years I’ve been quiet, I’ve heard the meanest nastiest things said in my presence and I’ve remained silent. Well for many of us, the last straw has broken the camels back.
Being well behaved adults has gotten us nowhere. Now that the left has won big time – their attacks are getting more vicious rather than them becoming more magnanimous.
So sure, it would be nice if our side would take the high road, but clearly that road leads no where. Look at what just happened with Barney Frank, I think his behavior says it all. There you had exactly the situation you’d like to see here in the comments. A well spoken person from the right – except he got completely trampled.
My guess is that any enforcement of comment rules would be applied selectively and since several of this blog’s regulars are some of the worst offenders, I doubt we’ll be seeing much enforcement of anything. Bruce rebuked my use of “Filtered” to indicate non-appearing comments and threatened to ban me but I haven’t seen him do so to anyone else since then. (shrug) It’s his blog.
I’d like to add two things. 1) I encourage everyone to better differentiate between a disagreement and an attack; 2) I encourage everyone to interpret comments more literally and if someone explains the meaning of a comment, accept the explanation rather than insist you know better.
Sorry, to clarify ^:
Should be: “…accept the explanation and its reasoning for what it is rather than insisting you know what the commenter really meant.”
I think Leah has summed it up perfectly. Listening politely, trying to discuss things respectfully, trying to interject real facts instead of emotion into communication with those on the other side has only emboldened them to get meaner, louder, dirtier and thus, raised their fortunes greatly among the voting population. It’s depressing but this is simply where society is heading. The lowest common denominator always wins, maybe not intellectually but where it counts, with the mob that can’t be bothered to dig deeper but still has the right to vote.
Well for many of us, the last straw has broken the camels back.
Agreed. What really broke it for me was how the Obama campaign and its affiliated shill bloggers started spreading the lie that Trig Palin was not Sarah Palin’s baby — and astonishingly, the gay community putting forth gay medical professionals in an attempt to smear her on websites run by gay journalists.
Think about that. This action, aside from the obvious bad things, violates the code of ethics of both medical professionals and journalists. But the gay community ignores both, demonstrating that it will break any code, any statute, any sense of common decency in order to destroy another human being’s life.
Civility has its place. But not in what the other side has made a fight to the death.
The rage here is both palpable and understandable.
But, please, don’t give in to the left’s vitriol.
Take Rep. Frank’s tirade at that poor kid the other day. Despite his ‘amen chorus’ in the audience, he came off as laughably defensive. This kid kept his cool while Frank sputtered and cursed and thundered. Think about it: if he had called Frank a ‘pin-head’ he would have lost the high ground.
Not to sound like a Pollyanna, but my family escaped communism in the 30’s. The relatives left behind have been lost to obscurity. Not a day passes that I am not thankful to be an American. Our disagreements are our strengths and in the final analysis, we have more in common with these folks than differences.
Even if some of them are ‘pin-heads.’ 😉
All enforcement of anything, by human beings, is inherently selective. Human nature. In law we’d have procedures that try to correct for that, but this isn’t a law court, only a blog.
Having said that: It is undeniable that Bruce and Dan are vastly more open and fair to left-wingers and other critics than left-wing blogs generally are to right-wingers. Bruce and Dan do a great job. I have never seen someone be deleted (or banned for that matter) on this blog who didn’t have it coming because of real incivility in their comments. Conversely, I have never seen someone who practices real civility (not just mouthing it or posturing) be deleted on this blog because of their unpopular content/ideas.
On occasion, I think problems have arisen with some people being unable to differentiate between incivility and moral disagreement.
For example, suppose I make the following statement (which I really believe, or find objectively true): “Big Government / statism is morally evil. In pursuing that path, Obama is pursuing a path of evil. And people who support Obama in doing that are, whether they realize it or not, supporting a path of evil.” I have made a very strong statement. A moral statement. It’s not incivil; it’s morally required (as far as I can tell). But some people might react to it as if it were incivil. Some people might try to tar-and-feather it – and the speaker – as incivil, whether because they are so easily threatened, or as a way to shut down all moral challenges to their approach. All one can do, in such cases, is let it be their problem and continue speaking the truth.
P.S. And another example would be someone making the statement, “Homosexuality is morally evil.” I disagree with that statement, strongly. But I recognize their right to make it. I don’t take it as an incivil attack on me as a person; I simply “let it be” that that individual and I have a serious, moral disagreement.
All enforcement of anything, by human beings, is inherently selective. Human nature.
To clarify what I meant: I provided an example of my having posted the word “Filtered” to which Bruce responded by threatening to ban my comments if I do it again, stating it “…bothers the f–k out of [him].”. Others have posted the very same comment (“Filtered”) with no threats, no reminders, nothing. It’s a small example of how selective I believe the “rules” are/would be applied (rules are implied to be objective and impartial) and although it isn’t in my nature to behave thusly, as I stated above it’s Bruce’s blog and he can run his blog as he sees fit. I hope I’ve made myself clear.
Patriot Goddess, agree.
Get ready for an attack, GPW.
Please, please, PLEASE stop using the following phrase, “I likely would have penned, er, pixeled…” It wasn’t particularly clever the first time you used it and it hasn’t become wittier after endless repetition. I have a suggestion. It’s a simple word called “wrote”. It’s concise and to the point. As my English teacher used to say, “K.I.S.S.”…”Keep it simple, stupid.”
I disagree. In the Civility thread two weeks ago that GPW linked, several people including me had posted “filtered” as a comment – and Bruce objected – and mine had the ‘pole position’ as the one nearest to his rebuke. I could have “made it about me”, if I were so inclined, but decided not to.
Um, Draybee, if we are going to go down that road, then I think “written” is the form you wanted 😉 (“I likely would have written…”)
(Or is it? Now I’m confused.)
Actually, Draybee, that’s a fair criticism. I don’t see it as an attack at all.
I don’t buy that simple writing rule though. Not much of a fan of Hemingway. I do prefer a bit more rhetorical prose as it makes the reading experience more enjoyable.
Will consider your advice though
What really broke it for me was how the Obama campaign and its affiliated shill bloggers started spreading the lie that Trig Palin was not Sarah Palin’s baby — and astonishingly, the gay community putting forth gay medical professionals in an attempt to smear her on websites run by gay journalists.
NDT, you have a point here. Such behavior that you describe is reprehensible. I condemn such behavior unequivocally. In fact, I think the whole family was treated horribly, including her daughter, from both the left and the right (that they felt compelled to say that she was planning to marry, instead of telling everyone to find their own f&&&in business), but obviously it came mostly from the left.
But it seems that you have taken this and turned it into a personal war, and your post seems to indicate this (please correct me if I’m wrong). And if that’s the case, that’s fine. But why lump people together? Do all individual lefties support and condone the behavior you described? I’m sure some do, but many also don’t. I certainly don’t.
It’s not fair to make assumptions about all gay lefties, just as it’s not fair to lump all gay conservatives together, and say they are all self-loathing, when that is only true for perhaps a very small minority of gay conservatives.
And further, please don’t assume that if one does not immediately begin talking about an issue without a condemnation, that that means the person supports it.
It is undeniable that Bruce and Dan are vastly more open and fair to left-wingers and other critics than left-wing blogs generally are to right-wingers. Bruce and Dan do a great job. I have never seen someone be deleted (or banned for that matter) on this blog who didn’t have it coming because of real incivility in their comments. Conversely, I have never seen someone who practices real civility (not just mouthing it or posturing) be deleted on this blog because of their unpopular content/ideas.
ILC, I agree with all the points that you made. That’s one of the reasons that I read and post on this blog.
Thanks Pat.
I disagree. In the Civility thread two weeks ago…
Could be. I don’t read every thread and as I stated above, “…I haven’t seen him do so to anyone else since then.”
I did a post on the Blood Libel against Republicans, and after using BlogExplosion all day, this comment came in from the DC Beltway:
————————————————-
UR A DOUCHE has left a new comment on your post “The Blood Libel against Republicans”:
At least the Left isn’t having people killed. That’s just Glenn Beck. If he didn’t think there was something to it, he wouldn’t be lamely defending himself 24 hours a day. He’s scared, we’ve got him dead to rights, so to speak.
And by the way, enjoy being the minority party, suckers! Being in power’s GREAT, we liberals are LOVING IT! Perhaps you can take back power in, I don’t know, 2032 or so.
Of course since comment moderation is enabled, you’ll post this right? Hmmm, free speech lover?
————————————-
I refused to publish it since the washington Monthly didn’t publish mine — and I didn’t curse.
I used to be a Liberal and I never acted like this. I pray for hubris.
See, it’s constant arrogance like that which bugs folks, or just me. Let the man write what he wants to write and how he wants to write it. I don’t honestly find it particularly funny, but I’m not a dick about it. Maybe if he were getting paid by you, you MIGHT have a point.
Why not bitch about spelling errors while you’re at it?
(Edited so Pat would approve).
(Edited so Pat would approve).
TGC, did you confuse me with another poster? If not, I’m curious as to what or how you edited your post so that I would approve. Thanks.
Nope. No confusion at all.