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As several people noted over the holiday, Robyn Ringler is throwing in the towel on comments. She got so tired of deleting comments she didn’t like, she decided it might be simpler to just follow the Brady Campaign’s (and just about every other anti-gun blog’s) lead and shut comments off.
Can’t win arguments? Tired of your viewpoint being the distinct minority? Fed up with people shooting your poorly thought out, irrational, unsupportable arguments full of rhetorical holes?
Just cover your ears and run for cover! That’s the intellectually responsible way to travel, eh?
It’s impossible to “win” an argument if there is no common ground for debate.
At most one can “win” the mud-slinging and name-calling.
But, yes, turning off comments pretty much admits that the blogger(s) can’t win those contests.
Americans used to have actual debates, with common ground, and mutually-agreed-upon definitions. That time of relative civility is long past and probably will not return.
It’s not “intellectually responsible” to harass people with rhetoric. If you’re going to debate, try finding some factual common ground.
Start, for example, by debunking Bellesisles — the guy who thinks Americans didn’t have guns because Bellesisles can’t find the records. That should establish some degree of commonly accepted historical fact. Move on to modern-day statistics.
Note that blog comments are a pretty bad forum for debunking. Blogs provide all the ego-boost of activism with a fraction of the actual results. If you want to be “intellectually responsible,” publish in a scholarly context.
Comment by Rick — September 12, 2007 @ 8:48 am