Generally you do a great job with the blog, Mr. Dreher. I’ll freely admit there are times I find you frustrating and maddening. I’m sure others feel likewise, perhaps at different times.
But then, I don’t come here to read posts that I agree with every time. I come here to encounter different ideas, discuss/debate them, sometimes with vehemence, and then come away from the discussion either more certain of my own beliefs or more aware and accepting of those of others. And, on some rare occasions, I come away with a new way of thinking.
You’re doing a fine job. Keep up the good work.

i wish that there was something, anything, on the radio dial that would dedicate themselves to this ideal.
(and i also wish that more people recognized how wonderful it can be to be the stupidest person in the room.)

Definitely, keep up the good work. I used to follow a lot of blogs, but the exact type of thing you’re talking about made me pare them back. This is one of the best for stiking a balance between diversity of ideas and keeping trolls and their ilk off. I wish these standards were commoner in blogs and the media in general!

Heck, Rod, you are doing a fine job!

You do a fine job Rod, and I enjoy the comments here usually as much as your posts. They feel like a natural extension of the “conversation”.
The post you quoted reminded me with sadness of a “Socrates Cafe” discussion group I used to belong to. For several years it was a wonderful weekly gathering of a (somewhat) diverse group of people who honestly engaged in intelligent dialog and questioning around philosophical questions that ranged from the serious to the whimsical. Most weeks, I left with my head swirling and more questions than answers. Then someone joined who at first seemed very pleasant and interested in ideas, but who was really only interested in pontificating and trying to persuade others of her opinion. Since we were a casual group, with no formal leadership, she soon set herself up as leader and took the group in her own direction. Sadly, those of us who had been core participants didn’t see it happening until it would have taken a major confrontation with her to reclaim what we once had. By ones and twos, we simply stopped showing up. I’ve heard the group still meets, but it’s now a much smaller group of like-minded folks who sit around mutually re-enforcing each other’s views. Those of us who let it happen are as much to blame as the woman who “took over”. It’s exactly what you said about a little less “freedom” actually being more free.

“I’ve heard the group still meets, but it’s now a much smaller group of like-minded folks who sit around mutually re-enforcing each other’s views.”
Alas, I’ve seen similar in some churches and humanist discussion groups I have attended over the years. I fail to understand how anyone can find enjoyment or fulfilment in life when it is lived among those who never disagree with you. Yet some people claim that this is exactly what they want.

OK, I’ve heard the insult tossed around on the Interwebs. I’ve even had my trusted assistant Mr. Google look it up. I still don’t understand just what a “concern troll” is. Can someone tell me. I’m listening?

Has anyone followed the links to Tim Burke’s blog? There is an amazing video of Ben Folds doing chatroulette at a concert. Pure genius.

Even if you are trying to “win” an argument, careful listening makes sense. I find that the best stuff is usually in my opposing counsel’s brief or argument. Once the other side has endorsed an idea, it’s really hard for them to attack it. I love getting up on rebuttal and saying, “She’s absolutely right about X, and that’s why my client wins.”
Of course, one problem lawyers and non-lawyers have is distinguishing conversation in which the goal is a better understanding of the issue, as opposed to “winning” the issue.
As to deleting rude comments, I find that on most responsible blogs, the blog owner does jerks (and those who agree with the jerks) a favor by deleting their obnoxious post. Obnoxious and rude arguments tend to alienate, not persuade.

I am 54 years old. My parents were born during the second and third decades of the 20th century. Their parents grew up in and raised them in a culture that would be another-planet alien to the last two or three generations.
I seem to have a reputation for civility in many online places (and you won’t see from me where that reputation is lacking [grin]). While it pleases me to be recognized for it, underneath it all is a bit of sadness that I’m sure my parents would feel as well: I’d rather be one of many than stand out as one of the few.
That’s my wish. I see Rod as one of those few (with a similar proportion of “failure”, seeing as how we share this trivial thing called being human). Maybe, once we politely acknowledge people like Rod, we can then go about encouraging a return of such civility to its former status as the norm rather than the exception.
Oh, and Rod: Your shoes’ are untied.

Rod,
Thanks for the comments. I’m a liberal pastor who specifically began subscribing to your RSS feed because I realized that too much of my blog reading was of the echo chamber variety. Thus, I appreciate your level-headed conservatism and hope it helps me to understand, even when I cannot agree with, my conservative brothers and sisters.

I too enjoy the civility of this blog. I enjoy being able to read the comments to Rod’s post as anecdotes and actual discussions, rather than diatribes and ok corral show downs.
Re Rod’s post: A certain cousin of mine, and I’m sure everyone has “that cousin”, kept coming to mind as I read. This person turns every Sunday lunch into “combat service” for his point of view. I sometimes wonder if I become this person in certain discussions or circles. This post brings in some self reflection, hopefully unneeded. Thanks for the reminder for me to work on “don’t be THAT guy.”

Burke is unusual for an historian (which I am, by the way) in that he has a good eye for the complexities that underlie communications. I only occasionally look in your blog but have thought for a while you might find him interesting. I recommend an essay he wrote in January 2009 about styles of discourse and the importance of learning to cultivate a taste for the unlike.
Burke said this is hard to do in Washington “because it requires a very fine distinction between the voices that authentically speak from a habitus or perspective that’s at odds with the worldview of the President and his advisors and much more calculated and cynical bids at “framing” that come from a well-oiled machine that approaches public dialogue as a pure instrument, as a zero-sum exercise which either advances or defeats narrow self-interests.
The distinction between the two is most easily glimpsed if you cultivate a taste for the unlike, force yourself to speak in unfamiliar and uncomfortable tongues, travel across ways of seeing and talking as one might travel across geographies. This commitment is not a safe, happy kind of venture of unity-in-difference, not a boat ride through ‘It’s a Small World’. Listening to the unlike, speaking the unfamiliar, can be draining, painful, frustrating. And at the end of any journey, you’re perfectly entitled to conclude that you like your established ways of talking best, that there’s something wrong with a stranger’s world and voice. But I think the person with the taste for the unlike can hear better the difference between a public voice that comes from somewhere real and a cynical attempt at framing that comes from some rag-and-bone shop think tank.”
There’s a lot more, see http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2009/01/22/mr-obamas-neighborhood/
I worked for 14 years as an employee of the National Archives, reviewing Richard Nixon’s secret White House recordings and files and deciding what could be opened to the public and what required restriction for national security or privacy or other statutory restrictions. some of that now has been released. I had worked on Nixon’s campaign in 1968, voted for him in 1972, and voted straight Republican until 1988 (I’ve been an Independent since then).
I began my work screening the Nixon materials at the age of 25. It was revelatory to see the amount of manipulation (and what we now would call astroturfing) which went on behind the scenes. Some of the letters to the editor, paid advertisements in newspapers, and other initiatives that I had thought while I was in college represented largely spontaneous public reaction turned out to the result of careful planning and direction by White House operatives.
While most members of the public are oblivious to such efforts, the problem of distinguishing what is what can run both ways. Burke makes the good point that people in successive administrations in Washington must be able to discern among authentic voices, efforts at framing, and other manipulations. It is very important to be able to distinguish among them in crafting communications strategies and reaching the reachable.
It’s interesting, too, how Burke focuses on what he calls unilateral disarmament in web interactions, which can occur when moderates run up against zealots. Smart, thoughtful guy, I know you’ll enjoy reading him, Mr. Dreher.