RedState to Ron Paul Supporters: You're Not Wanted Here

There's an interesting bit of blogosphere fuss about RedState's policy of preventing new commenters from voicing their support for Ron Paul. RedState says that they're basically crazy people, and that they add nothing to the debate. Let me say this: I am the farthest thing from a Ron Paul supporter than you can possibly be. As a pro-war, center-Left liberal Democrat, I'm as far from Paul's constituency as Tokyo is from Texarkana, but I reject the idea of excluding certain groups of commenters without sufficient cause. I'm feeling a bit lazy now, so I'll let my comment over at Michael van der Galien's place speak instead:

Well, I’m coming at this from the perspective of a pro-war liberal Democrat, but let me add a couple of things. In my view, Ron Paul is something of a crazy person, embodying the worst of 1930’s isolationism, and Lew Rockwell-style hardcore libertarianism. His supporters are almost cult-like in their zeal. The way I see it, no self-respecting liberal would support him.

That being said, Paul’s candidacy is a legit phenomenon, and ought not be ignored. It’s bad form to exclude certain groups from the discussion out of hand. RedState can do what they want, but it’s bad form if you ask me. Meaningless cheerleader posts should be met with equal mental energy, which is to say, not much. Thoughtful and substantive posts should be encouraged. As I’ve said, throwing the whole bunch out is bad form, and I’ll leave it at that.

I'm not sure how likely this is, but if Ron Paul supporters happen to show up here, the door is open. I welcome open and honest debate, even from those with whom I vehemently disagree. Including those who support a bats**t crazy person who wants to basically hollow out the government, and thinks the Civil War was an unnecessary war. If you do show up though, prepare to have your arguments challenged openly, and as I see it, torn to pieces.

Also, I think Simon over at SF has a point about Andrew Sullivan extending a welcome hand to Paul supporters. Sully really does have to open up his blog to comments, if he's going to make statements like that.

HT: Stubborn Facts

A General Theory of Blogrolling

Well, not really. There's an interesting discussion going on around the blogosphere, about the function of blogrolls, the idea of blogger communities, and the differences between righty and lefty blogs in that regard. There's a real concern about smaller, lesser-known blogs not getting the traffic that bigger, more A-list bloggers get. One part of this involves a bit of well-intentioned, but ill-executed nonsense called Blogger Amnesty Day, started by Atrios, who runs A-list lefty blog Eschaton. I could explain what happened, but I'll let Jon Swift do it better than I can:

But the more I learned about this Amnesty Day, the more I realized that it was a very strange amnesty indeed. The amnesty he granted turned out to be amnesty for himself. He wanted to assuage himself of the guilt he might feel at kicking blogs off his blogroll instead of granting amnesty to others to swarm across the border into his domain. "Everyone feels a wee bit guilty about removing blogs from their blogroll, so they're hesitant to add new ones to an ever-expanding list," he explained. So Atrios deleted his entire blogroll and disappointingly repopulated it for the most part with the usual suspects. Then others in the liberal blogosphere followed his example, including Jesus' General and PZ Myers at Pharyngula, who already takes a very Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest approach to blogrolling (see updates below). Then Markos at Daily Kos joined this ruthless bloodletting. "It sucks and it feels bad," he said, daubing the tears from his eyes as he typed. So the end result of Atrios' Amnesty Day was to make some blogrolls smaller and even more exclusive than they already were.

Not exactly how it was supposedly to work, huh? Now it's clear that I run a small and little-known blog, and I am but a Lowly Insect on the TTLB Ecosystem. I think, as Swift does, that it helps to link to lesser-known blogs, and that bigger blogs really ought to expand their blogrolls beyond just the inner circle. My blogroll serves as a list of blogs I like a lot, and many others that are interesting. My links cover the whole spectrum, although I try to stay away from the excessively hostile. I don't hang out at the swamp of LGF at all or Kos for that matter, and I've wondered if I should delete Kos from the roll for balance, but I'll peek there once or twice, and to be honest, Kos bothers me less (only slightly) than Charles Johnson's domain.

Oh, and Jon, I've added you to my blogroll. You do good work.

On a side note, I plan on posting on Imus, the Duke rape (well, non-rape) case, and the British sailors soon.

The April Fool's Eve-Wrestlemania Eve Blog Post

Not much to discuss. Tomorrow is April Fool's, as well as Palm Sunday (hmmm..), not to mention the day before Wrestlemania. Just posting random thoughts:

Apparently, there is a well-oiled revolution underway to thoroughly undermine American Idol, by the likes of Howard Stern, and Andrew Sullivan. It all revolves around the controversial frontrunner Sanjaya Malakar. I have a hard time continuing to pretend that I care about this show, but Ann Althouse is kinda pissed, and makes a serious appeal for Sanjaya's survival.

Oh, and in related stuff involving Ms. Althouse, there is still a bit of a firestorm over something of a spat she had with Garance Franke-Ruta, in a Bloggingheads diavlog. It had something to do with comments she made about a woman named Jessica Valenti, and breasts. I still haven't figured all this out yet, but many have their opinions, like Ezra Klein, who doesn't much care for Ann Althouse at all. Of course, one really should hear Ann's side as well to get a balanced picture. I must say though, that I watched the diavlog, and based on the context I've been able to gather, I think Ann was being entirely unfair to Garance. A lot of other interesting topics were discussed though, such as the general ugliness of some on the blogosphere. It's darn exciting, no matter what your persepective.

In other news, I feel the need to reiterate how awesome the movie 300 is. A consumate masterpiece. I plan on writing a lengthy piece on why this movie is so good, but I'll just reflect a bit on the unjustified heat this movie is getting from the Iranian government, and some short-sighted lefties. As for Iran, their silly and baseless beef seems to be that the movie is trying to provoke a war with Iran. This movie doesn't promote war with Persia per se, but it does include a lesson in the importance of free people having the courage to stand against those who would subjugate and destroy them. Not to mention it's just a damn-good epic about heroism and valor.

Besides, if the leadership in Iran is really worried about provoking a war, perhaps they shouldn't continually defy UN sanctions, or capture British sailors? Just sayin'.

Damn, this post was longer than I thought. Oh, well. Again, Palm Sunday tomorrow, and Wrestlemania.

Oh, and Georgetown just lost. The crunching sound you just heard was a million tourney brackets exploding into flames.