So here's a fun experience I had over at RedState.org
For those of you who visit the full spectrum of political blogs, I'm sure you'll count RedState as one of the less radical Republican blogs of our time. Sure they're still stuck on the "We're right because we were voted into office" mentality, but then if the Dems were on top, I'm sure Kos would be trumpeting the same tune. Still, they've never approved of nuking Mecca, and in the past they've been at least borderline reasonable with their blogging - admitting the Iraq war isn't a exactly a success, noting various Bush fobbles and Frist bold-faced lies, etc. This is good.
But recently, this meandering in the garden of moderation has lead to some alarming reactions. Liberal bloggers and blogreaders seem drawn to the site as a location for reasonable, if not always rational, discourse. As shortly as a month ago, if you posted a forum blurb about how you thought Bush was a yockle and a hack and that the Republican Party needed to be reformed, you'd get a bit of flame and perhaps a poor post rating. But you'd also get a bit of observation, a reaction, a logical response as to why you might be wrong.
Things are changing at Red State. Where before they'd kill a post for profanity or harassment, now it seems they're just axing people cause they don't like the words coming out of your mouth.
http://www.redstate.org/story/2005/7/8/181848/0502
http://c17wife.redstate.org/story/2005/7/9/151139/5547
You can read the back and forth here.
Which is to say, you can read the back, but not the forth, because RedState has now adopted a "Freeze posting rights for liberals" policy. Which, I suppose, they have every right to do. A political blog is much like a newspaper or even a chalk board. If you own it, you can write in it. If you don't, you can't. Don't like it, get your own.
That said, when dealing with the internet, you'd think there would be a bit more open-mindedness floating around. Not necessarily open-mindedness to ideas, but to the expressing of them. But it appears that while even the most childish Right Wing Young Conservative will answer a letter from Jesus General, there is no love left for the moderate weekend blogreader on RedState.
So to that ill-destined blog, I salute you for what you were. It is a shame we had to part company on such poor terms. Perhaps we will meet another day for genial ideological banter in a web-text format, but that will be for another hosting address at another time. :-p