Markos Moulitsas Zúniga will prove to be an important historical figure in 21st century American politics. The creation of Daily Kos not only provided an outlet for, organized and activated a frustrated liberal voting bloc, but it also helped establish they very discipline of political blogging. The success of Daily Kos has spawned books, political office holders, and good old fashion in your face journalism/activism (See, Mike Stark). However, the success of Daily Kos has put the site in the spotlight and is assumed to speak for large chunks of liberal voters. With great power, comes great responsibility. With greater prominence comes greater scrutiny. Under the spotlight, the question that must be asked is has the Daily Kos community met the challenge, or have they jumped the shark.
UPDATE: I changed the name of the diary because too many people only read the title and don't read the content.
The August 18, 2008 New York Magazine has an article about "The Humor Deficit" in this Presidential election. After discussing how the Republicans try to write off their attack ads as "humor" (despite the fact that there is little to laugh about in them), the article goes on to discuss the Democrats. It states:
But we've seen this summer that humorlessness is not a GOP-specific affliction. The reaction by Obama-ites to the New Yorker's cover cartoon ... ranged from disappointingly touchy to pathetically hysterical...In a Daily Kos poll of its readers, 58 percent said that the drawing was "tasteless and damaging" or "doesn't help anyone" ... if the ostensibly sophisticated left-wing people on Kos didn't get the joke, I guess it's plausible that some in the lumpen proletariat won't either.
This paragraph suggests a lot of things to me. First and foremost, it suggests that "others" look to Kos, the website, not the person, for the feelings of the political left. It also suggests that what happens at Kos does not stay at Kos. It reminds me of the old political adage, "don't say anything that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the Washington Post (or, I guess, New York Magazine)." This is a lesson I am sure Kos himself learned this lesson with the Blackwater affair. Finally, it suggests to me that the Kos community might not be doing its job. We were expected to get the joke. We were its target audience.
Kos is fond of saying that no one speaks for Kos except Kos, and no one speaks for the website except Kos and the
front pagers. While that is a perfectly reasonable (and necessary) position, it may be irrelevant. While nobody else can speak for Kos or even the website, people look to Kos for the views of the "community." Nobody can speak for the community except for the "community." New York Magazine didn't care what Kos or McJoan thought about the New Yorker Cover. It cared about what the Kos community thought about the New Yorker Cover.
The Kos community isn't just what is happening on the front page. It is what is happening on the sides, and in the comments. And it is on the sides and in the comments that things are going all wrong. Unless things change, the Kos community runs the risk of becoming what it most loathes.
Kos created Daily Kos to give himself, and eventually other people, a voice. The Bush administration, like legions of republicans before them, could not support their policies because of the "correctness" of their ideas. Thus, they simply put forward their ideas, and used the bully pulpit to call anyone who wanted to debate, or dared to dissent, "unpatriotic." Like the pamphleteers before him, Kos said no. Kos said that good policy is not created by the tyranny of the majority.
In doing so, though, Kos unwittingly created a mechanism for doing what he loathes most, suffocating dissent, the "Hide" button.
To be sure, the Hide button is an important feature of Daily Kos. As I mentioned at the top, we are considered a voice of the Democratic party. What appears on these pages is a reflection on Kos himself and the Democratic party. Thus, Kos is right in wanting to have a mechanism to get rid of people who reflect poorly on himself or the larger movement. Thus, for example, Kos depends on the community to get rid of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Democrats do not get elected by claiming 9/11 was a giant government conspiracy.
But Kos, the man who created this website because the Bush administration was stifling dissent, did not create hide ratings so that they could be used to silence dissent. Heck, they technically aren’t even to silence republicans. "The majority of people posting here fall on the liberal side of the US political spectrum, however people of conservative views are welcome to come and debate. If you are polite, you will be treated politely."
But silencing dissent is exactly what has been happening here. No, this is not another Lee Stranahan article, although I think what happened to him is a good example of why censorship is wrong. This is an article about more general notions of dissenting views and community tolerance. In doing so, I want to share with you an exchange I had the other day.
Commenter 1: I guess I am a horribe person, I have no problem with this.
Commenter 2 (gave him a HR): If you have nothing helpful to contribute then at least don't display your assholiness.
Me: C'mon people, TRIng a guy for having a different opinion that you? Uprated to offset the blatant TU abuse.
Commenter 3: Some opinions are not allowed here. This is a Democratic blog, and the purpose of this place is to get Democrats elected. This is not a place to debate Republican talking points.
There is much more to this exchange, but I am not going to post it because my purpose is not to call out any particular user. My purpose is to call into question how easily we attempt to silence someone for disagreeing. Somehow, it is argued that it is appropriate to hide a comment because disagreeing with the majority is the equivalent of "republican talking points."
First of all, no matter what the topic of the article, I don’t see how it is ever acceptable to hide a comment that consists of "I disagree." Nor, do I see how "I disagree" should be condemned as a republican talking point. We have voices people. Use them. Calling people names does not suffice for argument, and clicking "hide" should not be used in leiu of making an argument.
This is not a question of Constitutional notions of freedom of speech. They simply don’t exist on a privately held website. Nonetheless, especially as a Democratic blog, we should always strive to uphold Democratic ideals. And, in my opinion, the Democratic party stands for the notions of free speech as articulated by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition...But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas...that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.
In other words, you don’t establish truth by stating "this is the truth and anyone who disagrees with it will be censored." You establish truth by debate. You establish truth by convincing people. You establish truth by letting ideas compete. Commenter #1 above didn’t need to be silenced because his position was going to fail in the marketplace. This is what Democrats believe (or should in any rate). Democrats believe that the power of debate leads to good policy. Republicans believe that good policy is created by using power to stifle debate. We are secure enough in our ideas to know that they will succeed in the marketplace of ideas. They, like countless censors before them, need to censor dissenting views lest the populace believe them.
Daily Kos must remain a fighter for Democratic politicians and an example of Democratic ideals. We cannot become a "truth squad" using the power of the majority to silence the views of the majority. Sometimes, minority views become accepted fact. The geocentric view was accepted fact and Galileo was imprisoned for presented heliocentrism. No matter how much you suppress ideas, if they are right, they will eventually be found out.
I have rambled on for too long as is. I hope you understand my point. I am frustrated that a Democratic website has so many people willing to throw aside Democratic ideals in order to get Democrats elected. Nothing I say here is new. Like Justice Holmes, these ideas are not new. They are my exposition form the foundation provided by Socrates, Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill. In fact, I can never say it better (and I doubt anyone can) than J.S. Mill said it in "On Liberty"
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism.