Over at Liberal Idaho, they’re harping on Bryan Fischer for turning off comments at Idaho Value Alliance they entitle it, “Da IVA in ID…” a reference to the Soviet Union.
Later in the letter, he writes:
I was just curious of the reasoning behind said decision. I think the next step would be making all the Democrats in Idaho wear little Donkey patches on their outerwear so that they would be easily identified in public and we would know not to engage them in any sort of discussion, as what would the point be?
So, now turning off the comments on an issue advocacy site in the same as the Nazis and Communists? Come on. While a lot of politicians have talked about using blogs, it really doesn’t work for professional politics. For a variety of reasons. Idaho Values Alliance doesn’t exist to create a debating society, it exists to inform the public on issues of the day and influence policy.
Other sites exists for debate and comments. Lest you think that only Nazis and Communists don’t have comments, Instapundit and Michelle Malkin don’t either. They have an e-mail, which Bryan has and to which this guy sent his snarky and insulting letter.
Darren Rowse at Pro-Blogger commented that a lot of blogs are doing without comments. One thing is that policing comments is a huge amount of work and Bryan (as far as I’ve seen) never actually engaged the flamers, as he had more important things to do like researching, lobbying, etc. In addition, the comments eats up bandwidth.
The ironic thing about the Liberal Idaho attacking Bryan is that on their blog, you can’t just go over and post a comment. You have to register to post a comment.
Also, comparisons to Hitler and Communists makes political engagement impossible. As a candidate, I heard people tell me that as Republicans dominated Idaho it was “fascist one party state” despite the fact, that’s how voters voted. That people like this dominate their political movement. To me, of all liberals, Idaho liberals seem to be the most unhinged, driven mad by the fact that their entire Senate delegation could fit in a good-sized minivan and they’re powerless to do much of anything in this state.
