ANN ALTHOUSE STRIKES FROM THE CENTER

If there is a median opinion in the world, Madison-based Ann must be in the middle of it! The WSJ opinion journal quotes her:

What I've noticed, over and over, is that the bloggers on the right link to you when they agree and ignore the disagreements, and the bloggers on the left link only for the things they disagree with, to denounce you with short posts saying you're evil/stupid/crazy. . . .

I'm struck by the way the right perceives me as a potential ally and uses positive reinforcement and the left doesn't see me as anything but an opponent--doesn't even try to engage me with reasoned argument.

With a few exceptions, this has also been my experience in my extremely short blogging career. I have Ann’s link on my blog and checked her out today. Predictably, she has had relinks to her original observation over a year ago. She also quotes Redstate:

There are also plenty of pundits and bloggers who are on our side on the war, or the economy, or the culture, or the law, but not all of the above. In the blogosphere, there are centrists like Althouse and libertarians like Glenn Reynolds, Megan McArdle and Stephen Green. The pundit world even includes people like Christopher Hitchens and Nat Hentoff, arch-liberals on many issues who are nonetheless steadfast allies on some questions.

Anyway, from one issue controversy to the next, we may find ourselves on the opposite side from some of these folks. And therein lies the temptation to go the Kos path, and dissolve into spittle-spraying rage when people who are "supposed" to be on "our side" cross over and side against us. That's the situation where we need to think carefully about how harshly we go after people's motives, their intellectual integrity, etc. A ritual bridge-burning may be fun, but that's how you end up stranded on your own island.

And there are more comments on Redstate and Ann's links on various issues such as how the emphasis on primaries has brought both parties to expensive pitched battles the losing candidates often regret having entered. The sad result is that many of the losing candidates' supporters refuse to support the eventual party standard bearer. Also that Reagan’s 11th Commandment about not speaking ill of other Republicans has helped the right to avoid the Manichaean tendencies on the unhinged far-left side of the political spectrum.

The US political scene has a long tradition of civility helped by Robert’s Rules of Order and other canons of civilized discourse. I have lived overseas in countries without these codes [France] and the bitterness and divisiveness in the political arena in such places has seeped into the daily workplace. The American political culture seems slowly moving toward a collapse of the vital center bloggers like Althouse represent so well.

Meanwhile, Deborah Howell, Ombudsman of the Washington Post, got flamed with a torrent of obscene personal attacks for a peccadillo so minimal that it would have been overlooked in a sanitary political environment. But anyone who has checked into the left's chat-houses knows that mental and other forms of hygiene are sadly lacking over there.