That's My Story and I'm Sticking To It

Walter Russell Mead has ended comments capabilities.

I've considered enabling comments from time to time. But every time I think it might be a good idea, I scroll through the Yahoo! News comments. That's a scary bunch that it attracts. Thoughtful comments are swamped in a sea of idiocy and hate. If nothing else, it is a useful exercise in the dangers of mirror-imaging the motives and thought patterns in other countries.

Not that I'm defensive about my policy. I recently had one Turkish reader upset with my Syria coverage who claimed I failed to live up to ideals of free speech. He's wrong, of course. Free speech means my government does not try to stop my speech. Those exercising free speech rights have no obligation to enable others to counter that free speech. As I suggested to my reader and critic, he is free to start his own blog--it's free and easy with Blogger--and freely speak his mind about my blog and anything else. Assuming he feels he can get away with that in his own country.

And it would take time to manage comments. Time I don't wish to spend. Good grief, I spend too much time on this and not enough on writing for publication as it is, despite my best intentions.

Mostly, however, I don't enable comments because I don't want to be captured by commenters. I think that there would be a constant pressure to conform to both critics and fans, in an effort to promote readership. Right or wrong, I started this blog to offer my own opinions on mostly world events--not parrot others (well, other than the Karl Rovian memes transmitted during the Bush administration--but the batteries on that implant seem to have finally failed).

But I'll admit it is nice to have another blog to point to in defense of my policy.