Yeah, I got a complaint about lack of comments capability here on The Dignified Rant. It was over some post on Syria, and the Turkish guy (or at least he was using the Turkish language in his browser, so maybe he wasn't actually Turkish) who emailed me apparently was either a fan of Assad or merely deeply skeptical of attempts to remove Assad.
Mostly, he wanted to condemn me for failing to live up to American ideals of free speech by not having comments.
I explained his basic flaw in reasoning:
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.
If you are interested, I set forth my reasons for no comments in that post.
Anyway, that reader got a lesson in what violating free speech means from his own country's government--the Turkish government banned Twitter. And promptly face-planted.
That reader--and the rest of Turkey--can at least be grateful that the Turkish government isn't that good yet about suppressing speech.
