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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (14728)	3/18/2006 10:36:26 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540753

I'm not complaining. Except for banning Nadine, who is a very bright and very polite though sometimes tart exponent of a conservative viewpoint, I think your moderation is on the whole pretty good. Every once in a while when I opt to stifle my opinion in the interests of institutional support I feel guilty about it later. The banning of Nadine was one of those instances. I kept silent about it because I wanted to support Dale and what he was trying to do. Nadine is among that small cadre of informed, thoughtful, and polite SI posters that I would think all would want to encourage. I was happy to see her show up and I miss her presence here as I knew I would. Your post triggered my guilty feelings so here's my belated response to her banning. I didn't and still don't understand it.

To: carranza2 who wrote (14728)	3/18/2006 10:39:24 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540753

The problem with judging who is "highly partisan" and who has "punctured the prevalent viewpoint" is that it is always a 100% subjective and partisan judgment. Conservatives tell me it's all too liberal, liberals find much of it not progressive enough, and so on. To be blunt, whenever I get a criticism about partisanship from someone I know to be partisan, I don't pay it much mind. I have found that ardent conservatives and liberals both dislike threads where their views cannot prevail. They want the power to dismiss the Others with a single sarcastic quip and declare themselves the wise, objective winners. That's what other threads are for. This thread chronicles the weaknesses of the partisan right and the left, as the header suggests. If doing that narrows the roster to only those people who enjoy watching that process, that is peachy keen with me. That was the whole idea behind the thread, before every partisan who came along started sniping about their agenda not being followed. The fact that I get that sniping from both sides tells me I am accomplishing my goal. And it proves my gut feeling about the political disutility of partisanship to begin with. So conservatives can complain about the liberal slant and liberals can complain about conservative shots and I won't lose a minute of sleep over it. As I have said many times before, I periodically review all the posters I have banned. As soon as I find a personal attack or a post blindly demonizing the other side, they stay on the list. Guess what? No one has made it off the list. Because personal attacks and demonization are how they practice politics. And they don't do it here. The thread can have five posters or a hundred, whatever works. But by excluding a couple dozen, we have created a forum with a different atmosphere and flavor than most.