Some interesting comments here on how the community-based blogging sites like Daily Kos have begun to leave the right-of-center blogosphere in the dust, as far as traffic is concerned. My two cents: it’s inevitable and healthy that with national power now exclusively held by Republicans, the left will experience a revival in the popularity of its journalism. I’d also say that it may be helpful to think of community, activist blogs as a different species than querulous, individual blogs like this one. I have no interest in sustaining a political “movement” or becoming part of one. (A movement is different than a political or philosophical tradition.) Writers-who-blog are going to be different than online forums designed to forge new political alignments. There’s space for all of us. As to comment sections, I’ve pondered them from time to time and can’t make up my mind. They’d add traffic and thereby revenue, but they might well provide more heat than light, and as long as I acknowledge dissent and disagreement within the Dish, I don’t think I’m obliged to give flamers a platform. It can work on smaller blogs. But with around a quarter million visits a week, I’m nervous about starting an online mudfight that I don’t have the time to monitor.
THE BOTTOM LINE: If openly gay soldiers impair “unit cohesion” and destroy morale, why aren’t they kicked out in larger numbers during periods of conflict? I mean, that’s when they would logically pose the greatest threat, no? And yet, since 2000, the numbers of discharges have gone steadily down from over 1200 in 2001 to 653 last year. The reason is that gay soldiers pose absolutely no threat to any form of cohesion, and do amazing service for their country. When push comes to shove, the military recognizes this by what it doesn’t do. The rest is bigotry and irrational fear. I’m delighted that some stalwart conservatives in the Congress are now among the burgeoning numbers of people urging an end to the Clinton policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Pejman also has a great piece on this now posted. All our key allies have done away with this nonsense and seen absolutely no negative consequences. The positive consequences are more and better troops and saving a huge amount of money spent on training people we subsequently fire for no good reason.
The Dish 