Since I no longer contribute to the comments at Ethics Alarms, I’m hoping to find a replacement. Could anyone recommend a conservative blog with a good comments section to me?
What I’d like is a comments section where:
1) People who don’t agree with the blog’s views are treated respectfully.
2) Detailed back-and-forth discussions of issues are welcome.
3) The comments are neither too busy nor too empty for reasonable conversation to happen. (Blog comments that run into multi hundreds of comments are too busy to be good for the kind of discussion I prefer.)
For that matter, if anyone wants to recommend any other blogs worth reading – liberal, conservative, knitting-based, whatever – that would be fine too.
Five points, Barry:
1. Ethics Alarms is emphatically not a conservative blog. It takes positions that fall on all portions of the political spectrum, since ethical analysis, not ideology or partisan loyalties or objectives, determine the posts. If it seems conservative, that is only because it is being viewed from the extreme left.
2. You want one token “conservative blog”–what, as amusement? To have a foil? I may be misunderstanding, but I thought you were open to a wide range of views and the possibility of broadening your perspective. One blog that varies from the consistent progressive talking points here isn’t going to accomplish that.
3. I wasn’t aware that I was the only “conservative” blogger you visited. Especially since I’m not one.
4. My recommendation would be the Althouse blog. The professor isn’t really a conservative either, but she’s as much of one as I am, and will seem so to you and most of your readers.
5. I do miss your comments, predictable as they were.
1. Jack, although you do criticize conservatives for bad acts, 95% of the contested policy positions you take on your blog are right-wing (the major exception being same-sex marriage). By my definition, that makes your blog a conservative blog. But I don’t see any reason we can’t agree to disagree on this one.
2. As I said several times in the comments of your blog, I think the way Americans demonize our political opponents is a major problem. I’m no exception to this temptation. One way I resist is by looking for conservatives I can respect, who are willing to treat me respectfully in return. That – plus a love of debate – is why I’m looking for a conservative blog I’m comfortable commenting on.
3. You yourself sometimes read blogs that you rarely comment on (“Alas,” for example); you must know that “blogs I read” and “blogs where I often leave comments” are overlapping but distinct categories.
So it’s bewildering that, when you read my post, you failed to distinguish between “I’d like to find a conservative blog with a particular kind of comments section” (what I wrote) and “I only ever read one conservative blog” (what you wrongly believe I wrote).
4. Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve read Althouse many times, but I’ll make a point of checking out her comments.
5. Thanks for the compliment!
I’m not sure if the needless insult you attached (“predictable as they were”) was a failed attempt at good-natured banter, an intentional insult, or just you being a jerk without intending to be. It’s really hard to tell with you.
Some interesting blogs which I often read include
overlawyered.com Like FIRE, this sort of reads generally libertarian. Like FIRE it often ends up coming across conservative. There are no good comments but it has a lot of links to stories and is a quick, interesting daily scan.
Simple Justice: blog.simplejustice.us Written by a criminal defense attorney. Good stuff on rape, revenge porn, etc. Calling this “conservative” would be really wrong since it’s all about civil rights and rights of defendants, which is what used to be called liberalism. Worth reading perhaps to understand the degree to which “new liberal” thought is often opposed to some civil rights, esp. w/r/t rape, revenge porn, harassment, etc. Be warned, the blog owner can be very aggressive in comment responses. But comments are interesting to read.
http://randazza.wordpress.com/ Infrequent but good postings by an outstanding first amendment attorney.
Hercules and the Umpire (http://herculesandtheumpire.com/): not conservative but an unusual blog written by a sitting active federal judge and worth a read as a result.
Scotusblog: if you want good USSC reporting, read this.
FIRE http://www.thefire.org which I think you already read.
discriminations.us W/r/t discrimination, the writing is pretty good. It’s a well put together opposition to AA which does not appear to be racist (at least to me,) which makes it interesting to read. W/r/t to Obama it’s pretty ranty and I tend to skip it. But often surprisingly well written and interesting.
http://www.coyoteblog.com/ As with the above blog there’s a lot of good writing but can get ranty about Obama on occasion. Interesting stuff on effects of super-protective legislating.
http://apublicdefender.com/ Pretty much what it sounds like. Good blog.
I find STORMFRONT to be surprisingly fair and balanced, and of course there’s always the kind and gentle, well reasoned people at Free Republic. Both are very well stocked with conservative thinkers.
But seriously, the RATIONAL WIKI facebook page isn’t bad, I dropped it because they slide heavily towards having people without a sense of irony and were getting clogged with 4chan trolls for a while. Might check them out.
Not a conservative blog, but you might find the site I write for — Center for a Stateless Society, or c4ss.org — worth a read. It’s a left-wing market anarchist (free market anticapitalist) blog.
Brian, I’ll check it out.
Kevin, I already subscribe to your blogs RSS! I enjoy the blog, although I disagree with it fairly often.
I don’t think David Brin’s blog is conservative, but it’s pretty good and so is the comments section.
Well, let’s see:
Instapundit has a lot of content. I don’t know how he does it. I actually don’t do much commenting there, though, but there’s plenty of it.
Maggie’s Farm is another one of that ilk – I find the content very interesting but don’t do a lot of commenting. The doctor who runs it does a lot of travelling and writes about her travels in Italy and Sicily quite often.
Grim’s Hall will draw you into some quite philosophical debates. I think you’d like her. And there are some good music links as well, and occasionally some movie clips. The music links often send me off on YouTube tangents for an hour.
Home on the Range is written by a female law enforcement officer living in the boonies in Indiana. Some of the content is intensely personal, writing about her life growing up, the consequences of her first (failed) marriage, the people and animals currently in her life. I believe it’s excellent writing, and I’ve love to hear the opinions of the people on THIS blog that are writers. i think she should try publishing it. She also writes about guns, both from a personal and professional viewpoint, and posts some GREAT recipes.
Althouse is a female law professor in the heart of the beast (Madison, Wisconsin) who voted for Obama twice but is not so pleased with the outcome. I don’t know that I would necessarily call it a conservative blog – she favors gay marriage, for example. The comments there tend to be a bit spotty – there are some liberal types especially who tend to be a little abusive. But her articles are good, and she gives some very interesting and well-informed posts on Supreme Court decisions especially.
Sippican Cottage is a gentleman who used to be a bar band musician and who now lives in rural Maine and supports himself making furniture and selling it online. He and his wife homeschool their two sons, who have their own duo called “Unorganized Hancock” (the 9-year old plays the drums). He writes about his experiences in making things for a living, living in Maine, and his two kids. He also posts a lot of music clips, with commentary on the music, the musicians, and the music business in general.
Finally, there’s Villainous Company, written by a woman with the screen name of Cassandra. You can get pretty deep into a comment thread there on all manner of topics.
I enjoy all these blogs. I think you will as well.
g&w @3: Given that Amp specifically set a respectful and productive comments section as his main criteria for a worthwhile conservative blog, I’m baffled that you are recommending blogs that don’t have such comments sections. Are you just fucking with Amp? Particularly given that two of the blogs you mentioned (Simple Justice and Marc Randazza’s blog) are extremely hostile to feminists?
Well, to be fair, I also asked (at the end of the post) for recommendations in general. So probably that’s what G&W was responding to. I already read some of those (simplejustice and apublicdefender are both in my rss reader), so I’m interested.
Rod Dreher.
There are no comments as such, but I’ve been translating (with commentary) the Analects at Daily Analect. Although not exactly a modern American right-winger, Confucius is pretty much the best conservative thinker, so it’s not a bad resource for good conservative thought.
It depends what you mean by “treated respectfully,” because the posters and commenters believe aggressively that they are correct, but you might find “What’s Wrong With the World” interesting, because its writers are extremely conservative and extremely religious, but also (for the most part) highly educated.
I’d recommend The American Conservative blogs. Daniel Larison is very good on US foreign policy, Rod Dreher is Rod Dreher, and there are a number of other writers who, despite my frequent disagreements with them, are articulate and thoughtful. I find that reading them often hones my opinions, and gives rise to blog posts of my own. The comments sections, which are moderated, are also good, with a range of opinions represented, and plenty of people who try to think and to engage with people they disagree with. Dreher, for example, as little as I think of him as a writer or thinker, allows serious disagreement in the comments. I’ve been considering subscribing to TAC, their best stuff is that good and deserves support.
You might try the Volokh Conspiracy (now hosted by the Washington Post). Mostly legal, but conservative/libertarian.
I read Rod Dreher’s blog pretty frequently, but rarely comment there myself, as most of the commenters seem to be anti-feminist men of varying political stripes. Within that narrow spectrum of male commenter, one can find disagreements and debate (although there are token conservative female anti-feminists who also seem to comment).
In between the navel gazing and the food picture posts, Dreher’s particular hobby horse as of late is his mocking, contempt, and disapproval of trans people. (He seems resigned to the growing legalization of same-sex marriage, although he of course disapproves of it).
So, in all, I’d say disagreements are allowed to an extent, but I wouldn’t call the conversations respectful (although some are). But, if more feminists began commenting, who knows, that could shake things up.