Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Somewhere along the line, national and state Democrats discovered that most Americans do not cotton to extremists. For this reason, progressives in the state of Connecticut – nearly all politically active Democrats -- have taken to calling “extremists” those who oppose some of their more radical political positions. V. I. Lenin, an extremist of the first water, knew that if you effectively labeled an opponent or an idea, you did not have to argue with either. If you have successfully identified in the public mind as an extremist anyone who disagrees with you on a political or social point, you need not address his nuanced arguments. You need not bother to confront his arguments at all; the mud you throw – knowing full well that some of it will stick – will be sufficient to convince a majority of people that your position is superior to his, because you are superior to him: He is an extremist, and you are not. In cases such as these, arguments are won not through debate or the pr...

No one said during a recent Hartford Courant’s seminar on blogging that the activity was pretty much like a masked ball on the Pequod; masked because most of the commentators on ship operate under pseudonyms, and the Pequod because that fair ship was, among other things, Melville’s metaphor for a jostling, multicultural world. Most of the usual arguments against gay marriage having been answered sufficiently by proponents of gay marriage, I was wondering whether the same defenses used by gays may also be used to check what appears to be a troglodyte resistance to polygamy. So I proposed the question during a blog session at Connecticut Local Politics, one of the most active sites in Connecticut’s burgeoning blog community. A blogger, ctkeith, helpfully suggested that I move the dialogue to my own blog, “where it will never be read”. If it is never read, I see no harm in this. What follows below is the resulting thread on the question proposed. I’ve edited out other comments that do no...