One of the first state legislators ever to have a blog, Utah state Rep. Stephen Urquhart, raised an interesting issue, about partisanship and civility on the blogs, during at a Personal Democracy Forum event. National Journal's "Technology Daily" has the report...
Rep. Stephen Urquhart, R-Utah, issued a challenge to political bloggers to have passionate discussions on middle ground rather than extreme political positions. "We need to push the conversation to the middle," Urquhart said. "Otherwise we're disenfranchising Americans and helping rot out the core."
But during questions and answers several audience members said that may be easier said than done. One said that it's easy to get people on one political extreme or another to talk than they middle. Her theory was the middle was just not passionate. Another chimed in that the attitude of many moderates is they'll pay attention and vote closer to the election.
Urquhart, however, questioned whether moderates were really apathetic or disgusted by the animosity in the political discussion.
My own experience is that a partisan blog written with a conscientious devotion to telling the truth and basing analysis on verifiable, documented facts, creates the right atmosphere for discussion with people who don't share my point of view. My blog -BillHobbs.com, where I've written about politics from an unapologetically conservative point of view for more than five years - routinely sparks discussions across partisan and ideological lines, conversations that are, for the most part, civil.
You don't have to be a political centrist, a moderate, to be civil. You just have to be, well, civil.
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