Two good blog discussions…

I wish I had more time to spend on moderating the discussions on this blog, which frequently become shrill and excessively combative. On the other hand, most readers are adults who can figure out for themselves whether and how to “read” the comments boards.
In general, though, the ability to have this kind of cross-continental, open-ended discussion is a treasure that I don’t want to curtail too much. It really does allow for the creation of new knowledge and new understanding. (I have long believed that knowledge is an essentially social rather than individual creation… I mean, who taught Tom Hobbes and John Locke to speak and to express themselves, in the first place? Their ability to reason and to argue sure as heck didn’t “grow like mushrooms out of the ground” at all…. Ooops, end of communitarian rant, here.)
So anyway, I thought readers might like to see some useful new knowledge being created in these two portions of the blogosphere:

— Jonathan’s recent post (and the subsequent discussion) on the constitution and meaning of the Hamas government lineup, and
— Reidar Visser’s comment (in particular), as posted onto my post here yesterday about the continuing, extremely high-stakes political wrangling in Iraq.

Once JWN readers and commenters see how constructive discussions like this actually work, and how they serve us all by expanding the available knowledge base, perhaps you will all be a bit more mindful that this effect does not occur if people get into name-calling of the “hateful Helena” (or “hateful anyone else”) variety, or if they don’t actually make an effort to contribute new knowledge or their own thoughtfully conceived questions to the discussion. Also, it doesn’t really occur very easily if people go wildly off topic.
… One thing I’ve considered here is to see if anyone wants to take on the role of JWN’s “Bernhard”. Bernhard is the guy who started a parallel-universe blog called Moon of Alabama, where people could comment on Billmon’s Whiskey Bar blog, after Billmon shut down his comment section. MoA has evolved quite a bit since then.
Bernhard’s comments here are interesting. Actually, suddenly I’m thinking: why not ask Bernhard to run a JWN comment-site?
Does anyone have any other suggestions? Mail me.