Blog Comments

Like many people, I have been reading various commentaries, stories and blogs about this week's Supreme Court oral arguments on ObamaCare. For the most part these stories and blogs are well reasoned, whichever side of the argument they support. The comments attached to these stories and blogs are another thing altogether. The amount of unreasoned, emotional, ideologically-driven vitriol to be found in these comments is amazing.

Of course, comment writers are self-selected, so they hardly represent the population as a whole. Most people, myself included, hardly ever write a comment to an article or blog. Still, it is a reminder that many in the general population don't care about reasoned arguments, or facts, or apparently even about the exact wording of the Constitution. Whatever their ideological bias (and both sides seem to be represented about equally), their reactions (on both sides) are knee-jerk emotional and ideological reactions, not thoughtful ones.

This raises again the perennial question of whether a democracy can survive if most of the voters are illogical, emotional, and uneducated about the issues.