Happy Thanksgiving

Today and tomorrow are pretty busy as I finish the week's work early for the Thanksgiving holiday. I'll be leaving tomorrow to go my cousins' for a feast and fun. Thanksgiving is a great holiday, an American celebration of abundance and achievement, in which we eat to surfeit, then watch boring football games.

And of course it's always great to see the family -- the liberals who think I'm a warmongering fascist and the Christians who think I'm an agent of Satan because I don't bow my head when they say grace. But aside from religion and politics, which it is best to avoid, these reunions are fun. I enjoy the games and camaraderie.

In a recent comments thread there was a lot of mockery, venom and insults. If my blog gets more popular and attracts more commenters, then I will certainly disable comments like Instapundit. I'm not going to spend time every day asking people to be polite -- or worse, deleting comments from nihilists and nutcases. Just look at Free Republic or Democratic Underground and you see that some people, left and right, are simply unable to comment about their opponents without insulting them. Some commenters at FR and DU have nothing of substance to say, but they will gladly take the time to deliver a gratuitous insult. The insults diminish the value of those forums and make them tedious to wade through.

For now, however, this blog is still peanuts, so I get few comments (and almost none from leftists). Most commenters have been civil, but they slip up now and then. I deliver the occasional insult myself, especially to the big ones like Hillary Clinton or George W. Bush, but I try to argue ideas. After years of effort I am much better at avoiding insults and ad hominem attacks than I was in 1996 when I discovered cyberspace -- a country that is still a rugged frontier.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I'll be back next week.