Does the right to say what we think still apply when we do it anonymously?

Oh dear. It seems I’ve let the side down.

A number of people, on this blog and elsewhere, appeared to like what I wrote about the Molesworth St protesters challenging the woke Left’s long-standing stranglehold on what these days is called public discourse.

But then they got to the footnote in which I said I neither whole-heartedly supported nor opposed the protesters, and at that point I lost them. It seems that if you’re not 100 percent behind Camp Freedom, you’re part of the conspiracy against them. How sad (and I don’t mean that ironically, as in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum).

Of course this is nothing new. It’s a familiar, if perverse, quirk of human nature.

I get along fine with old friends with whom I’m almost totally at odds politically. The people whose friendship is sometimes less dependable are those who, because we share the same opinions on most issues, develop the irrational expectation that we’ll agree all the time, and who behave as if it’s an act of betrayal when I don’t fall into line with their thinking.  To put it another way, their approval is conditional on me agreeing with them on just about everything.

The urge to pick fights with people who are basically on the same side is well documented. If reports are to be believed, it has happened – quite literally – at the Molesworth St encampment.

Countless political organisations have fallen apart because people who were passionately committed to the same causes fell out bitterly over what often seemed like relatively minor ideological sticking points. That’s the principal reason the far Left in New Zealand has historically been so ineffectual (that is, until the 2020 election, when they sneaked under the radar). They were so busy disembowelling each other that they lost sight of the common enemy. The deep schism that split New Zealand communists into pro-China and pro-Soviet camps was a case in point.

G K Chesterton called it the Irish disease. According to Chesterton, “This consists of the ability to find yourself 99 per cent in agreement with someone and then focus with ferocious, unforgiving intensity on the other one per cent.”

But of course it’s not confined to the Irish. I don’t believe the people having a whack at me all have Gaelic surnames.

The peevish tone of some comments in recent weeks (not all of them published) illustrates a wider phenomenon. The tone of public debate, as many commentators have noted, has become volatile and intolerant. The mood of the country is brittle and feverish. People are splitting into tribal camps. A woman I know who works in a local retail business told me yesterday of confrontations with aggressive men making irrational demands. This is not normal.

Some of this unpleasantness can be blamed on social tensions created, or at least brought to the surface, by Covid-19.  But it can also be attributed to government policies that are driving a wedge through what has historically been, at least by international standards, an admirably harmonious society. Some days New Zealand feels more like the Balkans.

Some of the comments rebuking me for not taking an emphatic position in support of the Molesworth St protest were polite and considered. Others were snarly and sneering. Some commenters write as if I have some sort of obligation always to faithfully reflect their views, and when I don’t I’ve somehow failed them. But if people expect me to confine myself to opinions that they happen to share, they’re reading the wrong blog. Whatever happened to the notion that a pluralistic, liberal democracy allows us to express honestly held opinions, regardless of whether others agree? When did we split into absolutist camps, intolerant of any deviation?

Now, another thing. A good friend and regular reader of this blog – one who certainly doesn’t share all my views – asked me recently why I permit anonymous opinions. I’m starting to wonder the same thing.

I admit one reason I'm having second thoughts is that it irritates me when people snipe at me from the cover of anonymity. They know who I am; my identity is out there for anyone to see. Why should they be able to have a whack at me, on my blog, without identifying themselves?

But there are other good reasons for reconsidering my tolerance of anonymity. For one thing, I’ve always believed that if a view is worth expressing, it’s worth putting your name to. There are occasions when people have valid reasons for withholding their identity (for example, when disclosing sensitive personal information), but they’re rare.

For another, it’s important that people on the conservative side of politics should have enough confidence in their convictions to declare themselves boldly. I sometimes wonder whether they’re intimidated by the overwhelming weight of left-wing opinion out there in the public arena, and particularly in the mainstream media. But the Left wins the moral battle by default when they are prepared to stand up in public and the Right isn’t.  It’s like a rugby match where the opposing side hasn’t shown up. We live in a free society and we should take full advantage of it.

Thirdly, I believe the quality of comment improves when people have to put their names to it. That was borne out when newspapers began insisting on letters to the editor being signed and accompanied by a verifiable address rather than written using a nom-de-plume. Most papers adopted that rule decades ago and it seems odd that blogs don’t do the same.

People are less likely to express extreme, petty, abusive or defamatory opinions when they have to sign them. Admittedly, I have no way of verifying that commenters are who they say they are; it would largely be on trust. Nonetheless I believe a requirement that people identify themselves would reduce the risk of the right to comment being abused.

Having said that, I don’t want to deter people from commenting and I certainly don’t intend to stifle comments critical of me. The comments section is a crucial component of this blog and I greatly value readers’ contributions, which are often thoughtful, provocative and erudite. In fact I’ll stick my neck out and say that I sometimes think there’s more value in the comments than in the blog posts that trigger them. I’m very grateful to the people who take the trouble to comment and I especially thank those who write under their own names.

In the spirit of participatory democracy, since I regard readers and commenters as having a stake in this blog, I welcome input before I make any change.