Why We Blog?

Andrew Sullivan in his Atlantic Monthly article "Why I Blog" for November is a worthwhile because of the History he gives us and how a journalist can relate to it. Of course he mentions the luminaries in the blogosphere and nods to the rest of us, but when he mentioned the matter I lifted from the article below:

There is, after all, something simply irreplaceable about reading a piece of writing at length on paper, in a chair or on a couch or in bed. To use an obvious analogy, jazz entered our civilization much later than composed, formal music. But it hasn't replaced it; and no jazz musician would ever claim that it could. Jazz merely demands a different way of playing and listening, just as blogging requires a different mode of writing and reading. Jazz and blogging are intimate, improvisational, and individual—but also inherently collective. And the audience talks over both.

Which made me smile because I am listening to some Jazz as I read his article and write this blog. What I would like to add to his excellent article is an observation I made about some blogs which don't fit the definition by either not accepting comments or vetting them so only the supportive ones are published. I have a policy that will accept the comments; however I do require some sort of rational argument from the commenter. These have been what I found in the anti-evolution blogs like Uncommondescent, by that erstwhile polemicist William A. Dembski, and he is not alone in the blogosphere. Is this a sign of Intellectual Cowardice? I'm sure I don't know, but it can be a means of reducing your readership to those that share your world view, and which of course leads to a false and myopic world view.

I trust we can participate in this Great Conversation in the blogosphere as we seek enlightenment and truth, both the discovered and the revealed types.